Synopsis
No one knows how new members are selected to the board of Hale Banking and Holding. But there are rumors of a sordid rite of initiation.
Whispers how one woman and nine men disappear into a boardroom.
This time, that woman will be me.
The Hale family owns everything—the eighth largest bank in the world, everyone in our town, even the mortgage on my parents’ mansion. And now Royce Hale wants to own me.
He is charming. Seductive. Ruthless. But above all, he’s the prince of lies. My body may tighten with white-hot desire under his penetrating gaze, but I refuse to enjoy it.
I’ll make a deal with the devil to save my family and sell myself to the Hales. But Royce will never own my heart.
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Review
Holy smokes! The Initiation is something! I was not expecting any of that! That ending? Just what even was that?
It is unusual for a book to surprise me completely, and I may have been a little off my game when reading this one, but this book threw me for some loops. Royce charmed me as much as he charmed Marist, and I think he fooled me almost as much too. And poor Marist, no one thought to warn her?
I liked that Marist was the overlooked one. This is very much an ugly duckling sort of a story. She wasn’t ugly but overlooked and didn’t particularly fit in. I appreciated this, and I think being overlooked will only help Marist succeed more than she has. As I said, Royce is a charmer, and while I want to believe his intentions are good, I’m not sure we can trust anyone in the book, even Marist, to some extent.
This is much more of a character-driven book. Marist especially grows a lot in this book, and I expect more from her in the next book. While things happen in this book, the major plot points don’t start until closer to the end. That’s when stuff gets going and that ending. It really had me questioning things. I can’t wait to get my hands on the next book!
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