#BookReview: Fury Brothers: Take by Anna Hackett

I share a perfect kiss with a handsome stranger…only to find out that he’s my brother’s best friend.

New Orleans is an exciting new start for me. When I’m not in my lab working on my project, I’m determined to enjoy all the city has to offer. That’s how I ended up at a party hosted by the Fury Brothers.

That’s how I ended up kissing Reath Fury. Six-feet something of dark, handsome, and gorgeous.

When Reath finds out I’m the little sister of his best buddy from the military, he’s not happy.

But then I get attacked in my lab. Someone is after my project. Did I mention I have top-secret military funding? Turns out some very bad people plan to auction my work to the highest bidder.

Now Reath vows to keep me safe. The former CIA agent gives new meaning to the words overprotective and bossy. But spending every hour of the day together makes it impossible to keep our hands off each other.

We agree to keep it our little secret—all sex, no emotions allowed.

But the criminal after my project has a history with Reath, and he’s out for revenge. My brother’s best friend, the man who tells me he doesn’t do love, is the only one who can protect me.

And the only one who can break my heart.

My Review:

They chose to call themselves Fury because that’s what they were when they bonded. All five – at that point VERY young men were in foster care. They were all, individually and collectively, furious at their treatment in the foster home when they met and bonded.

Because their so-called carer was a man who liked to take young male foster kids and break them. He enjoyed beating them to a pulp – because he could. Reath was his special target, because Reath was the youngest and smallest of the quintet – and because he was black and pretty.

But a man who can beat up and beat down one kid can’t necessarily take on five absolutely furious young men who have no one and nothing but each other. Together, Dante, Colton, Kavner, Beauden and Reath got back a whole lot of their own and left – bonded together and filled with fury.

Fast forward a whole lot of years. Those boys are now very successful men – not in spite of what they came from but because of it – and because of each other.

As the saga of the Fury Brothers and the piece of New Orleans they claim as their own has shown, Dante (Fury), Colt (Keep), Kavner (Burn) and now Reath have each been chased down and pretty much ambushed by love – in spite of every single one of them so far proclaiming to all and sundry that love is the last thing they need or deserve. Ever.

Reath Fury is not going to be the exception – no matter how much he thinks he is. He’s not going to be exempted from his brothers’ ribbing him about it, either.

Or, as it turns out, her brother’s – even though the “bro code” is one of the biggest things Reath thinks is standing in the way of any possible relationship between himself and his best friend’s all-too-grown-up little sister.

But Frankie Parker isn’t going to let the ‘bro code’, her overprotective brother, or even a whole gang of mercenaries led by Reath’s literal worst enemy keep her from what she has set her sights on.

Her first goal is to keep her genius biochemistry project out of the hands of anyone who would turn it to terrible ends. Her second goal is to get a reluctant Reath Fury to admit that not only does he have a heart – but that it is already all hers.

Escape Rating B: Take returns to what seems to be the standard pattern for the Fury Brothers series. There is nothing wrong with patterns, they can work very well. Tropes exist for a reason, after all.

The pattern in this series is that the female protagonists start the story out already in trouble – even if, as is the case of Frankie Parker in this story – she doesn’t know it yet. And she should have – or at least have considered the possibility.

It is possible that Frankie simply hasn’t read nearly enough science fiction, or seen enough of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because she’s had her nose to the grindstone concentrating on her work. Her genius project – and it absolutely is a genius project – screams “super soldier serum” at high decibel volume with a whole phalanx of flying bullets to go with it.

Which is where Reath comes in. Frankie is in trouble. There really are some very bad people out to get her, to take her research – AND her – and sell both to the highest bidder. Because every villain in every world wants to make super soldiers and her project is a shortcut to that particular hellish road.

Reath and Frankie both have reasons for not wanting to get involved. Both have done their damndest to put their hearts on ice and both have succeeded at that terrible ambition entirely too well – except where their respective siblings are concerned.

But as has happened in the rest of this series, Frankie needs protection and Reath can’t seem to resist providing that protection. Then again, he can’t resist Frankie, either, and the feeling is very, very mutual.

They just have to get the villains out of the way first. Which turns out to be a bit more of a challenge than Reath and the rest of his brothers imagined. But they still get the job done.

As much as I liked the characters, and I adore the New Orleans setting, there were a couple of things in this story that tripped me up a bit. As I said, I found it a bit difficult to believe that Frankie didn’t know that her project was obviously capable of being weaponized even if that was not her intention. Likewise, the replacement lab where the climactic kidnapping took place was a screamingly obvious set up.

(Maybe I’ve read too much science fiction. Nah…)

So, a couple of things in this one didn’t quite work for me, but I had a good reading time and I still very much enjoy the series as a whole. Which is a good thing, as there’s one Fury brother – and therefore one book – left in the series. Claim, presumably Beauden Fury’s story, is coming in October. And then the author is on to the book I’ve been waiting for all year, the (still untitled) start of her next Sci-fi Romance series. I can’t wait!