Review: sensual risque read
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 17, 2014
The Arrangement. Bethany-KrisReview from Jeannie Zelos Book reviews.So, loved Bethany's Lynked and dived eagerly into this. It starts with a kidnapping and a bang – from a gun - and a murder, so the Mob angle is introduced very quickly. Vine though doesn't realise that she's being kidnapped to save her life, and doesn't cooperate, so receives a bit of rough justice from one of the kidnappers. This doesn't go down well with Anton, who'd given orders Vine was to be unharmed, and displeasing the Bratva Boss isn't something you want to be doing.....There's a lot of violence in this book, and a lot of very hot, erotic and sensual sex scenes. Vine is annoyed at first that she's had to leave the life she had mapped out, and marry Anton as originally planned. She thought when her father died and his brother took over as boss, that the plans were off, as she went from being Princess to a nobody.... Anton though fell in love with her at first sight, and for him Vine is his intended wife, and he'll do anything to protect her.I liked Vine, she'd been brought up in a tough world where violence was everyday life, and then she spends more time with Anton, who shows her that he can love her, be the Boss and keep work away from home. It's something her father never did, and that caused her a great deal of grief when young, and afraid of where she was allowed to go and what she might see.Anton is young, but one of those born to be a leader, and has the respect of his men. They fear his justice,but know he's fair, and isn't Boss just by heritage but by being the best person. I loved the way he was so in love with Vine, the way bits of their past history came out, the way he did everything he could to help her settle into the role she needed to be. His old flame – Forget her name– but daughter of another Boss, was determined she was going to be his wife, even though he'd never let anyone expect more than the odd, one off session with him. And he'd has lots of those but she thought she was more....I loved the way Vine stood up to her, and to be honest I’d have liked to see her play a bigger role. I do love the bad bitches in a romance, those determined to cause trouble :) the secret too, that was hinted at and tantalised in front of us. I just knew somehow that when things came out it was going to be huge, and cause problems. Its one of those were you can see trouble brewing but not sure  how it can be avoided. Anton was trying to do his best not to hurt her, knew she had to know,but I felt he was a bit scared of what it might mean for their relationship when it came out. I thought the way it did get known worked really well, very realistic.What I did struggle with though, and what’s dropped this down from a five star is that for at least the first half of the book I felt there was little actually happening, Vine had been taken, accepted her part, fallen in love – it was all very slick and smooth and lacked drama for me. Once the drama did heat up it was perfect, and we got the secret revealed and then more drama built on to that and it made for an exciting erotic read rather than the sexy but a tiny bit slooow that it had been so far :( Until the big reveal it felt a bit like Vine and Anton  have sex again, and again but in a different place, and yet again somewhere else. It was as if nothing much else was going on. It's priced at 3.29 for  319 pages on kindle so has the length to get fully into the plot and characters.Stars:  well, second half definitional five, but that slow start brought it down for me to a four. Its a very sensual,risqué read though all the scenes fit well within the storyline.