Riding Wild
So, a couple of weeks ago I found myself written out for the day, and needing something to read. When I’m in this kind of mood, I know I want something contemporary, and something hot — that kind of book you can just sit back with and have a lot of fun, going along for a great ride with the characters.
But I also wanted something I could read over at my in-laws, which meant: on my computer. So, knowing that Jaci Burton had a release upcoming, and it was the first book in her new Wild Riders series, I sent her an e-mail with some sad puppy eyes and was like, “pretty please?” She took pity on me, and so I got my hands on an eARC of:
Oh, yeah, we’ve got a winner here. Riding Wild starts off on a bang (not that kind! …not right away 😀 ) and doesn’t let up. You’ve got Lily, a kick-ass private investigator who runs into Mac Canfield, the bad boy from her past, under very suspicious circumstances: he’s stealing an artifact from a museum — an artifact that turns out to be holding a virus.
The rich girl, the bad boy who broke her heart and who she still doesn’t know if she can trust — on the surface, it sounds like a story I’ve read before. But Jaci handles it so well, and in a refreshing way; instead of moping around her hometown pining away for Mac, Lily’s broken heart spurred her into action, and into the life that she wanted to live. I love that she really did put Mac behind her — and that when he shows up again, she’s got her eyes wide open. She knows how he affects her … but she’s just as aware of how to use her own sexuality.
And then there’s Mac. He knows he’s got their past working against him — he really was a bad boy. But he’s turned around, working undercover, and he can’t blow that cover even for Lily. Especially for Lily, because he’s not clear exactly how she got tangled up in this. You can practically feel his frustration at times that he can’t come clean with her, that he can’t show her who he is now. Of course, not being able to come clean doesn’t mean he won’t kidnap her and keep her next to him until everything is settled (on a Harley, through a few back roads… I haven’t been on a motorcycle since I popped a wheelie on a 50cc Honda dirtbike and banged my hand on some gravel when I fell off (I still have the scar) and this almost made me take my husband down to the Harley-Davidson store down the way and straddle a seat.)
So all of that history adds such a fantastic layer to the story — in addition to all of the heat these two give off around each other, and how they can’t keep their hands (and other parts) to themselves, there’s a really wonderful emotional tension between them, too.
One warning, though: DON’T READ IT AT YOUR IN-LAWS’ HOUSE! (Or, like I’ve mentioned before about another book of hers, at a coffee shop.) Really. Trust me on this.
Because Jaci does hot really, really, really well. 😈 Very soon, I’ll be giving her more puppy eyes so that I can get my hands on an early copy of the next book in the series, Riding Temptation.
October’s a long way away. 🙁
