Alpha by Jasinda Wilder

The first time it happened, it seemed like an impossible miracle. Bills were piling up, adding up to more money than I could ever make. Mom's hospital bills. My baby brother's tuition. My tuition. Rent. Electricity. All of it on my shoulders. And I had just lost my job. There was no hope, no money in my account, no work to be found. And then, just when I thought all hope was lost, I found an envelope in the mail. No return address. My name on the front, my address. Inside was a check, made out to me, in the amount of ten thousand dollars. Enough to pay the bills and leave me some left over to live on until I found a job. Enough to let me focus on classes. There was no name on the check, just "VRI Inc.," and a post office box address for somewhere in the city. No hint of identity or reason for the check or anything. No mention of repayment, interest, nothing…except a single word, on the notes line: "You." Just those three letters.

If you receive a mysterious check, for enough money to erase all your worries, would you cash it?

I did.

The next month, I received another check, again from VRI Incorporated. It too contained a single word: "belong."

A third check, the next month. This time, two words. Four letters. "To me."

The checks kept coming. The notes stopped. Ten thousand dollars, every month. A girl gets used to that, real quick. It let me pay the bills without going into debt. Let me keep my baby brother in school and Mom's hospice care paid for. How do you turn down what seems like free money, when you're desperate? You don't. I didn't.

And then, after a year, there was a knock on my door. A sleek black limousine sat on the curb in front of my house. A driver stood in front of me, and he spoke six words: "It's time to pay your debt."

Would you have gotten in?

I did.

It turns out $120,000 doesn't come free.


Despite the number of JW reads that I have in a mountain I call my TBR pile, I chose to have this as my first. The blurb/excerpt kind of intrigued me what the book was all about. But just my luck, I didn't really win in this draw. 

So the sex in this book is hot. Hot, hot, hot! But that's just about it. When you stop and just think of the story, there was nothing to solidly grasp there. I really tried to like this book--hey, I finished it (pats back). But if you take the steam out out of the picture, I'll just be left there with a wrinkle-causing frown on my forehead looking all confused.

Trust me when I say that I will not give up JW yet. I have heard a lot of great things about her writing and of fellow bloggers raving about her work. I will most definitely keep on reading her stuff. I'm sure this is just one of those hiccups and it will take more than this for me to give up. This definitely won't be my first and last JW review.


Final verdict: 4/10. Meh.