PREY TELL

A Ph.D. student and her brother’s millionaire best friend cross paths in this dark romance, the first in a new series from Richardson.

Juliet Parker is engaged to Dylan Hall, who seems perfect on paper: a fellow Ph.D. student whose psychology discipline overlaps with hers. Yet, he doesn’t exactly light her fire…unlike Chase Ravage, the rich and handsome best friend of her brother Jackson. Eight years before, the 18-year-old Juliet had asked Chase to take her virginity. Chase, weighed down by a sense of responsibility, turned her down. After years of avoiding him, Juliet finds out that Chase paid for her engagement party, and suddenly he waltzes back into her life. At this point, Juliet’s life is upended: She splits up with Dylan and spends far too much time researching Chase Ravage and his rumored proclivities for sexual domination. That could be just the thing Juliet needs, while Chase finds himself questioning all his pet rules about long-term relationships. Richardson has crafted a story that is seductive and exciting, but occasionally Juliet and Chase fall into tired tropes: in particular, the uptight woman who has a sexual awakening courtesy of a brooding bad boy. When Juliet admits that none of her previous partners have given her an orgasm, Chase, believing he could be the first, declares, “Something dark and possessive rips through me at the thought”: It’s here that the story really slips into cliche. Yet the book has some well-observed details that make for interesting character development, specifically Chase’s relationship with his father, Juliet’s close bond with Jackson, and the conflict that this bond brings to her romance with Chase. Though her book is not revolutionary, Richardson brings the heat. She drops enough tantalizing material into this novel to stir up reader excitement for the promised sequels exploring the romantic escapades of the four other Ravage brothers.

A sexy, fast-paced romance with lovable characters on a journey of self-development.