Escort- Skye Warren

About this book: 

There is no shame in pleasure. And no love in business.

I have a blind date tonight, and I know with 100% certainty that I’m getting lucky. There shouldn’t be any surprises, not for one as jaded as me, but when I walk into the penthouse suite of L’Etoile, everything changes.

1) For one thing, Bea is heartstoppingly gorgeous. Pale green eyes and endless freckles. Curves I want to spend all night exploring, as if her body was made for me.

2) Her innocence makes me want to use my entire inventory of bedroom tricks on her and then invent a few more.

3) Except that… she’s a virgin.

I can initiate her into the world of desire without letting her get attached, can’t I? A few hours of tutoring, and at the end of the night a small fortune will be deposited into my bank account.

Yes, you read that right. There are many words for what I do. After all, mine is the oldest profession. I’m an escort, which means this date is nothing more than a mutually enjoyable transaction.

But once I realize one night with her won’t be enough, I’m the one who’s screwed.

Release Date: 20th March, 2018.

What I think?

So funny story actually, no no, not that Escort is a funny story, but what I meant to say was that it was a funny story how this ARC ended up in my kindle.

To understand this story, you need to understand my love for the cover of Hostage. Surely you’ve heard of that book eh? OK, tell me you’ve at the very least seen the cover? Because otherwise you should just go and live in a ditch because I’m dumping you. Well it was a collab between Skye and Annika that was released sometime around January. And I fell in love with that cover. And as it always happens with when I love covers so hard- I wanted a paperback. Fast-forward to last week, and there was a giveaway of Hostage in this Facebook group I am in and I won.

Now, you should know that there was no mention of the type of book it was, i.e. paperback or Kindle, and since the picture had a paperback copy in it I presumed it was a paperback copy.

You probably see where this is going don’t you?

Yeah so turns out, it was after all a direct to kindle copy of the book, and since I already had that, I told Sharon (Skye’s PA) to gift the book to someone else since that way another person gets to read the book. But Sharon insisted on gifting me a book by Skye, and I ended up with this after a lot of coercion lol. And to think I did not sign up for the ARC officially.

Universe man. What can you even do.

Anyways, on to the official review of Escort since I read it and all that shit.

One of the most surprising things about Escort was that it was a wholly male POV book, and it has been a long time since I’ve read a solely male first-person POV (I think it was Transcendence by Shay Savage that I’d read some 2 years ago- which if you haven’t read you totally should, and The Man I love by Suanne Laqueur- which isn’t first-person so really my statement holds true).

And I think we all ladies understand the difficulty of being inside a man’s head eh?

Hugo Bellmont is an Escort. Let me rephrase that- Hugo Bellmont is the highest paid escort in the city.

The book begins with Hugo being called to the penthouse of L’Etoile, where instead of finding some rich middle aged divorcee, he meets Bea- a 20 year old virgin, who has agoraphobia, and is some kind of classical music online celebrity. Which is actually pretty cool.

What a life she leads, both decadent and desolate.

After which it’s the very standard- H falls in love with h’s shyness and goodness and all the nessness that authors make people think happen in love and bla bla bla.

The one thing that made me sad for this book was how much scope there was. Let me list them down:

• Hugo– witnesses his mother being raped when he was 7 // lives through her tragic death when he was 13 // get’s abused and sold into prostitution by a woman he comes to trust when he was 15 // lives through life as a prostitute/escort for such a long time // believes himself to be heartless.
• Bea– lived through her parent’s brutal death at 10 // suffers from agoraphobia and is afraid of meeting new people // has been proposed by her guardian/father’s friend for marriage (which is traumatic as fuck yo!)

How does she see inside me, like my skin is made of glass?

So you see there’s so much pain and suffering in both their lives. I waited and wanted to feel the angst, but instead Skye made this book far too sweet for my taste.

Hugo immediately immediately falls for Bea and completely changes himself.

I wanted Skye to deal with Bea’s agoraphobia because that’s a real serious condition that love DOES NOT magically cure by farting out of it’s unicorn arse. And I don’t even wanna think about Hugo’s mental trauma. For me I felt like the sole purpose of those trauma was for the reader to sympathize with the characters. You want to love those characters because you feel that 3-legged-puppy syndrome where the sole reason you might love that pup is because you feel bad that it has to live with 3 legs only. Even if the pup is a cranky bastard. That’s a cheap party trick that I didn’t feel someone as talented as Skye needed to use.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Hugo and Bea- they were great characters. I just didn’t love the way Skye dealt with their issues. But what I loved about them was also what I complained about- the lack of drama. They were both so matured- which given their circumstances, I’m not surprised of.

Hugo’s immediate urge to take care of Bea, and Bea’s attitude for wanting change was simply beautiful to read as the story progressed.

But you know what I loved blindly?

Skye’s writing. God that woman is really bloody talented. Her writing is like this rich silk wrapping itself around you making you feel all posh and stuff. I literally gave this book 4 stars just because her writing had lulled me into this soothing dream like state, where I just loved this book lol. A witch she is, I tell ya.

Whatever you want, she says, so I pretend we have forever.

—Get this book—

 

About this author:

Skye Warren is the New York Times bestselling author of dangerous romance such as the Endgame trilogy. Her books have been featured in Jezebel, Buzzfeed, USA Today Happily Ever After, Glamour, and Elle Magazine. She makes her home in Texas with her loving family, sweet dogs, and evil cat.