Reviewed by Kimberley
TITLE: Hostile Takeover
AUTHOR: E.M. Lynley
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 320 pages
BLURB:
Years ago, Chase Richards and Mathias Tobler fell in love while training for the US Olympic fencing team. Afterward, they even attended the same business school so they could be together. Then Chase left Mathias alone and heartbroken in Italy. But all of that is ancient history by the time Chase thunders back into Mathias’s safe, settled life with a business deal.
There’s no way Mathias is going to do business with Chase. He spent nine years picking up the pieces and has moved on in life—-and love. But Chase won’t give up without a fight: he concocts a scheme to manipulate the market and take over the Tobler family business. If Mathias wants to save it, he’ll have to face off against Chase over crossed sabers.
Chase has a reputation as an unscrupulous corporate raider, but the Tobler business holds little interest for him. In reality, he wants Mathias. Chase must win him back—-by any means necessary—-before Mathias gives his heart to someone else. But how does a cold-blooded corporate raider convince the man he loves that his heart really isn’t made of stone?
REVIEW:
I was quite anxious to read this book after stumbling across the blurb. I requested this book thinking that I was going to get this great story about these two powerful businessman who were college sweethearts who broke up and have the opportunity to reconnect and reunite years later. So I fully expected to like this book when I got it.
I wanted to like this book. I truly tried to get into this book. By the second chapter I just knew but it would be a struggle to complete this book. It wasn’t the writing that was bad as far as the editing and the character development was concerned. What drove me crazy were the constant flashbacks. I could’ve handled it once or twice, here or there within the story. But flashbacks throughout the entire book became confusing, irritating and quite tedious. Add to that the completely unlikable characters in this book and I just couldn’t remember what it was about the book that drew me to it in the first place. I don’t know which MC I disliked more. Chase was this odd combination of spoiled vindictive brat, insecure boy, and ruthless businessman.
Mathias was the nice guy but up to a certain point. Now he was an odd combination of extremely smart but was extremely stupid when it came to his lying, cheating, deceitful little witch of a fiancé.
The story starts off extremely slow and the flashbacks greatly contributed to that. It was almost as if you couldn’t move forward in the story properly because the author kept insisting on constantly taking you back. If there was a purpose to be served with the constant flashbacks I probably wouldn’t have minded but there didn’t seem to be a purpose to the flashbacks at all. There was nothing of value to be learned about these characters by constantly inserting these flashbacks into this book. The author could’ve told the story of Chase and Mathias’s breakup in a paragraph, as it was obvious as to why the two had broken up nine years earlier. It actually caused the book to drag along and created these clusters of ‘info dumps’ in the story that were just too much. I felt that these men weren’t progressing forward fast enough because the author kept taking you back to their starting point.
And then there were just too many stunts and shows in between to bring these men together. So much so, that by the time these man finally do end up back together you were too exhausted to even care.
The technical aspects of the book were on point. The editing was nice there were no misspelled words, plot holes or anything like that. The execution of the story, though, not so much.
The stunts and shows, combined with the constant flashbacks and unlikable characters just made it difficult for me to get through this book.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS: