Talos has finally run virgin villainess Eve to ground in London, and is looking forward to exacting his long-overdue revenge. Oh, that Eve, she was the epitome of evil. She and her rich friends ravaged hotel rooms and led lives that defined the worst in excess and pleasure-seeking. Eve was hard as diamond. She had the beauty of a goddess and she flaunted her beauty in the tiniest of tiny clothes. Any man who saw her was compelled to gaze upon her in helpless awe. How was such a creature a virgin? Such a mystery to Talos. And how could such a creature fool him so completely, and steal his Important Document, and then betray him to his greatest business rival? And then elude his crack team of investigators for three months? So many mysteries.
And none to be resolved in the short-term, for Eve, Talos learns, has amnesia. And Eve is pregnant. With his baby!
Talos will have his revenge. Sure, in the end that Important Document didn’t do as much damage as Eve had planned, but she had intentions, and she must be punished! And she was maybe in love with his business rival, and in non-coitus cahoots with him, and must be punished! He will pretend to be Eve’s beloved, and he will capture her and keep her close. Then, when her memory returns, she will know that she is in Talos’s trap and Talos will have answers!
Amnesia is just so great. I cannot believe that for the longest time I refused to read amnesia romances. I had this whole wrong-headed thing going, where I’d read this critique of them somewhere and was persuaded that they were bad because amnesia doesn’t work that way, and it’s all a big cliché. I refuse to let some kind of real-world grounded accuracy get in the way of entertainment. Never again. Especially not after reading the greatest amnesia romance story of all time: Maya Banks’ ‘The Tycoon’s Pregnant Mistress.’
‘Bought’ has a few things in common with ‘Tycoon,’ but never quite reaches the same level of crazy. However, it has some really wonderful moments.
Eve doesn’t remember Talos, but he’s hot and makes her insides go gooey. He also isn’t glaring at her and gnashing his teeth while he tries to conceal how much he despises her, so she’s not getting any weird mixed messages. She’s so sweet and earnestly sorry she can’t remember him, because it must be causing him great emotional pain. Of course she’ll go along with him to Venice, and then Athens. Sure, he can kiss her. He’s a great kisser. Eve doesn’t need much persuasion to agree to marriage. For the baby, and for love.
She’s noticeably different in personality. Amnesia-Eve is a far sweeter, happier woman than pre-amnesia-Eve. And amnesia-Eve feels very self-conscious in tiny clothes, and goes out shopping for clothes with more coverage. She’s also no longer into the excesses of wealth, and Talos really can’t work out what’s going on. She’s something else. But he likes it, and he wants to sleep with it. He wants to sleep with it repeatedly.
Talos is all alpha and controlling. He comes up with a plan to isolate Eve from anything that might remove her amnesia, to the point of removing all the sex he really desperately wants to be having with her, when she tells him that she’s having post-coitus flashbacks. What I’ve really come to appreciate about JL’s heroes is that she makes them as alpha and controlling as the worst of the modern-day heroes, but she makes it clear that their efforts are doomed. Amnesia-Eve is in love with Talos, and he’s desperate to keep her and their baby, but it’s so clear that he’s going to fail. He wants her so much. Amnesia-Eve is his perfect woman, and it’s only a matter of time before he loses her.
What isn’t clear, is what was going on with pre-amnesia Eve. I had my theory, and it was great, but completely wrong. JL managed to surprise me, and she had something even better. I won’t go into spoilers, but it worked. It worked because it’s not so much a shocking twist as a revelation supported by a good series of clues. Without giving too much away, I came out of this book with a full and deep appreciation for pre-amnesia Eve. And for JL, for the way she’d put the plot together. I had a great time imagining pre-amnesia Eve’s relationship with Talos from her perspective, and it wouldn’t have worked as well if there’d been more of Eve’s perspective. She could never have been quite as ninja as I imagined her to be.
The romance was so dramatic and doomed. Talos was a wonderful reluctant hero who found love when he least expected it, and then had to face his own powerlessness in preventing the end he’d set in motion. And I thoroughly appreciated the whole hidden story of pre-amnesia Eve, and how much as a reader I was left to infer, and to find the parallels between the hero and heroine’s stories. My favourite JL to date.