🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 4.2/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | Book 1 in the Rush Series
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Rebel Heir yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
You walk into a bar where you have absolutely no business being behind the counter, you start messing up drinks, you tell a customer you hear the owner is a complete prick, and then that customer turns out to be the owner. This is where Rebel Heir starts and I was immediately on board because the chaos was real from page one and it only gets messier from there.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
The World’s Worst First Shift
Gia is a writer who got a ten thousand dollar advance on a book, blew through the entire thing, and is now in urgent need of money. Her roommate Riley asks her to cover a bar shift last minute because her sister is in labor, and Gia reluctantly agrees despite having zero bartending experience and she isn’t an actual employee at the bar. She ends up behind the bar messing up drinks, undercharging people, and generally doing a spectacular job of being a disaster. She spots a guy staring at her from the end of the bar, goes to serve him, and just comes completely clean: she can really only make beer, she has probably gotten some prices wrong, and she hears the owner is kind of a prick. And then Oak, the bouncer, walks up and calls this man boss.
Rush, who is indeed the owner, tells her to get out from behind his bar and that her friend is fired too. But Oak tells Rush that the hostess quit, and Rush needs someone to seat people before the rush hits, so he pivots: if Gia can host for the night, he’ll let her friend keep her job. She negotiates herself a permanent position out of what was supposed to be a one-night disaster.
She also tells him she’s a writer who blew through her advance and actually needs the income, which you can tell registers differently with him than he expected.
Everything Is Complicated
It turns out Rush owns the rental Gia is currently living in. He got it through an inheritance from his paternal grandfather, and there is a whole story there: Rush is the bastard son of a man who was already married with a family when he got Rush’s mom pregnant, and who has never wanted anything to do with Rush. His grandfather, apparently fed up with his own son, arranged things very specifically when he died: Rush’s dad got 24.5% voting shares in the family companies, Rush’s half-brother got 24.5%, and Rush got exactly 25%, which gives him the deciding vote on everything, unless the other 2 pair up. Rush shows up to every shareholder meeting specifically because it pisses his bio dad and half-brother off.
Gia’s background has its own weight: her mom walked out when she was two because she didn’t have the maternal gene, by her own account, so it’s been just Gia and her dad her whole life and she is very close with him.
Gia’s car broke down so Rush starts driving Gia home from work every night, which is already a man communicating things without saying them out loud, and then he secretly goes ahead and fixes her car. He feels weird telling her after the fact even though he didn’t feel weird doing it.
One night when Gia isn’t working she borrows Riley’s car to go to the movies, still not knowing her car has been fixed. She goes to pick up Riley from the bar, and when she gets there and sees Rush with a woman named Lauren, and Lauren mentions she has to leave before her husband finds out she’s there. Gia immediately assumes Rush is sleeping with a married woman and is disgusted. But Lauren is actually his half-brother’s wife and she was there trying to repair the rift between the two brothers, so Gia has the whole thing completely wrong. Still, it’s a solid window into how her mind works about him.
They end up having a drink together and she invites him in. He finds her creepy doll collection, which she clearly expected to freak him out, and instead they end up making a bet: whoever can quit their vice the longest wins. Rush quits smoking, Gia quits candy. If Rush loses he has to fix her car, which is very convenient since he already did it and just needs a reason to tell her without it being weird. If Gia loses she has to name her book’s main character Rush.
The Mess Escalates
Rush decides he needs to take his mind off Gia and makes plans with another woman. Before he can get to this woman’s house he gets a call: Gia got punched trying to break up a fight at work. He cancels everything immediately.
He tells her about the voting shares and the family situation. Gia asks to come along on his upcoming trip to Manhattan for a board meeting, officially to visit her dad who lives there, unofficially because she wants to spend more time with Rush. At the actual board meeting, Rush catches his half-brother with his face buried in the neck of a female board member, and it is not his wife.
Back at the bar, Rush and Gia have it out. She feels like he has expressed interest in her, he’s upset because he doesn’t think he has. She tells him, well, I guess that opens me up to accept that date from Reese who has been asking. The next night Reese is at the bar and flirting with Gia, and Rush is across the room completely losing it.
Then Rush’s mom calls to say she’s coming in for her birthday, and Rush sets up the rooftop bar for her. Gia trades shifts so she can work that night, ends up on the rooftop losing it over Rush being with another woman (she thinks he is dating his mom), and Rush basically tells her to mind her own business and stay out of his way. That night he’s watching a patron openly stare at Gia and he takes massive offense, goes over to make a scene at the table, then heads outside to get his mom’s easel from the car.
Gia follows him out and confronts him about his behavior. It escalates, he says something that is genuinely shocking and crude, she slaps him, and then they both realize his mom has been sitting at the bar watching this entire thing unfold. Rush is not pleased.
He tells Gia to stay off the rooftop for the rest of the night. But while he’s busy, his mom finds Gia downstairs and they end up bonding over being creative types, painting for her and writing for Gia. His mom invites Gia to come see her art studio whenever she wants. Rush walks in on this friendship forming and is visibly thrown by it. When they’re alone he and Gia make up, and he then spends a whole day pretending to fix her car, since he “lost the bet” and started smoking again, as a way of retroactively getting her permission for what he already did weeks ago, which is both completely ridiculous and oddly sweet.
The Proposal
Riley’s advice is to just go in and propose a friends-with-benefits arrangement, get him in too deep to walk away. She dresses Gia up and sends her in. Rush shuts it down. But then they end up kissing, and when he pulls back he tells her she misunderstood what he was trying to say: he doesn’t want to just hook up with her, he actually wants to try and see how things go. She is completely thrown that he wants to date for real, not just fall into something casual.
They go on a double date with Rush’s mom and her boyfriend. Things are going well.
And then Gia realizes she hasn’t gotten her period in two months. Before Rush, before any of this, there was a man from the Heights who slept with her and then gave her a fake number and disappeared. She tells Riley. Riley gets her a test and it comes back positive.
Gia is certain Rush is going to break up with her the second he finds out she’s carrying another man’s baby, so she decides she just needs one more night with him before she loses him. Afterward, Rush takes her home and uses the bathroom. He sees the pregnancy test. He assumes at first that it must be Riley’s, but the more he thinks about everything going on with Gia, the more it clicks. He starts saying fuck over and over.
She is braced for him to leave. He scoops her up instead.
Rush Tries to Fix Everything at Once
He shows up to her next shift having gone out and bought her a chair so she has somewhere to rest her feet. He’s not there himself and doesn’t text, but he also fixed her car again to make sure she could get home safely without him. She gets back from work and he’s sitting outside her house waiting.
He has spent the day trying to dismantle every single problem she has: the house she rents is his, it’s not booked after Labor Day, she can just stay and live there for free, he’ll keep her on at the bar and actually teach her to mix drinks, he wants to solve everything. But then he tells her they can’t be together.
He tells his mom about the situation and his mom tells Gia she can come by any time. Gia goes to visit while she’s sad about Rush. Rush, meanwhile, decides he needs to get over this once and for all, goes back to the woman he had stood up that night, and cannot follow through. He walks out. He goes directly to Gia’s and sits outside until she notices him through the window and calls him to ask why there is a man outside her house.
She tells him she has her first ultrasound tomorrow and asks if he’ll come and of course he does. On the way home she tells him his offer is generous but she can’t take it, because if she starts relying on him now she will just keep relying on him and that is not fair. She gets out of the car. He chases after her.
He tells her he loves her. He wants to be all in with her and with the baby. He loves them both.
Then sex.
The Ending
It’s Rush’s half-brother’s birthday party, and they get ready to go specifically because showing up will annoy his brother. They get there and Rush points his brother out across the room.
It’s the man from the Heights. The one who got her pregnant.
That is where Book 1 ends.
A Note on Reading Order
Read Book 1 before Book 2. This is not a standalone. That cliffhanger is a hard stop and you will need the next book immediately, so maybe just go ahead and have it ready.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
This is a 🔥🔥🔥 and it delivers on that promise. There is actual sex in this book, not just tension and fade-to-black, and the heat fits the slow build the story has been doing the whole time. Not the explicit end of the scale, but warm enough to earn the rating.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
So satisfied. That cliffhanger is brutal in the best way possible and you absolutely do not see it coming, even though in retrospect it makes complete sense. You spend the whole book rooting for these two and then the last reveal blows everything up, and that is exactly what a first book in a duet is supposed to do.
Would I Reread It?
No, but Book 1 has enough pull that the cliffhanger alone sends you straight to Book 2, which is kind of the whole point.
Who Is This For
If you like chaotic meet-cutes where someone has absolutely no business being where they are, a broody boss with complicated family baggage and a soft spot for exactly one woman, and a story that keeps stacking reveals until the very last page, this is your book. The pregnancy and the brother reveal at the end are the kind of thing you genuinely do not see coming, and the setup for Book 2 is excellent.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Bookshop.org
🎧 Audiobook
Audible US | Audible CA | Libro.fm
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📚 More from the Rush Series
- Book 1 — Rebel Heir | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 4.2/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — Read the Review
- Book 2 — Rebel Heart | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 3.8/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — Read the Review
- Full Series Review — Is the Rush Series Worth Reading? — Coming Soon
Ready for more from LD? Find them here
Plot Twisted. 🔥🔥🔥
🎧 | Series: Rush Series Book 1 | Genre: Contemporary Romance | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
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