Review: Risking It All by Tessa Bailey
Risking It All
Book One
400 Pages
Released: 01/27/2015
PUBLISHER: ENTANGLED PUBLISHING | IMPRINT: ENTANGLED SELECT
GENRE: CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE | SERIES: CROSSING THE LINE
She’s gone rogue. He’ll live to keep her safe…
NYPD detective Seraphina Newsom will avenge her brother’s death at any cost. Even if it means insinuating herself into a rough, Brooklyn street gang and going so far undercover, she’s not sure she’ll be able to get out. Every minute she spends in their midst means the clock ticking down on her life, especially when she overhears something that could get her killed.
Bowen Driscol is the heir to a crime enterprise. He never asked for the job, but with his father behind bars, he has no choice but to step in and keep the operation running. But when the NYPD blackmails him with a piece of damning information in exchange for aiding an undercover cop, he finds himself on the other side of the law for the first time in his life.
Bowen knows the danger Sera is in, and keeping her safe trumps saving his own ass. The problem? She can’t know he’s on her side. And there’s the matter of the seriously inconvenient heat sparking between them that’s incinerating his resistance. But Sera only sees Bowen’s past, and men like him are the reason her brother is dead. If they’re to get out alive, he’ll have to risk exposing the man beneath, and hope to hell he doesn’t blow the whole operation in the process.
QUOTE OF NOTE
“Watching you work fucks me up. You have any idea what it does to me when you bend over a table and smile? It makes me want to pull up your skirt and turn that smile into a scream.”
~ Bowen Driscol, Risking It All ~
Risking it All is the first full-length book in Tessa Bailey’s Crossing the Line series. In the book, rookie NYPD detective, Seraphina Newsom, goes rogue in an unsanctioned undercover operation to bring down her brother’s murderer. Tough-talking bad boy and South Brooklyn crime head, Bowen Driscol, (His Risk To Take, Riskier Business) is the man police blackmail into going in after Sera and getting her back out safely.
“Do you talk to other girls like this?”
~ Sera ~
When Sera first sets eyes on Bowen, it’s hate at first sight. But then when he moves a little closer, she’s struck by his good looks and brash-talking ways. And then she discovers he’s a criminal, the same kind of criminal she went undercover to bring down. Except Bowen proves to be more than his reputation says he is, and the contradictions in him both confuse and intrigue Sera.
Bowen quickly comes to believe he’s royally screwed. He’s attracted to a cop, and what’s worse, he’s been ordered to keep said cop out of harms way while she works to get the information the department needs to bring down her brother’s killer. Taking her to bed would be a mistake, and yet, it’s the only thing Bowen wants to do from the moment he lock eyes with her across the bar room floor.
“I don’t even turn on the lights for other girls.”
~ Bowen ~
I loved this book, and these characters. Risking It All is a fantastic story with a heroine out for some personal justice and an unconventional hero willing to do whatever it takes to keep her from meeting the same fate her brother found. It’s a story that will keep you up at night, with a dirty-talking hero you’re not likely to forget anytime soon, and heroine you’ll simultaneously envy, relate to, and cheer on.
If you love good girl meets bad boy, woman in danger and hero as protector love stories, you’ll want to read Risking It All by Tessa Bailey. The story has everything you could possibly want in a romance, and a few things you didn’t even know you needed and craved.
“Tessa Bailey’s alpha heroes will make you combust!”
~ NYT Bestselling Author, Laura Kaye ~
Tessa lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and young daughter. When she isn’t writing or reading romance, Tessa enjoys a good argument and thirty-minute recipes.
