Publisher: M. O'Keefe (May 1st, 2017)
Series: Bad Boys Romance, 2
Genre: Contemporary Romance
A MAN WITH NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE
I sold my soul a long time ago to pay my father’s debts. Now my life is a prison: no friends. No family. Nothing it would hurt to lose.
I never should’ve touched Abby. I tried not to, but she is beautiful, magnetic, sexy. Everything I want but can't let myself have.
UNTIL HE MET HER
She seduced me not knowing who I was or what I really do in the shadows. I should have resisted her, but I wanted to be the man Abby thought I was for as long as I could.
But all debts must be paid, sooner or later. And mine are paid with blood.
Now Abby knows who I am, what I am, and she’s run from me.
I would have let her go for her own good. But when I find out she’s carrying my baby — there’s nowhere she can hide…
I sold my soul a long time ago to pay my father’s debts. Now my life is a prison: no friends. No family. Nothing it would hurt to lose.
I never should’ve touched Abby. I tried not to, but she is beautiful, magnetic, sexy. Everything I want but can't let myself have.
UNTIL HE MET HER
She seduced me not knowing who I was or what I really do in the shadows. I should have resisted her, but I wanted to be the man Abby thought I was for as long as I could.
But all debts must be paid, sooner or later. And mine are paid with blood.
Now Abby knows who I am, what I am, and she’s run from me.
I would have let her go for her own good. But when I find out she’s carrying my baby — there’s nowhere she can hide…
Where to Buy*:
More Info:
Reviews of O'Keefe's Previous Novels:
Wild Child (#1)
Never Been Kissed (#2)
Between the Sheets (#3)
Burn Down the Night (#3)
Wait for It (#4)
My Review:
Baby, Come Back is the sequel to Bad Neighbor, and though you could read it alone, I do recommend starting with book 1. First, because it’s O’Keefe and all her books are awesome. Second, because you do get a bit of the backstory of this couple mixed in there. Also, Baby, Come Back is a $0.99 pre-order, but on release day (5/1) it’ll go up to $3.99. So if you’re interested, grab it now and save yourself a bit of money AND enjoy a great book in exchange!
Chemistry is the secret that turns the world around.
Fuck love. It’s chemistry that gets shit done.
Like an idiot, I thought I knew attraction inside out, from every angle—when you only have one skill, you tend to lean on it pretty hard. But then I met Jack. And it wasn’t love at first sight—that’s for children and idiots. For people who don’t fuck their high school science teacher just so they can pass a class. It wasn’t even fear at first sight. That came much later.
But it was chemistry, so much chemistry my whole world blew up. And me with it.
Abby works for a company that sends the women out to various bars, all dressed up, to push a certain brand of vodka. She enjoys the work, loves to show off like that, to flirt and tease men – and take her pleasure where she wishes, when she wishes. And while she won’t admit it to anyone, the job isn’t enough on its own. She wants more from her life – a career, eventually a family. Everyone looks at her and just sees the pretty blonde, the one who wasn’t good in school and has always been a bit boy-crazy -- she couldn’t possibly have dreams or goals outside of the bars and hookups. They’d be wrong. But because that’s all they see, she’s afraid to voice her dreams out loud, afraid to reach for them – afraid she’ll fail and once again need her twin sister to bail her out.
I liked the grumpy guys, who gave their smiles only to me and weren’t super excited to meet my friends, but would do it because they loved me. The assholes with temper issues and inferiority complexes were not for me. That was another skill I had developed over the years: differentiating the harmless grumpy guys from the asshole grumpy guys. I was so good at it I could smell it on them.
When she walks into her newest bar job, she can sense that there’s something . . . off about the place. And then she sees him, sitting at a table reading. His arms scream of a life far darker than hers, covered in tattoos that a person doesn’t just get at the local tattoo shop for the hell of it. He’s dangerous – but is he dangerous to her, or just to everyone else? Even as Abby knows that she should walk away, she can’t help but be drawn back to this mysterious man. And even though he wants to push her away, it’s clear that he’s just as interested as she is.
They agree on 3 days together before they go their separate ways. And those days were everything she could have asked for – hot and intense, with a hint of something more teasing below the surface. Unfortunately, life doesn’t give them the full 3 days, and Jack’s shitty reality blows up. To protect her, he pushes her away – acts like a complete ass, hating that this hurts her, too, in a different way, but knowing it’ll be better than what will happen if she stays around him – and just when she thinks that he’s gone for good, he leaves one last voicemail, proclaiming his love. When she shows up at the club looking for him, she gets so much more than that, and stumbles into a scene right from a nightmare: Jack shooting a man, execution style. She runs, seeks her sister’s help to get out of town and away from the man who might never physically hurt her but has blood on his hands and darkness in his eyes. Safely halfway across the country, she then finds out that their one time without a condom did the trick: she’s pregnant.
Jack has his reasons for what he’s done, though he’s not proud of it, not happy with what he’s seen, what he’s done. When his father was killed over a $500,000 debt owed to the wrong man, Jack had to step up and save his brother from the same fate. Jack took the deal: be the hired muscle to beat up anyone who crosses his new boss and the debt will be forgiven, his younger brother ignored. For the last two years, that’s what he’s done, never killing anyone, but doing so many other things that make him sick. What Abby witnessed was his first and only killing, and while he’s not happy that he did it, and hates that she saw, the man (his boss) had been caught torturing and killing women. The world is better without him in it, and for doing it, the new boss agrees to wipe off the rest of the debt and let Jack walk free – so long as he leaves the city and keeps his mouth shut, as well as Abby’s, since she saw something she shouldn’t have. But before he can go after her and try to explain, she’s gone, out of the club, out of the city, out of his life. Jack is determined to find her, and a few months later he tracks her down to the small town she’s hiding out in over in Idaho. Now he faces the biggest challenge: convincing the woman he loves, the mother of his unborn child, that he’s not a monster.
Oh, I loved this one. Their story was sexy but also a bit sweet, and tinged with that gritty darkness undertone that O’Keefe has in many of her books. (I love it, but I know it’s not for some readers, and that’s okay.) I thought that Jack’s motivations and story was done well and gave him some depth and explanations for what he was forced to do, all for the sake of his family. He’s not an innocent man, but he’s not a bad man, either, just one that did what he had to in order to survive and save his brother.
I really loved Abby’s character. O’Keefe always writes very sex-positive romances with sexually confident heroines, and Abby is no different there. I loved that she gives zero fucks about her love of sex and flirting and being able to turn a man’s head. She goes after what she wants and doesn’t care how society sees her for it, and I admired her for that.
“I want to come,” I said. A privileged demand.
“Fuck,” he breathed, coming up against my body, his hips between my thighs. His hands on my back, running along my spine, making me curl into him. “How?” he asked. “How would my princess like to come?” He kissed my nipple, sucking it into his mouth, his tongue sweeping over it and then he let it go, blowing against the damp skin until I moaned. “You want to come against my hand?” he asked and pulled my other nipple into his mouth. Licking it until it was hard and I was wet. “My cock?”
“Your mouth.” Oh, his eyes. The blaze of heat there, the smirk on his lips. It was crazy how they made me feel. Like a stranger to myself in some ways. Like he’d opened up some secret room of desire inside of me.
“Whatever my princess desires."
It seems like there’s not *as* much sex in this one as some of O’Keefe’s others, but what we get is just as dirty and hot and satisfying. Then again, the slightly smaller number of sex scenes is due to them only being together a few days and then being apart for months, so I get it.
Baby, Come Back is told in 1st POV, alternating between both Jack and Abby, with the first part of the book (labeled “Before”, as in “Before she ran”) told entirely from her POV, and the later part a mix of both of their POVs (labeled “After”), though all from his POV until he finds her. It flows quite well this way, trust me, even though my explanation of the POV set up may sound a bit odd here!
"I loved you from the second you walked over and asked me what I was reading. From the moment you surprised yourself talking about that book, talking about your own intelligence that you’ve always underestimated. But my love…my love has little value,” I told her. “I don’t know what I bring to you but the blood on my hands.”
“I think,” she whispered, “that you have always underestimated your love. And if you love me, let me tell you as an authority.” Tears spilled from her eyes and I felt my own welling up in turn. “Your love has tremendous value. Your love might be the most valuable thing I have.”
“I have spent so long pushing aside everything I would reach for…”
“I’m right here, Jack,” she said, smiling through those tears. “It’s not that hard.”
Another great read from O’Keefe, who has once again made it to my favorites list. The epilogue was great, a peek into the future for both Jack and Abby as well as Jesse and Charlotte, and it made me smile. A little birdy told me that the next book (out in June, new series) has a virgin hero and I am 500% ready for this. Virgin hero AND O’Keefe’s amazing writing? *hums* These are a few of my favorite things . . .
4 1/2 STARS!
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I received an e-ARC of this book from the author.
*Note: The quotes used belong to M. O'Keefe; TBQ's Book Palace does not claim them. Any mistakes or typos in the quotes are my own fault.
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Remember, since this is a Royal Pick, come back on May 25th for a chance to WIN an ecopy of your own!
Enjoy!
Until Next Time,
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