Great next installment in this forbidden love!

Addiction gives us another chapter of Penny and James that’s just as addictive as the first! They go through the trials of their relationship becoming public and what that will mean for them. Through the story James really stands up for Penny’s integrity and I love him even more for it. When he has to choose to do what’s right or what is best for him personally he ultimately puts their relationship first without even thinking.

Meghan Crawford continues to do fantastic narrating both views. There are definitely some secrets revealed, some super sexy scenes and some moments that make you laugh out loud.

2 people found this helpful

I gulped 😂

The first 2 times I heard “ I gulped” I didn’t mind but by the hundreds?? Lol.

2 people found this helpful

It got a lot better

Yes I went on to the second book despite almost not finishing the first. Penny wasn't as fickle and stupid in this one. Although I kept expecting her to screw up. She's just doesn't seem to be a very strong character. She's an obsessive overthinker and it is so frustrating. Now...on to the next book!! Because I'm totally crushing on Professor Hunter!!

1 person found this helpful

So good

This book is great. So funny! I laughed a lot! I highly recommend this book!

1 person found this helpful

Better than Book One

I liked this book better than book one. I thought Megan’s performance was spot on. I’m not so sure I like James and the way he treats Penny. Sometimes he seems too controlling that it comes across as abuse. I kind of like Tyler much better, but we’ll see what happens with the other books. Brendan seems nice as well.

1 person found this helpful

Drama

This book is extremely emotionally charged. So be prepared for a wild ride on that emotional roller coaster, but the ride is so worth it to get to the ending!! This book doesn’t have an epic cliffhanger, but leaves it open to where you do want to continue their story!

1 person found this helpful

Trashy in a good way I guess

So I’ve listened to the first and second book and I’m impressed. As a book the novel makes me swoon, and a couple years ago I would have been fantasizing about sleeping with my professor.

I just want to say though, that Professor Hunter, were he real, would be a predator. I like the trashiness of the novel, so long as it stays in the novel. To the young girls reading this, if you’re under 25 and dating someone 7 years older than you, please super asses why this man is dating someone so much younger than him, and make sure you’re staying safe 💜

1 person found this helpful

Why do I keep doing this?

Penny is so frustrating! She annoys me but I can't stop listening. I started the Hunted series 1 week ago on audible and I just finished Book #2. I love this series even though there are annoying parts.

James & Penny’s Steamy Story Is Dripping In Angst!

James & Penny’s Steamy Story Is Dripping In Angst & Will Have You Reaching For The Next Book In The Series! Their Romance Opens As They Meet At The Start Of Her Sophomore Year Of College. As Penny Balances The Three Men In Her Life – Professor James Hunter, Tyler, and Brendan – Things Become Very Complicated. This Book Is Explosive!


This is the second of four books in The Hunted series, which is James and Penny’s story. Their story continues in the three book The Light to my Darkness series. See James as a teenager in the four book Empire High series (Matt’s story), which gives the backstory for James and his friends, the Untouchables. There are other standalones that are spinoffs to these books, including City of Sin (Mason and Bee’s story), Third Chances (Rob and Daphne’s story), and Missing Pieces (Tyler and Hailey’s story).

The review for Addiction, book two, is below. For those that are not reading the series back-to-back, a little summary of the previous books is first included.

FROM TEMPTATION, BOOK ONE:

As book one came to a close, James and Penny’s tumultuous relationship had fractured. It had been love at first sight for the pair that first crossed paths in a coffee shop, but the professor-student situation they found themselves in the next day had them fighting their feelings for one another. Penny dated a little, including a double date with her roommate Melissa and her new boyfriend Josh that paired Penny with her ex from last year, Austin. Then there is Tyler. He is Josh’s Sigma Pi fraternity brother and sits beside Penny in Comm 212, which is the course Professor Hunter teaches. Tyler and Penny definitely have chemistry, but for Penny, it is not quite enough to pull her past the heartbreak that Austin caused her. They become good friends, though Tyler clearly wants more. He is sweet and thoughtful, but he definitely makes a few big mistakes. What makes Tyler so forgivable is the fact that he is sincerely apologetic. If Tyler and Penny were given time, they would most likely become a couple. Unfortunately for Tyler, time is not on his side when it comes to Penny. Though Tyler may be older than Penny, as a senior he is still a child in comparison to Professor Hunter.

The heartbreak that Penny experienced last spring is all but forgotten in Professor Hunter’s presence. Eventually, neither Professor Hunter nor Penny can maintain the appropriate professor-student boundaries. This puts them both in the position of hiding their forbidden relationship from everyone – not a healthy place for a new relationship to start. But James had kept the fact that he was technically still a married man from Penny, and she struggled to trust him again once she found out. They took a break, but when they got back together and James indicated he would like her to move in with him, Penny finally shared her own secret – that she was not a senior as he had presumed, but a sophomore just turning twenty. James has a past that still remains somewhat of a mystery, but trust is an issue he struggles with himself. He ends things with Penny on the spot, sending her back to her dorm room to nurse her broken heart. By this time Penny’s secret relationship with Professor Hunter had become known to Tyler and Melissa, neither of which is pleased with Penny.

FROM PROFESSOR HUNTER:

The free bonus mini book in Professor Hunter’s POV is available via the link at the back of Temptation. It gives some insight into James. A few minor facts from Addiction are thrown in below to give a more detailed summary.

James is trying to make a change in his life, and teaching makes him happy. He misses the busy lifestyle that his NYC home has to offer, but staying was no longer an option. He needs real change. He had partied away his undergrad years at Harvard as an escape from his parents’ plans for him to marry the dreaded ice queen Isabella, the daughter of a family friend. The pair had attended high school together and he had never taken to her. He had a girlfriend in high school that his parents forced him to give up. The arrangement with Isabella was supposedly ideal since like James, Isabella came from money. The logic was that Isabella therefore wouldn’t be marrying him for his money. After college, at twenty-two, James began a tech startup, Blive Tech International, which is now a Fortune 500 publicly traded company. He then finally bit the bullet and married Isabella as planned. Despite his best efforts to turn it into a real marriage, he suspected Isabella had never been faithful to him. Things were definitely bad when he chose to sell his company last year and only keep his seat on the board. He got 2.8 billion dollars from the sale, but Isabella hadn’t wanted him to sell and become a lowly professor. Apparently she was mostly into the marriage because of the money after all.

He began teaching in New York and found that he loved it, but last December he found Isabella in their bed with the dean of admissions at his college, Jared Halloway. That was the end of his job and his marriage. He filed for divorce, and he had relocated to the University of New Castle spring semester of last year. It made him happy for a time, but he had begun to feel empty inside. James suffers from addiction. His whole life he felt pressured to be the perfect son, and he escaped the pressure by drifting from one addiction to another. His therapist wants him to work on his breathing – slow breaths – but Delaware was beginning to feel stifling until he ran into the beautiful redhead in the coffee shop on Main Street. Suddenly he could breathe again. When she showed up in his classroom he knew it was fate, and yet it was wrong. He was no good for her, but his obsession couldn’t be helped. She was a temptation he couldn’t ignore. Just as it looked like they might have something real together, though, he learned that like him, she had lied. James has difficulty trusting people, which is why he had become so isolated. The truth had shattered him.

IN THIS BOOK:

As book two opens, it is October fourteenth, the day before Penny’s birthday.

Penny Taylor, just turning twenty, is in the middle of the fall semester of her sophomore year of college at the University of New Castle in Newark, Delaware. She feels entirely alone. It seems everyone is disappointed in her. Two weeks have passed since Professor Hunter sent her away. Since then, Penny has spiraled downhill. She felt the sting of not being able to fully explain herself to James and has since let herself and her academics slip. Meanwhile, she has watched as Professor Hunter ignores her yet looks completely put together and unaffected by their breakup. Penny needs to make a change before she flunks her classes and loses her scholarship, and Melissa’s advice keeps coming back to her: the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.

Penny is more inclined to stay in for the weekend than to find a party to attend. She tends to follow the rules and is rather straight laced. Her roommate Melissa, though, loves a good time and tries her best to pull Penny out of her comfort zone. She urges Penny to attend their joint birthday party being held at Sigma Pi on Friday, the fifteenth. With a few drinks in her system, Penny begins to feel the a little more courage. She hadn’t needed to drink to feel courage around Professor Hunter – she was naturally emboldened in his presence. But when he doesn’t even wish her a happy birthday, she knows their relationship is truly dead and over. The party is epic in so many ways. It ends in disaster, but it also opens the door for her and James to get back together. A lot went on during their two weeks apart, and much must be forgiven by the two if they are to pick back up where they left off. And there is one truth that James shares with her that makes her doubt what they have is real. James is an addict, and one might argue that Penny is his new addiction.

Once again, Penny has several men in her life vying for her attention. They all make their interest known to her. Austin makes a brief appearance again. Tyler continues to wait on the sidelines hoping his friendship with Penny will eventually lead to something more. His devotion is endearing despite the fact that his judgement is sometimes imperfect (fans shouldn’t feel too bad for Tyler; he gets his own HEA in Missing Pieces). Notably, a new man enters Penny’s life – a man that made a brief appearance in book one. Brendan, twenty-nine, is the architect that designed Professor Hunter’s ritzy apartment building. He had witnessed Penny’s half-dressed escape after she had found the wedding ring in Temptation. Here he once again catches her coming and going, and the pair begin an awkward friendship – one that involves advice as well as kisses. Like Tyler, he makes it clear what he wants, but he doesn’t mind being a friend in the meantime. As Professor Hunter and Penny try to work things out, the other men in her life aren’t too far away. And because their relationship is rocky, those men might just find Penny at a vulnerable point and swoop in to help her pick up the pieces. The angst keeps the readers on their toes! As Penny balances the three men in her life – Professor Hunter, Tyler, and Brendan – things become very complicated.

As James and Penny get more serious, more characters are introduced. Penny’s parents enter the picture, and their discovery of her relationship with James isn’t ideal. James’ friend from Empire High and Harvard fraternity brother Mason Caldwell gets a brief introduction, and he gets his own story in City of Sin. James’ brother Rob enters the story as well. Rob is a handful and talks a mile a minute. He is the opposite of James, and his influence on James is questionable. In some ways he seems to bring James out of his shell, but in other ways he seems to lead James into temptation. Rob might just qualify as one of the men vying for Penny’s attention; it is unclear if his blatant flirting is only meant to push buttons. Rob’s story is in Third Chances. There is also a Dr. Steven Ridge, whose relationship with James remains unexplained. Finally, Isabella herself enters the story. Her appearance ramps up the plot as things really begin to get serious in a variety of ways for James and Penny. As the circle that knows about James and Penny increases, so does the danger of discovery. This book is explosive, but the couple earns a happy for now ending. Their story continues in book three, Eruption

The second installment in James and Penny’s story doesn’t disappoint. The angst will have you in knots and the steam is hot. Though elements of this story are fantasy, there is a lot that feels very real. The characters are imperfect. James and Penny make some big mistakes. In the latter half of book one and part of this book, Penny is somewhat pathetic. She loses herself. We know that the weakness she exhibits is uncharacteristic of her, though, so she can be forgiven for the temporary setback. It makes her human. She does show some maturity by the end of this story. There is a lot of wavering in her head, but much of that is just showing her thought process. This book takes place over the course of roughly two very eventful weeks, and she struggles in her head over the changes and decisions she faces. Tyler’s character also feels very real. The fact that Tyler makes a few big mistakes could make him the villain, but this story humanizes his mistakes. It shows both sides despite the fact that it is entirely in Penny’s POV.

James and Penny’s steamy story is dripping in angst and will have you reaching for the next book in the series to see what happens in the next leg of couple’s journey! James and Penny’s romance opens as they meet at the beginning of her sophomore year of college. As Professor Hunter, James is taboo but that doesn’t deter Penny from pursuing him. He tries to do the right thing, but she doesn’t make it easy. They struggle against temptation and distractions, but when they finally seem to be on the same page, everything explodes around them. This story is nicely written. The plot is somewhat complex. The characters are three dimensional and real. The story is written in first person in Penny’s POV. I rate this book 4.5 stars.

As for the Audio: it is nicely performed and consistent with the book.

Just Binged All 4 Books

I listened to all 4 books. The narrator overall did a good job for all of the characters she portrays, but I would have preferred a male narrator for the male lead character. She made the male sound too wimpy and young when I know from what is being read did not match up. As far as the storyline as well as how the narrator read the lead female, she was almost too stupid and naive. Started getting on my nerves after a while. It made it hard to visualize the chemistry between the two. 4 credits for this series worth it? Not so sure.