Review: The Professional by Kresley ColeThe Professional by Kresley Cole
Series: The Game Maker #1
Published by Simon and Schuster on May 6, 2014
Genres: Bdsm, Erotic Romance
Pages: 400
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased
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three-stars

The highly anticipated complete novel of The Professional—the first installment in #1 New York Times bestselling author Kresley Cole’s scorching Game Maker series, an erotica collection that has readers asking: How hot is too hot?

He makes the rules…

Mafiya enforcer Aleksei “The Siberian” Sevastyan’s loyalty to his boss knows no bounds, until he meets the boss’s long-lost daughter, a curvy, feisty redhead who haunts his mind and heats his blood like no other. Ordered to protect her, Aleksei will do anything to possess her as well—on his own wicked terms.

Rules are made to be broken…

Grad student Natalie Porter had barely recovered from her first sight of the dark and breathtaking Sevastyan before the professional enforcer whisks her away to Russia, thrusting her into a world of extreme wealth and wanton pleasures. Every day under his protection leads her deeper under his masterful spell.

Are you ready to play?

Yet all is not as it seems. To remove Natalie from an enemy’s reach, Sevastyan spirits her into hiding. From an opulent palace in Russia to the decadent playgrounds of the mega-wealthy in Paris, the two lovers will discover that even their darkest—and most forbidden—fantasies can come true…

Since I decided to go ahead and read The Master, I thought I’d combine my reviews of the The Professional (it was serialized).

Quick opinion of the book is that I didn’t like Sevastyn. I think the fact that it’s written in 1st person point of view means we don’t get to know him as well as we do her Immortals After Dark heroes, so all that possessive territorial behavior has no excuse. I love a good alpha male, even one who can be a bit of a bossy jerkface, but it works because we see him from other points of view.

With The Professional, we don’t get that  viewpoint, so he comes off as a big asshole. Even his redeeming qualities didn’t work for me because it was just given to us at the end. Kresley Cole excels at creating alphahole heroes who I don’t hate. They work really well, and this woman could write the phone book and I’d read it. Although, here, I may have preferred the phone book. No really. She’s my favorite author ever, and I’m sad to say this didn’t work for me. I liked Natalie, but since she’s the only pov we get, it makes sense. I hope I’m not setting myself up for disappointment by reading the next book.

My full reviews of The Professional:

Part I

Part II

Part III

 

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three-stars