Blog Tour, Review & #Giveaway: ★Rebel★ by @_callie_hart

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About The Book

Rebel and Sophia’s story.The first of a three part series. This novel contains a small snippet which has already been released in the Owned: An Alpha Anthology, however it is followed by a full story installment.

Sophia

Sometimes, you don’t mean to become another person. Sometimes the choice is made for you, and pretending is the only thing that keeps you going. When Alexis Romera is taken and her kidnappers find her fake ID in her purse, she must become Sophia in order to keep her family safe. Revealing her real identity to the man she’s sold to would be easy enough, but can she trust him? Hell bent on revenging the murder of his uncle, Rebel doesn’t seem all that interested in playing things safe.

In fact, nothing about the secretive, dark and brooding MC president seems safe at all.

Rebel

What do you do when the man who raised you is murdered, and the only witness is kidnapped girl who’s being sold as a sex slave? You buy her, of course. As president to the most powerful motorcycle club in America, Rebel isn’t lacking in power. There are strings the man can pull, and entire criminal organisations and corporate businesses alike would fall to their knees. However, along with such power comes intense interest. The DEA have their eye fixed solely on the MC…and they’re just waiting for Rebel to trip up.

Getting Sophia to testify is the only way to bring the Los Oscuros cartel down. The beautiful, dark haired, dark eyed woman is belligerent and uncooperative and unlikely to bend to his will, but Rebel has a few tricks up his sleeve to make her compliant–he’ll charm her until she’s bending over backwards to please him.

Of course, falling for her might cause a few hiccups along the way…

Excerpt

“You gonna sit down or what?”I sit down. Arguing with him would be futile. We sit there, side by side, staring off down the arrow-straight road, and for a moment I don’t hate him. He pulls a cell phone out of his pocket and taps something into it, and then he turns to face me, frowning slightly.

“You believe in vengeance?”

“You mean like revenge?”

He shakes his head. “Revenge is a selfish act. Retaliation for something. Vengeance is a different thing altogether. It’s about obtaining justice, usually for someone who can’t claim it for themselves.”

This is an odd line of questioning but I decide I’ll bite. Maybe I wouldn’t if he were being a jerk like he was a couple of hours ago, but that’s not what’s happening. He’s pensive, the live wire that apparently runs through him dulled for the moment. “I don’t know,” I say. “Probably, in that case.”

“What if I simplified the question?

What if I say, do you believe in justice?

“Then, yes, I do believe.”

Review

4 stars 

You believe in vengeance?”
“You mean like revenge?”
He shakes his head. “Revenge is a selfish act. Retaliation for something. Vengeance is a different thing altogether. It’s about obtaining justice, usually for someone who can’t claim it for themselves.”

Ever since I finished Burn, I have been practically salivating to get my hands on Rebel and Sophia’s story. After the tiny peak that we get in the Blood & Roses series, you already knew that this was going to be something amazingly good. And if you haven’t yet read the Blood & Roses series, don’t worry, because you can easily start with this book first.

One night where she’s in the wrong place and an even worse time, Alexis Romera’s life as she knows it comes to a screeching stop. She witnesses something that she’s not supposed to see and becomes a liability to men that you don’t even want knowing you exist. Taken. Sold. She is no longer Alexis but Sophia. Fearful for her family’s lives she keeps her true identity a secret while she fights to escape the clutches of men that wouldn’t think twice before slitting her throat.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about Sophia after learning some of the things that I learned about her in the B&R series. But being inside her head definitely fixed that. Even though she’s young, this is one tough bitch. And luckily for me, her age never leads to any TSTL decisions which is so often the case. Callie Hart did a phenomenal job in giving the readers a heroine that while has her vulnerability and fear very much present, she still manages to maintain a backbone without being too obvious about it.

Now what can I tell you about Rebel? This was definitely a character that was not at all what I had expected him to be. He was more. So much more. This is no everyday anti-hero. While he is definitely still that, he also has so much depth to him.

I appreciated the fact that the author didn’t simply pain him in black and white. If ever there was a character that was very firmly in the gray area, Rebel is that. While he has his bad he also has a lot of hidden good which you get to see unravel piece by piece throughout the book.

I also appreciated the fact that there was no insta-lust to be found here. The relationship development between Sophia and Rebel is very realistic in the fact that it’s a slow build. I simply couldn’t imagine it any other way. While Sophia is certainly attracted to him right away, she’s also as equally untrusting of him. There was this delicious undercurrent of sexual tension throughout all their interactions that makes for some extremely interesting reading.

You think you use your brain when you’re having sex?”
“Oh, Sophia. I use my brain. Every time I sleep with a woman, I’m using my head to figure out what she likes. How she likes it. What I can do to have her screaming my name until her throat’s raw.”

I loved that the author didn’t throw these characters together right away. You truly get to experience Sophia’s struggle with her circumstances and her attraction to her unlikely “captor”.

…I get the feeling sex with Rebel really would be criminal.

This is a continuing story arc that will have 2 additional parts, so it does end on a cliffhanger. However as interesting as the cliffy was, it wasn’t that bad because it’s more of a plot cliffy than a relationship one. If you were a fan of the Blood and Roses series, then this book is a must read. And if you haven’t yet discovered this fantastic author, there’s no better book to start with than this one. I can’t wait to see where Sophia and Rebel’s story will lead to next. All I can say is that the set up sounds absolutely delicious.

I can’t look away, though. I could close my eyes, but there’s something in the way he’s staring at me, so intense and focused, as though I’m the only thing he sees or cares about in this moment. I already know, deep down in my bones, that being looked at like that by him will be an addiction I won’t be able to shake.

About the Author

Callie has experienced many changes throughout her life, and gone through many ups and downs that have all worked towards shaping and molding her into the person she is today: fun loving, active, social, and hard working. The only thing that has remained a constant throughout her life is writing. Creating characters who will tear your conscience in two is a favorite pastime of Callie’s. There are few real saints and sinners in her books; more often, the denizens of her stories are all very human. Broken, flawed, and always with the potential for redemption.

Despite the subject matter being markedly hot and heavy in comparison to the stories she wrote in elementary school, there will always be an element of fairytale to her work.

Giveaway
3 Rebel Super Swag packs
1 paperback of Rebel w/ signed bookplate
1 complete eCopy set of the Blood & Roses series
1 ARC of Callie Hart & Lili St. Germain’s upcoming collaboration, Hell’s Kitchen 
(to be ready by end of February)
1 MAC “Rebel” lipstick
Signed Gary Taylor Leather Jacket
$20 Amazon/iBooks Gift card
Kindle HD 6

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Comments

  1. I completely disagree that a reader can pick up Rebel and start without having read the entire Blood & Roses series! If you want to understand and appreciate Rebel, you MUST read the entire Blood & Roses series! IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND AND APPRECIATE THE COMPLETE STORIES, THE PERSONALITIES OF ALL THE CHARACTERS WHO ARE SPILL OVERS FROM BLOOD & ROSES, WHO ARE CRITICAL TO THE BOOK "REBEL" AND ANY OTHER SUCH CHARACTERS (CADE, CARNIE, ETC.) AND THE ACTIONS IN THE STORY LINE, YOU MUST READ THE BLOOD & ROSES SERIES (WITH THE INTEGRAL STORIES) IN ITS ENTIRETY!

    PERIOD.

    Given the comment Callie Hart made at the end of Collateral, Blood & Roses Book 6, (following), it appears Rebel was originally intended to BE part of the Blood & Roses series. Amazon is even now calling it Book 7 of the Blood & Roses series. The lowest reviews for Rebel are by people who have NOT read the Blood & Roses series. That speaks for itself. I wish Callie would rethink the idea of calling the new books "Dead Man's Ink" series, and I hope reviewers and bloggers will cease saying that Rebel is independent from the Blood & Roses Series! Because It absolutely isn't. A reader will NOT be able to completely "get" the story or the characters and personalities of the carry over characters without having read the Blood & Roses Series. CALLIE HART, you incredible author and all around wonderful person, please really do include these new books under the Blood & Roses series banner!

    Excerpt from Q & A at the end of Collateral regarding Rebel's book:

    Q. What happened with Julio and Rebel? This is the end of the series and we never got to read the outcome of those characters’ storylines.

    A. This is in actual fact the end of Zeth & Sloane’s story , but it’s not the official end of the series. Rebel falls under the Blood & Roses series banner, and will be out at the end of the year (2014). I couldn’t show you guys what happens when Michael goes off to help Rebel with his Julio problem, because that would ruin elements of the other book. But don’t worry! All will be explained soon.

    Hart, Callie (2014-10-12). Collateral (Blood & Roses Book 6) (Kindle Locations 2463-2467). . Kindle Edition.

    • I want to read this but if it means I have to read the entire Blood & Roses, then I might have to rethink as I don't have the time to read all of them. And I think most readers would also feel the same way. So in that regard, I think the AUTHOR has the right idea of making this separate from Blood & Roses. 🙂

    • Hey Carol,

      Thanks for your comment! I'm happy you loved Rebel and the Blood and Roses series too 🙂
      As for my statement about it being OK to read as a standalone from the B&R, that's per the author's own statement. Since Rebel is a prequel to the B&R series, it offers new readers to discover Callie without having read the other series first and then maybe jumping into the B&R series after. I've seen lots of readers that haven't read B&R yet really love Rebel. But hey, books are subjective so it all depends on the reader. Some will love, some won't, and it may have nothing to do with not reading one or the other first.

      There are many characters that are carried over, but I myself haven't finished the B&R and I absolutely loved Rebel.

      Here's Callie's comment about readers asking the same question about the series:

      "Rebel is actually book 1 in the Dead Man’s Ink series, but it was weirdly tagged by Amazon as book 7. I corrected that as soon as I realised that happened. You don’t need to have read Blood & Roses in order to read Dead Man’s Ink, but the characters are obviously heavily interlinked and the story explains a lot of things that were happening in the background of Zeth & Sloane’s story."

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