Ivan (Gideon's Riders, #3)

by Kit Rocha

[Melanie]

4.5 stars

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

I continue to enjoy my audio revisit of the Gideon’s Riders series as we watch Ivan and Maricela come together. Ivan is another of one of Gideon’s Riders, kinda like Gideon’s personal guard/special ops team. Ivan isn’t just any rider, he is one that Gideon help save. Ivan’s father died when Ivan was still young, so he was left with just his mother. His uncles turned traitor and tried to kill off the Rios family. His mother got the brunt of what happened because everyone assumed she knew what the uncles were doing. So Ivan spent his childhood living on the streets at times. That is until Gideon found out and brought him into the fold and eventually made him a rider, though there are some in the sector who still look down on him.

Maricela is Gideon’s youngest sister. She was pretty young when her parents died and Gideon and her older sister, Isabelle finished raising her. They never stopped protecting her from everything they could. She didn’t really live in the real world. She was living in a gilded cage. She also felt she had the weight of the sector on her shoulders. She has to be “on” everytime she is out in public. She has to be the sector princess that she was.

Now, Sector One preaches love and family. But when you are part of the royal family (or one of the most powerful families in the sector), you don’t necessarily get to marry for love. Isabelle is pushing Maricela to marry and is looking at several of the suitors from other power families. It doesn’t matter if she marries a man or a woman, as long as they are from the right family.

Oh, and someone is still targeting the Rios family, which is why Gideon assigned one of his Riders to guild his treasured baby sister. Little did Gideon know, that Ivan and Maricela have quite the attraction to each other.

This is another great installment with wonderful characters, action, family drama, forbidden love. This is a fun world with a vast array of characters that really bring the world to life. I’m not one who readings books out of order (or at least I do it rarely), I think this series is best read in order. There are a lot of characters and knowing who is who and part of which family will be confusing if you start in the middle.

Lastly, I have to mention these covers. This series has some of my favorite covers that feature models (so photographs, not artwork). I love the costumes and settings. They all fit the characters and are just perfect.

Narration
Tatiana Sokolov continues to do a great job with the narration of this series. There is a large cast of characters, most of them male. She does a great job keeping all the voices distinct and fitting of the character’s personality. She’s also great with pacing and tone as we have action scenes, emotional scenes and sex scenes that are on point.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.