Review: Ours to Embrace by Denise Rossetti

She’s sweet, serious and prim - and she’s messing with his head.

Shuttle pilot Cory Olsen figures he’ll live fast and die young. After all, his is one of the most dangerous jobs on the Earth Ship Siren. Out among the stars, on the long journey to the penal colony on Solitaire, Cory parties hard, laughing and loving, no commitments, nothing serious.

Which would be fine if he could ignore Bella - Prisoner 2844 - and move on to the next pretty face. He can’t work out where he’s going wrong. The woman’s all lush temptation - skin like velvet, mouth like honeysuckle - but Bella’s crankier than his temperamental shuttle craft and twice as mean.

Since Bella’s doing seven years for sedition, she can’t afford entanglements of any kind, not with her old associates and especially not with a handsome, reckless flyboy who makes her laugh at all the wrong moments. With tension on the Siren reaching fever pitch, a ruthless leader emerges from among the convicts. When violence starts to escalate, rebellion seems inevitable.

If Bella’s not careful, she could lose a lot more than her wary heart. She could cost Cory Olsen his life. 

***

Has it been a year already? Just about. Almost a year since I saw three gorgeous ES Siren covers on Netgalley and click, click clicked. Now books 7, 8 and 9 are out and I'm set to poke around to see if there might be more in the works.

I've become a big fan of Rossetti's "grown up" characters. For me, they bear a maturity I respect and I find I "get" them from the moment they appear on the page before me. While all three contributors to this series pulled together the brilliant task of fitting their pieces together, Rossetti's characters feel the most "right" to me.

The last trio of stories in the series ramps up the action and raises the stakes in a big way. With pressure building from the loss of one of the three ships, overcrowding and dwindling resources the official command begins to lose control to a brutal faction determined to rewrite the way humans succeed on Unity.

Bella and Cory are fantastic together and this episode sets the scene for the next two in the series.


I received a copy from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.