Title: The Big, Bad Billionaire
Series: Billionaire Fairy Tales Book #4
Stand Alone Title: yes
Author: Jackie Ashenden
Genre: Romance
Blurb: Wicked. Ruthless. Obsessed.
Sent away from his family as a boy because he couldn’t be controlled, Rafe DeSantis’s new guardian turned him into a monster. One who wants only two things out of life: To get revenge on the father who destroyed his life. And to possess the woman who was kept from him. Ella Hart has been his obsession for years, and now that he’s her guardian he’s finally in position to black mail her into his bed. And once he has her there? He’s going to eat her up.
Innocent. Alone. Hunted.
Ella has been living with her grandmother since the death of her parents when she was a child. She’s learned to pour her grief and pain into dance, and it’s become her escape. Her passion. Now she’s set her sights on a prestigious dance school in Paris. But there’s one problem. Ella was so young when her parents died, her money was left in the hands of the DeSantis family…and it’s now controlled by Rafe. A man she’s always found compelling and terrifying at the same time. Rafe offers her an ultimatum: Give herself to him, body and soul, and she’ll get the money she needs.
Ella isn’t in a position to refuse, though she tries to resist the sexy billionaire. It feels good, until her heart becomes involved. Does the big bad billionaire want to capture her heart? Or does he only want to own her body?
Favorite quotes: “Run, little Red,” Rafe murmured, watching her walk fast up the steps to her front door. “Run while you can. But one day I’ll catch you, make no mistake. And you’re going to love it when I do.”
Thoughts: This book was a good mix of a billionaire storyline meshed with a fairytale retelling, in this case Little Red Riding Hood. Rafe was a conflicting character – he was harsh, abrupt, ruthless, and he has taken struggles in his life and learned to manipulate and interact with people to get what he wants. And one of the things he has always wanted is Ella. Honestly, the way he was treated makes you sympathize with him (and regret CPS never got involved with his family!), yet at times he is difficult to fully like. Ella, by the same token, is a little too innocent and stubborn. Her willingness to stick her head in the sand like an ostrich annoyed me at times, and she was so manipulated by her own parents into not liking Rafe that it frustrated me that she wouldn’t take a step back and evaluate things on her own without stubbornly thinking only other people’s thoughts rather than her own.
The storyline had a lot of ebbs and peaks, times where there was intense emotion and times where things fell flat. Overall, it was a pretty good book that I enjoyed reading and getting caught up in for a little while.
Rating: B
I love Billiioniare books.