Most Eligible Bastard, an all-new standalone romance from New York Times bestselling author Annika Martin is LIVE!
Title: Most Eligible Bastard
Author: Annika Martin
Genre: Romantic Comedy
He’s a powerful billionaire CEO who built the family business into an empire. The money doesn’t matter to him, but the company is his life. And then his eccentric mother wills it all to her tiny dog.
********
I’m Vicky, the dog whisperer. (Not really, but that’s what my elderly neighbor always says.) When she dies, she surprises everybody by leaving a corporation worth billions to her dog, Smuckers. With me as his spokesperson.
Suddenly I go from running my Etsy store to sitting in an elegant Wall Street boardroom with Smuckers in my lap. And my neighbor’s son, Henry Locke, aka New York’s most eligible bachelor, glaring across the table at me.
Rumor has it Henry’s a business genius who’s as talented in the bedroom as he is in the boardroom. Sure, he’s gorgeous. Sex-in-a-seven-thousand dollar suit. But…
He’s arrogant and infuriating.
He refuses to listen to me when I insist I didn’t con his mother.
He thinks he can bully me, buy me off, control me, even seduce me.
Henry may have the women of Manhattan eating out of the palm of his hand, but I'm so over entitled rich guys who think they own the world.
No way will his wicked smile be charming ME out of my panties.
His wicked...devastating...impossible-to-resist smile.
Oh well, who needs panties anyway?
Excerpt:
She glares at me now. “I can’t believe you tried to strip poor Smuckers of his vote. Do you have no decency?”
“When it comes to protecting this company?” I say. “No.”
Her gaze intensifies. “Just no?”
“None at all,” I say. “No decency whatsoever. Nada, if you will.”
Her pretty lips part. It’s shock. Maybe a little bit awe.
I give her an amused smile, adjusting my jacket sleeve over my cuff just so. The suit was tailored by a man who charges three hundred bucks an hour and is worth every penny.
“Uh,” she says. “You think you’re all that? You’re not.”
“Oh, I am all that,” I say. “I very much am. And for the record, I will crush you in the end.”
“Smuckers had this medication once,” she says. “We tried to hide it in his food, and he spit it out. No matter what we did, he’d spit it out.” She puts one finger on the paper with the new amendment and slides it back across the desk. “Smuckers doesn’t like when people try to fool him. That’s his message for you.”
“I have a message for Smuckers.” I put my finger on it and slide it back across to her. “Smuckers needs to know that we have a private investigator on this case. Smuckers might not have very nice food to eat if you ended up in prison.”
Finally she looks scared.
Brett swoops in. “I say we settle this. One-time offer from me personally.” He writes the number—$4,500,000.00. “This offer expires in two minutes.”
My heart pounds. She needs to take offer. We’ve shown how close she can come to losing everything.
She looks at the paper.
She’s all alone caring for that sister of hers. She’s poor—we have her banking information; we know it for a fact. She has every reason in the world to take it. Yet she hesitates.
“This is our last offer,” Brett says. “After this, we’ll take the company from you, and you’ll get nothing.”
She raises her brown eyes to me. It’s me she’s really dealing with. I like that she knows that.
“You know what Smuckers hates even more than being fooled?” she says.
My heart pounds. She almost lost everything to me, and now she’s going to tell me a dog story?
“He hates being threatened,” she says. “And bullied. He really, really hates it.”
“Well he’s going to have to get used to it,” I hear myself saying. “He’s used to bubbles and bows and sunny parks but he’s in the jungle now. There are animals who are faster and stronger and smarter than he is. Animals who will dominate him easily—savagely, even.”
“Then you don’t know Smuckers very well.”
“Oh, I know all about Smuckers, and I’d suggest he practice rolling over. Baring his belly for the superior predator.” I lower my voice. “Begging sweetly for mercy.”
The color heightens in her face. This shouldn’t be fun.
But oh, it is.
I keep going. “Smuckers may think he can request packets and bylaws and get up to speed, but he can’t compete here. He doesn’t have the skills.”
“Smuckers thinks owning fifty-one percent is the best skill to have,” she says.
Review:
Before I get into the review, I have to say I found the perfect song for Vicky & Henry's story: Call It What You Want by Taylor Swift. I had it on loop while reading the book, but it just fits them so perfectly. So if you are one to listen to music while you read, do it! Ok, onto the review now. I knew going into this book that it was going to be a romantic comedy, but I didn't realize how funny it was. It had my giggling and laughing out loud on my subway ride to school/work. At one point, I think I had tears in my eyes. The premise is hilarious which brings the two of them together. Vicky has control over Smuckers who is Henry's late mother's dog. So she owns 51% of the companies and Henry will stop at nothing to get his company back. They end up spending a lot of time together and they are constantly butting heads. The moments in the board meeting (the throne) and how Vicky talks about Smuckers are absolutely hilarious. I was pretty much sold when I read the premise before and saw that a dog was involved since I'm a huge dog lover. Smuckers was the third character in the story and I loved how he stayed significant throughout. Onto the characters, both are such great leading protagonists. I love the dual-perspective of the text because once you read their chapters, you get a sense of how their mind works and have a new appreciation for them. Henry seemed really cold in Vicky's earlier chapters, but getting into his chapters, I really loved him as a character. You can tell he holds a lot of hurt and resentment from his childhood, but at the end of the day, is simply a boy who loved his mom very much. Vicky, on the other hand, has a very dark secret past, but today she is trying to make the best of things to care for her younger sister and work on her craft. Both are crafters and creators and I loved the scenes where they worked on things. Both have been burned so they find it extremely hard to trust and open up, and I liked that they were growing as a couple. Henry is definitely one of those swoon-worthy leading male protagonist because even though he is arrogant and cocky in some moments, when he loves, he really loves. I loved what he did towards the end to help Vicky and her past. It was one of those slow clap moments. Overall, I can't say enough good things about this book. I just really loved it. Once I finished I spent the next day talking off my boyfriend and best friend's ear about it. I was like "THIS BOOK!!" It had amazing comedy, super romantic moments, but incredibly strong background stories that showed there was many layers to the characters. This is my first book by Annika Martin, and I'm totally going out and buying a bunch of them now because I absolutely love her writing. Please pick up this book and meet Vicky, Henry, and Smuckers. You won't regret it!
My rating of the book: ✮✮✮✮✮ (5/5 stars)
Disclaimer: An advanced reader's copy of this book was sent to me in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Read Today!
Amazon US➜ http://amzn.to/2zfhkbt
Amazon UK➜ http://amzn.to/2zgCCbk
iBooks➜ http://geni.us/zURXRO
Kindle➜ http://amzn.to/2yFkW8f
Kobo➜ http://geni.us/Hnnbjb
Nook➜ http://geni.us/CPR0
GooglePlay Alert ➜ http://eepurl.com/c7ngpz
ADD to your TBR➜ http://geni.us/BeIcB
About Annika:
Annika Martin loves fun, dirty stories, hot heroes, and wild, dramatic everything. She enjoys hanging out in Minneapolis coffee shops with her writer husband, and also likes birdwatching at her bird feeder alongside her two stunningly photogenic cats, especially when she should be writing. She’s heavy into running, music, saving the planet, taking long baths, and consuming chocolate suckers. She’s worked a surprisingly large number of waitressing jobs, and has also worked in a plastics factory and the advertising trenches; her garden is total bee-friendly madness and her most unfavorite word is nosh or possibly fob. A NYT bestselling author, she has also written as RITA award-winning author Carolyn Crane.
Connect with Annika:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Annika_Martin
Stay up to date with Annika by joining her mailing list: http://www.annikamartinbooks.com/newletter/
Disclaimer: I have signed up with Social Butterfly PR to help promote this author and her book. I have received an early reader's copy of this book for my participation in the Blog Tours and in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
No comments:
Post a Comment