Author: Kit Rocha
Release date: May 2015
Genre: Dystopian/Erotic
Source: Review copy from the authors
Series: Beyond Series #5
Description: For years, Jared has existed on the fringes of both Eden society and Dallas O'Kane's Sector Four gang. He travels between these worlds, protected by his money and power - money he earned selling his body, and power that comes from knowing secrets. He's untouchable - until he starts a new life gathering intelligence for the O'Kanes.
Lili Fleming walked out of Sector Five with a gun, the bloodstained clothes on her back, and an icy determination to survive. She finds herself in a world where people live hard and love harder, and nothing's more terrifying than how much the O'Kanes wake her up, make her feel—especially Jared.
Emotion is a risk he can't afford, and a complication she doesn't need. But neither can resist the lust simmering between them, and the sparks that could either melt the ice around both their hearts…or get them killed. Because the only thing more dangerous than loving an O'Kane is loving a spy.
My thoughts: I love this series and I'm glad to say that this one lived up to its predecessors. However, I have very mixed feelings about this book. I really enjoyed it, some things make it one of my favourites from the series, but there are other things that I think could have been done slightly differently or explored slightly more which I think would have made it even better. In some places it felt rushed.
Let's start at the beginning - I was eager to read about Lili, who has been a political match/trophy wife to a pretty horrible guy before escaping to Sector Four. She'd shown she was pretty determined and I hoped that with her links to the Sector politics she would be a very interesting character to read about. She was but not quite as much as I'd hoped - it's definitely Sectors vs. Eden politics in this book.
Kit Rocha matches Lili up with Jared, who has been floating around the edge of the O'Kanes since the start of the series. While we know a bit about him at this point, I was curious to know more. I couldn't quite imagine how they were going to get to know each other, especially when I read the first couple of chapters, where Lili is running out of her brain-numbing drugs and gradually being forced to start feeling things again. She first sees Jared at one of the O'Kane parties and they talk - he's dressed smartly, like men she's used to seeing, which is something familiar in a place that is so different from everything she's known. It was a good first meeting but then I was disappointed with how quickly things escalated from there. It felt a lot like insta-love, which I really hate in books. I just don't believe that these two could become that interested in each other and that close so quickly. I especially don't believe it with how numb Lili had been and how timid and frail she's made out to be in the first few chapters of the books.
Apart from the insta-love it was a pretty good story. I do have to talk about the other bit that frustrated me though. Lili is trying to convince Jared that she can help him in his ventures in to Eden. She's got a background of being arm candy at important political events and being the perfect show wife. Who else do we know who knows how to play political games with rich people? Particularly rich Eden people? So I thought "Yay, we're going to see more of Noelle proving her worth! And getting more page time apart from as a sex partner!" But no. A little later in the book, there was a similar situation. I thought, "So now she's going to go to Noelle for advice and make a great new friend!" Again, no. I'm disappointed that given how much this book works around Eden politics, we don't see Noelle giving any input. I also thought that given their somewhat similar backgrounds and how shy Noelle was at first that there would be on-page evidence of a friendship forming between the two women.
All that aside, I do think that this series is getting better and better. I hope the political games continue in the next instalment of the Beyond series. I'm going to give this 7/10.
Author website with buy links
~Ailsa
PS, if you've read this one, I'd love to talk about it! Leave me a comment or talk to me on Twitter :)
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