Kathryn Shay - High Stakes

Dylan O’Neil’s Achilles heel is his family. He’ll do anything to protect them. Rachel Scott, a cable newscaster, seems to offend and even hurt the O’Neils with her coverage of them. When Dylan exposes her irresponsible journalism in one of his popular columns for a local magazine, Rachel is furious and accuses him of bias and vindictiveness. Forced by the heads of both news agencies to resolve their differences, Dylan sees another side to Rachel, one with more warmth and depth than she displays to the world. And she finds him to be a caring man who safeguards those he loves. Attraction between them flares out of control, and they are drawn deeply into each other’s lives. But with the entire O’Neil clan against them, can they ever have a lasting relationship? 

Comment: This is the fourth installment in the O'Neil series by author Kathryn Shay. As I've said before, I liked the first book enough to be compelled to read the ones following but so far the other books have been a little extra lower in appreciation for me, compared with the first.

I had hopes for this since it would feature a enemies to lovers trope where the heroine is a reporter that had often caused problems to the hero's family.

In this book we get to know better Rachel Scott, the intrepid reporter who follows vice-president Clay (hero from book #1) and by her sensationalist pieces, she even cause problems for the secret service which caused harm to some people in book #2.

Dylan O'Neil, brother to heroine from book #1, also has a column where the points out issues related to any situation and he is famous for his follow-up pieces in determining if the news are right or not when accusations/doubts exist. He wants to remove Rachel from following his family so one night he follows her after his brother Aidan's wedding and they sleep together. 

Now that they are closer than any of them expected, will they both understand the other side?

I thought this story had all the ingredients to be a good one for me. I tend to like enemies to lovers quite a lot because the fun part is to see how the characters get closer, how they start discovering the better/good side of the other and that puts them in a different position: that of admiration and respect for the other person. When done well, this can be very romantic and sweet.

In this book this situation happened more or less like this but I think too much focus was given to the differences between them and not as much to the situation after they fell in love.

Dylan and Rachel have been logical secondary characters to fit the bill of the enemies to lovers trope. We've had simple scenes here and there in the previous books where Dylan would criticize Rachel so that was rather obvious from the start they had to become a pair. The way this was put into evidence in this story was, obviously, in how they had a night together but they keep saying they are too far apart and Rachel's past actions caused quite a lot of drama in Dylan's family, so no one would think they could be well together.

I think this part of the plot, the development, went well as was why they had to spend some time together, which caused them to see another side of the other unknown until then. Of course Dylan turns out to be loving and a defender of those he loves and Rachel has something in her past that caused her drive to be seen as lacking scruples by some.

I thought, well Rachel has to have a good reason to appear to hard and driven to get the exclusives, to be the first to give the news even if it's about the vice-president and his wife's family, something the public wants to know all about.

When we discover why, after all she wants to succeed to switch to international news, I was really... disappointed. So, she acts like that, she gives off the persona of a hard, cold woman because of that reason? It's not because she lives and breathes journalism and thinks she will be the best foreign correspondent ever... no, she wants it because it means prestige and why she feels she has to prove something was, in the end of the day, rather silly especially when she is confronted with those she felt like impressing and everything turned out to be a misunderstanding on her side. I mean... talk about wasting your time on the wrong path/thing!

So, after this is out of the way, the biggest conflict between out couple is how his family can accept their relationship or not. This sounded more realistic thinking of how before she went after those Dylan cares about. His family isn't too keen on seeing as part of the family, then the lovebirds decide they are better apart, they mope, Rachel has a revelation, Dylan convinces his brothers he is in love and the end has a HEA for them, as expected.

I think I'd have liked Rachel's change/character development to be more focused on her career per se and not in her emotional state of mind...the way things happened, it felt like the path these two took into their HEA wasn't as necessary, they could have just spoken, confided in each other and voilá, problems solved.

Despite the things I'd change, this was still a good enough read, I liked having the other known characters playing their family part and how this out into evidence the important part which is how united the siblings are and how important family actually is.

Grade: 7/10