Compelling and powerful with characters who brought out the best in one another, Play Dirty starts off the Brooklyn Dawn series on a very high note. ~ Slick – Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews
Synopsis:
I walked into a club called Ruin and found it—and him—when he bent me over the piano he was playing.
I did as he said, but not until after he’d decimated me in the filthiest way possible.
I loved every second.
That one, and the ones that came years later. When he sang with me against his will, although the words burned and the scar tissue left him raw.
Nash has secrets, deadly ones, and he won’t let me in. He just gives me dirty little tastes of him that make me desperate for more.
To the world, I’m on top. The lead singer of a famous rock band.
With Nash, I don’t mind getting on my knees.
But someone is watching us. And our stalker isn’t content to stay on the sidelines any longer.
The curtain is about to rise. Win, lose…or die.
From Wikipedia: Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary (rather than opposing) forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. According to this philosophy, everything has both yin and yang aspects (for instance, shadow cannot exist without light). ~ Without a doubt this describes the main characters in Play Dirty by Cari Quinn and Taryn Elliott.
The band Brooklyn Dawn has shown up or been mentioned in both the Lost in Oblivion and Found in Oblivion series and yet they remained a bit of an enigma. There was no doubt they are talented, no doubt they had have some interesting members, and no doubt they’ve worked hard to get where they are and they are led by Lindsey, their lead singer, songwriter, and talented musician. Lindsey leads a pretty private life that isn’t near as interesting as the tabloids make out and when she gets a call from a friend who needs a favor, she leaves her much needed break in Hawaii and heads to Winchester Falls in upstate New York only to find her worst mistake there. Nash feels betrayed by Logan when Lindsey appears to finish out the Christmas album he’s producing for Logan, and he doesn’t handle it very well. They had a moment years ago and he ruined it; she is the light to his dark, the happiness to his brooding, the yin to his yang and he has no idea how they’ll be able to get through a week together when the mere sight of her leaves him on edge.
Authors Cari Quinn and Taryn Elliott do not mess around when they want to get their point across and it was really evident that Lindsey and Nash didn’t want to be near one another or work together. Polar opposites in temperament, but when collaborating they are pure magic and when forced to deal with one another sparks and clothing fly everywhere.
I also felt Lindsey was a bit aloof, a bit spoiled, and quite possibly a bit of a diva, but in this book we see she is none of that. She sees everything, the feels deeply, and she protects those she cares about with all she has. I liked this Lindsey a lot and hated when she was hurting, but I was also impressed the while she might blow up, she might sing her pain away, she was also fair and would listen to reason.
It took me awhile to warm up to Nash, while there was no doubt he was brilliant at what he does for artists, he was a bit of an a$$. I’m not saying that I couldn’t understand some of his pain and reasons, but his communication skills quite frankly s*cked and there were many times I wanted to bop him upside his head and tell him to snap out of it.
Throughout this book it was obvious that something big and a bit sinister was going to happen, they were dealing with someone who had obviously lost their grip on reality, but in the bits and pieces it came out they really didn’t see it at the time. It is never easy seeing characters go through such an emotional turmoil, but as always I trusted these authors to do right by the characters and provide the happy ever after their readers demand.
Compelling and powerful with characters who brought out the best in one another, Play Dirty starts off the Brooklyn Dawn series on a very high note.
4 stars