Review: Rush (Breathless #1) by Maya Banks

Gabe, Jace, and Ash: three of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the country. They’re accustomed to getting anything they want. Anything at all. For Gabe, it’s making one particular fantasy come true with a woman who was forbidden fruit. Now she’s ripe for the picking... When Gabe Hamilton saw Mia Crestwell walk into the ballroom for his hotel’s grand opening, he knew he was going to hell for what he had planned. After all, Mia is his best friend’s little sister. Except she’s not so little anymore. And Gabe has waited a long time to act on his desires. Gabe has starred in Mia’s fantasies more than once, ever since she was a teenager with a huge crush on her brother’s best friend. So what if Gabe’s fourteen years older? Mia knows he’s way out of her league, but her attraction has only grown stronger with time. She’s an adult now, and there’s no reason not to act on her most secret desires. As Gabe pulls her into his provocative world, she realizes there’s a lot she doesn’t know about him or how exacting his demands can be. Their relationship is intense and obsessive, but as they cross the line from secret sexual odyssey to something deeper, their affair runs the risk of being exposed—and vulnerable to a betrayal far more intimate than either expected.

Gabe, Ash and Jace are three best friends and business partners who work hard and play hard. Their sexual interests are on the more extreme side, Ash and Jace can normally be found in a threesome together and Gabe is very dominant and likes to completely own the woman he’s with. He went through a painful and public divorce that humiliated him in the public eye and his professional world when his now ex-wife accused him of abuse even though their relationship was consensual albeit, more limit pushing sexually than the norm. Gabe has learned to harden his heart and now he never goes into a sexual relationship without a written contract between him and the woman he wants in his bed. He’s lusted after Mia, Jace’s little sister for years, but being fourteen years older than her, he never felt like the time was right to make his feelings known. But he’s not waiting any longer and he gives Mia a proposition to have her in his life: come work for him as his personal assistant and sexually be available to him when he wants, where he wants, in any way he wants. Why would any woman agree to this? I have no idea, but Mia signs his contract and Gabe now owns her.

I didn’t care for this set up at all. I’m usually a sucker for the hero loving his best friend’s sister for years and him finally a making a move. I love that. But here if felt like he was paying Mia to be at his beck and call. Even though Mia acknowledges this, hates how it seems and wants to actually do her job so she’s paid for working, it didn’t feel that way. I also understand that erotic books have limits pushed and to expect those limits to pushed often with regard to sex scenes. However, I needed to have a scene between Gabe and Mia that didn’t start or end with sex. Just one. But it was way too much for this reader; office sex, back of the car sex, waking Mia up with sex, he just needed to have her right now sex. Enough already. There’s nothing wrong with some dialogue and plot and it was lacking through much of the book.

The leads didn’t capture me as well. I love a strong heroine and Mia just didn’t inspire that feeling for me when reading about her. I hate to say she seemed weak, but more times than not that’s exactly the word that came to mind. She finally stood up for herself in the end, but it was too little too late. And Gabe…I enjoy a dominate alpha male. I don’t enjoy a dominate asshole male and that’s how Gabe read to me. We get some details about what he’s going through with his family life and his parent’s drama, but I needed to know Gabe away from all the sex scenes and there’s not much chance for that. The real kicker was when he felt scared of his deepening feelings for Mia and decided to push HER limits buy inviting three business men, men who Gabe knew but strangers to Mia, into their hotel room to pleasure Mia in any way they saw fit, just no penetrating her. Yes, because that stipulation makes him a real stand-up guy. The scene goes horribly wrong, ending with Mia being hit and it kept going downhill from there.

Gabe doesn’t man up when Jace finds out about their relationship and while it didn’t surprise me how that all played out, and how he and Mia finally reconcile to find their happy ending, I was out of the story by the end anyway and didn’t much care about what happened. I found this to be a very disappointing read. I wasn’t able to connect to the characters, Gabe wasn’t likable to me and with all the sex scenes between Gabe and Mia, I just needed more than that for them.

Rating: D

Release Date: February 5, 2013
Publisher: Berkley
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*eARC provided by publisher for review*