The Bastard

By: Lisa Renee Jones

Narrated by: Jason Clarke, Erin Mallon

Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's Summary

I'm the bastard child, son to the mistress, my father's backup heir to the Kingston empire. He sent me to Harvard. I left and became a Navy SEAL, but I'm back now, and I finished school on my own dime. I'm now the right-hand man to Grayson Bennett, the billionaire who runs the Bennett Empire. I'm now a few months from being a billionaire myself. I don't need my father's company or his love. My "brother" can have it. I will never go back there. I will never be the mistake my father made, the way he was the mistake my mother made. 

And then she walks in the door, the princess I'd once wanted more than I'd wanted my father's love. She wants me to come back. She says my father needs to be saved. I don't want to save my father but I do want her. Deeply. Passionately. More than I want anything else. 

But she's the Princess and I'm the Bastard. We don't fit. We don't belong together and yet she says he needs me, that she needs me. We're like sugar and spice, we don't mix, but I really crave a taste. Just one. What harm can just one taste do?

©2018 Julie Patra Publishing (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

I wasn't mentally prepared for the cliffhanger 😭

Worth the read/listen but gosh dang it...If I had realized I would have waited for the next book to be out or at least close to being released.

Amazing

First off I'll start by saying this ends in a cliffhanger. The trilogy is complete on Amazon just not on Audible yet. So if you hate cliffhangers you may want to wait, the next one is out in April.

The story is told in dual pov with the past and present. There is one huge question, who is the pawn? Is it Harper or Eric? Their love is sort of a second chance since many years pass between the night they met and the present. It is an instant attraction but that did not bother me. Perfect narration casting in my opinion.

ENTERTAINING AND SUSPENSEFUL.. mostly

Hummm.. well, I’ve gone through many different and varied opinions of this trilogy as I was binge-listening to it.. and they ranged from gripping, masterful, sexy, tense, thrilling, exciting, tender and romantic to - repetitive, frustrating, boring, over-sexed and, in the end, a wee bit rushed. But, despite its peaks and troughs, this dual POV trilogy was very enjoyable, suspenseful and often intense as clues had to be slowly pieced together, a murderer with his (or her) reasons had to be uncovered, motives had to be revealed, all secrets had to be disclosed, trust had to be given and earned.. and foundations had to be laid for an all-consuming love. Book 1 is, IMO, the best.. closely followed by book 2 and then, despite its revelations, book 3 because of its repetitive ‘trust’ issues.

Erin and Jason (sigh) did a fantastic job as usual with the narration and they infused, injected and inflected all the fundamental elements together to enable me to create colorful mental images, to bring the story and its characters to life and to cringe, blush, reel, rock and relish every word.

Worth a credit? Yes, IMO, it would’ve been.. however, I didn’t have to use any - and that’s the beauty of being a member of the Romance Package.. it’s a win win situation and there’s nothing to lose.. well except time and patience of course :)

In Love with these characters!!

This book is definitely worth the listen and books like this is why the Romance Package is worth the extra price!! But if needed to I would have definitely used my credit on this book!. only took me a day to finish as it was so good! And as always Lisa Renee Jones did amazing writing and she brought amazing narrators to bring the characters and the story to life. I can't wait for the next book in the series to come out.

Warring if you don't like cliff hangers you might want to wait for the next book to come out.

Narrators awful and the storyline was repetitive

I immediately thought that Jason Clarke’s narration style was...different. He sounded like he was trying too hard to impress me so that I would not notice the terrible writing. How many times do I need to hear that Eric, the protagonist, is a bastard? It’s not Mr. Clarke’s fault that his lines were written poorly, but his delivery left something to be desired.

Then, Erin Mallon took a chapter as Harper and I wished Mr. Clarke would come back. She spoke so matter-of-factly, it was like she was making some kind of declaration rather than reading a sex scene—like, “I am the boss and this is what will happen” kind of tone. The end of every sentence had her holding onto the last syllable for slightly too long: “Harperrrrrrrr.” “To the beeeeeeed.” “He took off his shirt and I stared at his inkhhhhhh.” I started liking Eric’s chapters rather than Harper’s.

Like another reviewer said, you could play a drinking game while listening to this book. The words and phrases bastard, Princess, sweetheart, ink, his mouth closed down on mine, he/she cut her eyes, and the condom, to name a few, appear too often. Get a thesaurus, Lisa! Aside from that, I didn’t understand the dynamic between Eric and Harper. How could two people hate and distrust each other one second and then jump each other the next, then hate and distrust each other as soon as they’re done? This was a recurring theme. The moments of intimacy were ill-placed...”I just got off the phone with our evil step-grandma...wanna bang?”

There were a couple things I thought were bright spots: Eric being a savant was an interesting angle. The car company investigation could have been a great aspect of you didn’t get lost in all the love/hate sex in the middle of investigating.

Overall, I’m not continuing the series. It was too annoying to try a second book.

Tedious

Six and a half hours.
Nothing really happened.
Then, with the implication things are going to happen in the very next paragraph… it ends?! That’s not a cliffhanger. That’s Wiley Coyote suspended midair above the drop before he realizes he’s going to fall… cut to black.
I’m not sure if I absolutely MUST listen to the next installment to learn what happens, or if it’s not worth another 6 1/2 hrs of my life wasted on another tease. I feel like I’ve sat through a 6 1/2 hour movie trailer. That’s not a book. That’s an intro.
Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for this kind of story. I’m walking away from this one feeling like someone forgot to insert the plot. We were introduced to characters, given a little back story, and….. did I fall asleep? Did I miss it?

Erin Mallon and Jason Clarke are both good narrators. Jason can make so many distinct character voices without any of them overlapping, sounding like cartoons, or becoming caricatures. That’s obviously not an easy thing, judging by the array of other narrators’ attempts I’ve heard on audible. Erin is some kind of wizard with dialogue. Her voices and accents are spectacular. I don’t hear her, I hear them, the characters. I’m less of a fan of her “narrator voice”. She does something weird, dragging out the ends of words and phrases. It’s distracting. But I LOVE listening to her do voices. And have you heard any of the stuff she’s authored?! I think I love her mind!

Not even two really great narrators could make this an enjoyable listen for me. My recommendation, find them narrating another title. Skip this one.

Ahhhhh

I can’t wait for the next book, April 16th isn’t going to come fast enough. Worth the credit/money. Emotional and suspenseful. I didn’t realize it was a trilogy. I usually wait for an entire series to come out before I start listening because I hate cliffhangers.

I Hate Cliffhangers.

This was a good story but everything was so prolonged. I feel like nothing really got done and then the cliffhanger. My favorite narrator was awesome of course and LRJ is clearly a talented author. If all of her books end in a Cliffhanger this series may be it for me

F#$%^& CLIFFHANGER!!!

I got this book from the list of the "Dirty Rich" series where it appears as the latest book in that series. From there you can't see that this book is also book 1 of 3 in the "Filthy" series, which I only noticed after I had to click on the book link to leave this review, and then it says:

"Series: Dirty Rich, Filthy Trilogy, Book 1"

There is not "Filthy Trilogy" on the "Dirty Rich" series page, and it should. On that page it is not specified that this is just part 1 of a 3 part story.

If you could let people know that this is part 1 of 3 in all the places you can "click" for the book it would be great. Instead of people finding out there is an awful cliffhanger in a book from a series that has wrapped each previous story with a nice epilogue, even when there have been follow up stories.

When there is a cliffhanger it would be nice to let the customers know so they can decide if they want to listen to the book right away or wait for the whole story to come out, which is what I usually do.

Not letting people know there is a cliffhanger is not OK.

The story was great until it wasn't. The abrupt cliffhanger killed it for me.

You should disclose this is not a whole story in all the places you can click for it, otherwise it is deceiving to the people who follow the "Dirty Rich" series.

Ends on a cliff hanger...

I enjoyed the book and was shocked when it just ended. No warning...just ended. All to sell the next book....well I feel cheated and won't be purchasing the next one.