Rough & Ruthless

by Hayley Faiman

[Eve1972]

Needing to escape her abusive boyfriend quickly Mary-Anne Lukin calls Max "MadDog" Duhart the president of the Original Charter of Notorious Devils. Within hours of placing that call, Mary-Anne finds herself on the back of Max's bike and shortly thereafter his bed...

Max "MadDog" Duhart has lived a lot of life. At 60 years old he has pretty much seen and done it all. One look at Mary-Anne and he knows their connection is something special. But with more than 30 years separating them, and outside forces trying to pull them apart, these two will have to fight if they want a HEA.



The first 30% or so of this book was rough going for me. I wasn't really sure if this was going to work for me or not. The hero is a 60-year-old man. The heroine 27. Now I adore way older men to younger woman stories, but this was pushing it for me. Not to mention these two got off more than a teenager discovering their body parts can do wonderful things. That said, both these characters come off younger than their years. Especially the heroine. So I decided to just file the age difference away in the back of my mind.

Around the 30% mark, a miraculous thing started to happen. I really started to enjoy the hell out of this one. The writing drew me in. I fell in love with Max. Oh, he was bat shit crazy, and sort of an ass at times, but he was ALL in with Mary-Anne from the moment she hopped on the back of his bike. He was sexy as hell. An alpha, but also really sweet. Other than his habit of killing people that wronged Mary-Anne in excessively gruesome ways, he was pretty much perfect.

Mary-Anne frustrated me for a good portion of the book. She was very insecure and I wanted her to grow a backbone. That said, I understood why she was like that because of the abuse she suffered as a child and then with her ex, so I tried to cut her some slack. She did come into her own near the end of the book and I was cheering her on. Even if I do think she forgave Max WAY to easily. Dude needed to grovel WAY more than he did.

I also want to add that I haven't read any of the other books in this series and wasn't lost in the least. So I can firmly say that you are fine with reading this as a standalone. Characters from the previous books do make appearances. Nothing much left to say really. I'm glad I kept going because I would have been bummed had I missed out on this little gem. Two thumbs up from yours truly.