Ruthless King (Kings of Rittenhouse #3) – Maya Hughes
Published: 10th January 2019Source: Review Copy Author
Genre: Contemporary Romance, New Adult
My Rating:
My dick never got me in half as much trouble as my heart...
We were high school sweethearts. I was head over heels for her and no one could tell me we weren’t going to last forever. College? Going pro? My family’s money? None of it mattered. She was all I needed.
Then she ripped my heart out. But I’m not going to let that happen again.
She’s back. Invading my life and acting like she was the wronged one. The pain is still there, but I can’t keep my eyes off her. I can’t stop thinking about her and how much was left unsaid between us. Being this close is making me question everything I thought I knew about her.
This time everything will be on my terms. Everything…
I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I received an email about this book and it is rather different to my romance reading of late, but as soon as I read the summary I was tempted. That alone has me thinking of books I’ve read in the past and I couldn’t help but accept and agree to review. I haven’t read a new adult book like this one in a good long while. I started with new adult romance when I was making my entrance into the romance world because I was fed up of reading about YA characters who felt immature to me and could relate to NA characters far more. I still have such a soft spot for them because really you don’t forget your first romances, do you? Sure, I’d read the chick lit which used to be popular in the UK but I’d never classed myself as a romance reader until I began reading NA and sports romance a while back. The rest, they say, is history.
From the first page, this book had me feeling nostalgic. It opens with Emmett, our male lead, kicking someone out of his apartment showcasing all the signs of being a rich boy with no feelings. I mean, he should come across utterly unlikable because he obviously sounds like he gets through many women and he’s overly privileged but then he reveals his inner man pain and boy do I want to know how some girl broke his heart from there. (Also, as a side note I would like it known that in real life it is never acceptable to treat people badly because you had your heart broken, he would get a strong talking to and get told not to be a dickhead if this was reality.) Basically, Emmett acts like a massive dickhead through a lot of this book and I did question how he was even allowed and wanted to punch him several times… but I also wanted him to find out the truth and get back with Avery because in the flashbacks to the best he seemed pretty adorable. I did also want to take all of this money away because the dude seriously tried to control folks with money without even realising it. Not in a bad way… but he tried to pay for everything to kind of make his friends owe him… which also sounds bad when I put it like that. Honestly, the last part of the book (apart from a couple of times when I shouted use your words at him) he wasn’t all that bad and he became a total sweetheart again. He was going through a dickhead recovery period.
And then there is Avery who is obviously the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who dated the rich, popular guy in school before a thing happened which made him hate her for years. Seriously, this book is hella dramatic and I loved it! Anyway, I’m sure you can guess some of the things which occurred when I say the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, right? Obviously, family was involved on both sides to create added drama which was fun to read. Avery is your typical good, kind, hardworking woman who has spent her years since high school ended working all hours (which she also did whilst at school too, the girl had a work ethic we could all do with having). She has worked hard to make sure her sister is well fed and can have any opportunity she wished for so she didn’t have to struggle as Avery did and finally her sister has graduated and the book starts with Avery looking to her future… except she doesn’t know what she wants in life. She inevitably ends up going to the summer cottage Emmett and his friends have rented because Emmett was meant to have pulled out. All kinds of fun things happen with those two stuck in the same house together and seriously have to read for all the drama. Avery could be frustrating because none of this book would have happened if the girl hadn’t used her words from the very start, but I liked her all the same. She still hadn’t learnt the lesson in using her words, though. Why do folks in romance struggle with this?
This book was not original and the storyline has been seen before. I’m not going to lie to you on that. I mean the rich guy with a trust fund who used to be in love with the girl from the wrong side of the tracks? Yeah, we’ve all seen it before. And we all know the misunderstandings which will occur when they’re stuck together somewhere like a rented cottage at the beach with friends. It did have its moments of not necessarily surprising me, but it takes an unexpected turn. Maya Hughes took some well-known tropes and plot devices and made it so even when you can see the next turn in the story coming you don’t care because you’re having so much fun on the journey. Sure, I wanted to slap Avery upside the head for not being honest and Emmett was a massive dickhead at times using money to get his friends to do as he wanted them to and letting his parents act as they did, but I still liked both of them despite their flaws. They were flawed but I was fully invested in Emmett finally finding out the truth and realising that Avery’s only fault was she couldn’t be honest and trust him as much as she should and that he can be far too quick to jump to conclusions.
This was a book which shouldn’t have worked for me because I hate this level of drama and miscommunication but for some reason, I didn’t even care. I think half was the sense of nostalgia and the other half was that it was a well-written romance which I enjoyed reading. I do wish I’d read the other books in this series because the secondary characters were great and I feel like I would have appreciated their presence even more if I knew the backstory to the couples. The small glimpse you get into the next book in the series certainly has me excited to read that too. This was a lesson that sometimes reading a book in a genre you used to love can be the best thing because there is a reason you read so many of them.
Anyone else read this or any of the other book in the series? Have I missed out on a good story I need to go back and explore? And have you returned to a genre/category of book you used to love before?
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