Rival

Starred review from July 28, 2014
Douglas follows Bully with a gritty, racy new adult tale peppered with raw emotions. It has been two years since step-siblings Fallon Pierce and Madoc Caruthers laid eyes on each other. Without skipping a beat, they return to old habits, trading hateful barbs in public before abandoning themselves to emotional, raw, satisfying sex in private. But this time Fallon has a vengeful plan in mind, and Madoc’s emotions are caught between a rock and a hard place. Fallon and Medoc have equally painful stories that will crush the readers’s hearts as they watch the couple try to rebuild the bonds of trust and yet again separate. While stubbornness keeps them apart and a family crisis challenges their relationship, a little conniving from their friends brings them back together to confront the past. This smoking-hot, action-packed story is a powerful addition to the edgy side of the genre, and readers will eagerly anticipate the next installment.

August 1, 2014
The last person on earth Fallon Pierce wants to see is her stepbrother, Madoc Caruthers, but, unfortunately for her, it seems that she'll be stuck spending her summer vacation with him. Two years earlier, Fallon's illicit affair with Madoc prompted her parents to send her off to boarding school. Now all Fallon wants to do is spend a quiet summer at home before she heads off to college, and Madoc may have the same idea. He may have been able to count on his sexy bad-boy looks and mercurial moods to get whatever he wanted with Fallon in the past, but things are definitely different now. As far as Fallon is concerned, if Madoc thinks he can just pick things up where they left off, he is the one in for a big surprise. Bully (2014), the first book in Douglas' new adult romance Fall Away series, was a self-published sensation, and Rival, the latest installment, is bound to capture even more readers with its intensely emotional writing, angst-driven plot, and abundance of steamy sex scenes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)