A Nix Review – The Viper by Kele Moon (5 Stars)

The Viper by Kele Moon
Series: Untamed Hearts #1
Published by Loose ID on 19-08-2014
Genres: Erotic Romance
Pages: 249
Format: eBook
Goodreads

Marcos Rivera is a fighter. A gang member. Someone who has seen the dark side of humankind and survived. He has lost family and gained enemies. He has stolen cars and destroyed hearts, stripping one for money and the other for pleasure. His past is haunted and his future is bleak.

Until her.

Katie Foster is a high school history teacher. Smart, strong, and sexy. She is a woman Marcos shouldn’t want. Shouldn’t touch. Shouldn’t love. He met her in Garnet, a backwards, hick town that’s the last place in the world he wants to be, but he finds himself going back for a taste of the forbidden.

Katie represents all that is good in the world, and Marcos knows he’s nothing but trouble for her perfect life. He fights and he screws. He commits crimes and he breaks the rules. He will never change and he will never escape his gang lifestyle.

Or can he?

What happens when two different people from two very different walks of life risk it all by giving into the passion that threatens to consume both of them? Can a woman who only knows how to play it safe give her heart to a man who lives hard and loves harder?

Will she survive The Viper?

FTC: I got this book to review from the author for a fair and honest review. I adore this series.

The Battered Heart series was amazing. It was gritty, sexy and I was devastated when it finished. I knew that the saga wasn’t over (I hadn’t had Nova’s book for God’s sake) but I wasn’t expecting The Viper. Two unknown characters and one of them is a gang member? Sounded different to say the least. Not only did I love it but I have a new respect for Ms Moon’s work; she is a very, very intelligent lady. I know now I am not ready for Nova’s love story. I am not ready to see him as the hero I want for any heroine but, as she builds up the darkness with the bad-boys of this series, I think just maybe I’ll get there.

Katie is a woman in a rut. Her ex-husband still seems to think that he is part of her life, her job isn’t particularly fulfilling and her social life is non-existent. Then a road accident with the lovely Marcos changes her way of thinking and her life. She spends weeks and months searching for him but to no avail. When, without warning, he comes back into her life to ask her to stop trying to connect with him, she grabs on to what little time he can give her with both hands. He is unlike anyone she has ever let into her life before; can she let him back out again as easily when the time comes for him to leave?

I liked Katie. She wanted to change her life and, when she gets the opportunity, she latches on to it without fear of the consequences. Some people may have thought she was crazy for her actions (I’ll admit to being one of them) but on reading her scenes with Marcus, I couldn’t have been happier with her tenacity. She didn’t care what people thought, she didn’t care that he was probably going to break her heart and she certainly didn’t care what was in his past.  She only cared about he treated her and how he made her feel. I couldn’t fault her for that and, even though there were times when I thought that she was taking too many risks, I loved that she was finally trying to find something in her life that made her feel good.

Marcos is a like the mini bad-boy of the series. Now, don’t get me wrong, being a convicted criminal with gang affiliations and a tendency to punch first and ask questions later, he’s obviously not a nice hero, but hear me out. There is a “story” as to why he is in a gang and it made me sniffle. He also wants out but just can’t seem, for various reasons, to actually do it. However, the real way I know that he is a mild bad-boy is the way that he treats everyone in this book. He isn’t a complete arsehole to them, he doesn’t threaten them with violence unless they deserve it and he doesn’t want to scam them out of all their money. He is genuinely an OK, if not prickly, guy. It’s the way that he is with Katie that made me swoon. He treats her like something precious yet equal. He never disrespects her, or treats her as anything less than what she is, whilst going out of his way to be the most chivalrous, dirty talking man ever to grace her bed. The chemistry between them simmered constantly throughout the book but it exploded with the sex scenes, some of them being the hottest I’ve read from this author to date.

This is a Kele Moon book so there will be danger and chaos on the path to true love. Marcos’s gang-mates are a constant source of tension for them and it seems that he will never be free of the ties that bind him to his life of crime. Will there be any way out of this impossible situation for these two? Well, I recommend you read it and find out! But read it in order (with the Battered Hearts books first) because you need to fall in love with this town before you meet the bad-boys of this series.

This book was fantastic in its own right. It’s dirty, gritty and, in complete contrast, often charming. I can’t help but feel that I’m being tenderised with this story though, that I’m being softened up to accept the romance of much more tortured men who’ve done much more dastardly deeds. I can’t wait to see where Kele Moon goes with Chiuto’s book next!