Review: Rebel Heir by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward

Rebel Heir
(Rush Duet #1)
by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward
Publisher: Self-published
Publication date: Aug. 7, 2018
Genre: Romance
Rating:

How to kick off a great summer in the Hamptons:

Snag a gorgeous rental on the beach. Check.

Get a job at a trendy summer haunt. Check.

How to screw up a great summer in the Hamptons:

Fall for the one guy with a dark leather jacket, scruff on his face, and intense eyes that doesn’t fit in with the rest of the tony looking crowd. A guy you can’t have when you’ll be leaving at the end of the season.

Check. Check. Check.

I should add—especially when the guy is your sexy, tattooed God of a boss.

Especially when he not only owns your place of employment but inherited half of the town.

Especially when he’s mean to you.

Or so I thought.

Until one night when he demanded I get in his car so he could drive me home because he didn’t want me walking in the dark.

That was sort of how it all started with Rush.

And then little by little, some of the walls of this hardass man started to come down.

I never expected that the two of us, seemingly opposites from the outside, would grow so close.

I wasn’t supposed to fall for the rebel heir, especially when he made it clear he didn’t want to cross the line with me.

As the temperature turned cooler, the nights became hotter. My summer became a lot more interesting—and complicated.

All good things must come to an end, right?

Except our ending was one I didn’t see coming.

When Gia’s friend calls in a huge favor to have her cover her shift working the bar, she had no idea what she was getting into. Pouring drinks should be super easy. I mean, how hard can it be? Well, for a girl who can barely pour a decent beer, it’s disastrous. Between over/undercharging patrons, not getting drink orders correct and pretty much just making up your own recipe for everything, to actually pissing off the patrons of the bar… Gia is not doing a good job. Then you throw in the fact that she starts bad-mouthing the owner of the establishment (through word of mouth from her friend), not realizing that the handsome man she’s talking to is in fact the owner. Lucky for her, he’s in a bind and is willing to overlook her friend’s horrible judgement, and offers her a job as a hostess. For an unattainable, grumpy, bad-boy, Rush finds himself showing a softer side of himself that he didn’t know existed whenever he’s around Gia. The only problem is, he’s not built for commitment, and he’s her boss.

Rebel Heir had all the ingredients for a success. Bad-boy? Check! Boss/employee relationship? Check! A grumpy hero who starts to get mushy around a certain heroine? Check! However, the story was a bit all over the place. Anywhere the author could throw in drama, the author did just that. I mean, Gia is going off on women left and right when she sees Rush with them… and they weren’t even dating! Rush is no better since he does the same exact thing. There are some other crazy plot twists that the authors throws in that I didn’t feel were overly necessary. Even the whammy that’s unloaded on the readers right at the end sort of turned me off from this train wreck.

I think for me, it was the fact that for the majority of the book these two characters deny their feelings for each other. They clearly have insane chemistry, but both have been hurt before and don’t want to get too close in fear of hurting the other person. Honestly, it got kind of old after a while. Especially given the fact that they were clearly an item, just minus the label. I think the story would have been much better if these two didn’t drag it out for so long and shifted gears a lot sooner than they did. By the time we were enjoying them as a legit couple, the authors threw in a curve ball that set things all off kilter again and it was a bit frustrating.

Rebel Heir was a quick read. It wasn’t bad, but I guess I wanted more from it. It seemed too juvenile and it was as if the authors were trying to come up with crazy plot twists to shock the readers with, instead of just allowing their characters to shine through the pages. Like I said before, the whammy of a cliffhanger won’t be pulling me in to read the next book.

Favorite quote…

“Sweetheart, sometimes the risk of what bad things could happen keeps us from experiencing all the good things life has to offer.”