When Emily Wayborn goes home to visit her mom while on hiatus from her hit TV show, she receives a voicemail from her former best friend, Amber. Though the two were once notorious party girls, they haven’t spoken in years. Although the message might sound benign to anyone else, Amber uses a safe word that Emily recognizes, a word they always used to get out of sticky situations during their wild days. And what’s more chilling than the voicemail: it turns out that Amber has gone missing.
Determined to track down her friend, Emily follows a chain of clues that lead her to the enigmatic billionaire Reeve Sallis, a hotelier known for his shady dealings and play boy reputation. Now, in order to find Amber, Emily must seduce Reeve to learn his secrets and discover the whereabouts of her friend. But as she finds herself more entangled with him, she finds she’s drawn to Reeve for more than just his connection to Amber, despite her growing fear that he may be the enemy. When she’s forced to choose where her loyalty lies, how will she decide between saving Amber and saving her heart?
My Review:
“For good or bad, all roads led back to him. Perhaps that’s what it meant to really be his.”
I could not. Put. This. Book. Down. Simply out, this book grabbed me from the beginning and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Emily and Reeve since I finished. FIRST TOUCH is without a doubt one of my favorite books of the year.
The plot, the pacing, the hotter-than-hot sex scenes, the emotion, the characters…all pure perfection. I love Laurelin Paige’s writing but with FIRST TOUCH, she has written the best book of her career. Run, don’t walk, to buy this book!
I absolutely love a damaged heroine when written well. Emily is an incredibly real, thoughtful, smart and beautiful woman, who lived a very fast and dangerous lifestyle when she was young. Her “partner in crime” was her best friend Amber, with whom she lost touch but who has now reached out to Emily. Amber represents a part of Emily’s past that she’d like to put behind her, but Emily is forced into using her beauty and charm once again in order to seduce the man she believes might hold the clues to Amber’s whereabouts.
“Men were my drug. Staying away from them had been the only way I knew to stay clean. The only way to reinvent myself.”
Amber has disappeared, is somehow in danger and Emily feels she owes it to Amber to help her. Amber did the same for Emily many times when they were younger, and Emily senses that Amber needs her now. To that end, Emily sets her sights on wealthy hotelier Reeve, who might be the only link she has to Amber. Reeve, it seems, is only interested in a purely sexual arrangement with the alluring Emily. But Emily can’t help but fall for the hot, yet emotionally reserved playboy.
“His grip was strong and sure and aggressive. Almost too tight, but just barely not. He held it without saying anything for several seconds, and, I don’t know how— somehow, though— I knew he was making his own allusion. His own promise. He wanted me to know what he’d be like. In bed. With me. He’d be powerful and controlling and forceful, even. Almost too forceful, but just barely not. Was that how he’d been with her? Did almost become too much?”
This book is part erotic romance, part thriller, part romantic suspense…FIRST TOUCH has it all. There are some VERY graphic sex scenes in this book and the steam factor is off the charts!! But there is much more to this story than just the erotic elements. My heart absolutely ached for the suffering Emily had endured; and I was literally holding my breath in anticipation throughout the story, hoping against hope that she and Reeve would develop real feelings for each other, beyond their agreed-upon sexual arrangement. Emily’s pretend seduction of Reeve quickly turns into something more and she knows that Reeve represents the possibility of a real connection, real feelings, but he is hiding many secrets of his own.
“Because the only thing worse than falling under Reeve’s spell would be me believing that he’d fallen under mine as well.”
There is a large cast of characters in FIRST TOUCH – some might be dangerous, some might not be, and some might know what happened to Amber. One thing is for sure, nothing is as it seems in FIRST TOUCH. And that is what makes this such an outstanding story.
Favorite quote:
“This is only today. Tomorrow’s going to be something else entirely.”
(ARC provided by the publisher in return for an honest review.)
– Ellen
Pre-Order LAST KISS (coming June 2016)!!
