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Take Me, I'm Yours
Ruby Runyon's hot date turns out to be mob-connected and married , and her only chance of escape is to crash a swanky party. At least the rich and snooty aren't out to kill her! Then, she's practically seduced by a man who is actually named Keaton Hamilton Donning III. He's out of her league, but he's also oh-so-strong and protective... and Ruby sure could use protecting right now... Most men have a secret -- and Keaton is no exception, because the unruffled chief adviser to one of the world's most snobbish royals longs to break free. After all, how many awful society parties -- with their watered-down cocktails and guests who speak with their jaws firmly clenched -- can one man take? Ruby turns his well-ordered existence on its head. She's sexy and sassy and just right for passion, But is he truly willing to take all she has to offer -- including her love?
384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published April 1, 2002
3 people are currently reading
197 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Bevarly
378 books156 followersElizabeth Bevarly was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and earned her BA with honors in English from the University of Louisville in 1983. Although she can’t recall ever wanting to be anything but a novelist-oh, all right, she toyed briefly with becoming an archaeologist, until she realized how awful she looked in khaki and flannel, and there was a brief fling with the interior decorator thing, until she realized she had trouble distinguishing chintz from moiré, and… (Where was I? Oh, yeah. My brilliant career.) Anyway, her career side trips before making the leap to writing included stints working as a bartender, a waitress, a movie theater cashier, a soap-hawker for Crabtree & Evelyn, an apparel-hawker for The Limited, and a bridal registry consultant for a major department store. She also did time as an editorial assistant for a medical journal, where she learned the correct spellings and meanings of a variety of words (like microscopy and histological) which, with any luck at all, she will never use again in this life.
She wrote her first novel when she was twelve years old. It was 32 pages long-and that was with college rule notebook paper-and featured three girls named Liz, Marianne and Cheryl, who explored the mysteries of a haunted house. Her friends Marianne and Cheryl proclaimed it “Brilliant! Spellbinding! Kept me up past dinnertime reading!” Those rave reviews only kindled the fire inside her to write more.
Since sixth grade, Elizabeth has gone on to complete more than 60 works of contemporary romance. Her novels regularly appear on the USA Today and Waldenbooks bestseller lists, and The Thing About Men was a New York Times Extended List bestseller. She’s been nominated for the prestigious RITA Award, has won the coveted National Readers’ Choice Award, and Romantic Times magazine has seen fit to honor her with two-count ‘em TWO-Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been translated into two dozen languages and published in three dozen countries, and there are more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She has claimed as residences Washington, DC, northern Virginia, southern New Jersey and Puerto Rico, but she now resides back in her native Kentucky with her husband and son and two very troubled cats where she fully intends to remain.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 15, 2008
Barely made it through 5 pages
January 6, 2018
Started off fine, but got boring after a while. And the ending was just too much. Some guy moves to the Bahamas, but buys his own plane so he can take daily classes at the University of Miami. WTF?
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October 8, 2025dnf
September 18, 2012
How could I have liked my first book from Elizabeth Bevarly so much that I bought 5 more, each of those 5 I ended up finding a bit pathetic and rather appalling. This one will definitely be the last one ever.
This book is a rather good example of all the author does that I positively hate :
- create characters that are caricature of themselves, defined by 2/3 facts or qualities that are repeated over and over ad nauseam
- tell us that the characters have changed during the story, without ever showing and proving it
- have improbable mates fall in love with each other with no explanation regarding the hows and why, which makes it totally impossible to believe
- over delayed story with every scene extended to the maximum with the thoughts and hinsights of one of the characters. Those were supposed tobe funny but fell completely off in most of the cases.
- NEVER having done ANY research / check on what the author assumes to be right or almost right, or right enough and just tell bullshits at regular intervals. This gives me the impression she does not consider her readers intelligent enough to deserve right vocabulary and right explanations.
Two quick examples : at the beginning of the book, it is explained that Reynaldo no longer is the king of Pelagia, as he was overthrown, except that this word overthrown which is the correct one is NEVER used, and it is several times mentioned that the people of Pelagia took their independence, as if it were the colony of some other country. Then Keaton is supposed to have a German passport because he was born in Germany, despite his parents being American and French. Totally impossible, Germany does NOT grant citizenship based on the place of birth. And there were others that kept grating on my nerves.
Well to sum it up, it was an extremely painful read about a bunch of loathsome uninteresting brainless characters, in supposedly funny situations that are never really funny just plain ridiculous and stupid.
I put it up for sale before I even was half way through.
This book is a rather good example of all the author does that I positively hate :
- create characters that are caricature of themselves, defined by 2/3 facts or qualities that are repeated over and over ad nauseam
- tell us that the characters have changed during the story, without ever showing and proving it
- have improbable mates fall in love with each other with no explanation regarding the hows and why, which makes it totally impossible to believe
- over delayed story with every scene extended to the maximum with the thoughts and hinsights of one of the characters. Those were supposed tobe funny but fell completely off in most of the cases.
- NEVER having done ANY research / check on what the author assumes to be right or almost right, or right enough and just tell bullshits at regular intervals. This gives me the impression she does not consider her readers intelligent enough to deserve right vocabulary and right explanations.
Two quick examples : at the beginning of the book, it is explained that Reynaldo no longer is the king of Pelagia, as he was overthrown, except that this word overthrown which is the correct one is NEVER used, and it is several times mentioned that the people of Pelagia took their independence, as if it were the colony of some other country. Then Keaton is supposed to have a German passport because he was born in Germany, despite his parents being American and French. Totally impossible, Germany does NOT grant citizenship based on the place of birth. And there were others that kept grating on my nerves.
Well to sum it up, it was an extremely painful read about a bunch of loathsome uninteresting brainless characters, in supposedly funny situations that are never really funny just plain ridiculous and stupid.
I put it up for sale before I even was half way through.
May 30, 2012
Pages survived: 54
Okay, soooo.
Yeah.
This book was kind of a bomb.
I was moderately okay with the novel for the first fifteen or twenty pages or so, irked, but tolerate of the seemingly never-ending internal monologues of the hero and heroine's introduction. They were, dear God, the very definition of epic. But, alas, I tolerated, thinking simply that the writer was utilizing this as an information-dump, allowing the readers to know the characters intimately before story lines emerge.
And then page fifty-four arrived, and still not secession to Long Ass Internal Wordage, so I thumbed ahead with a glance, and still, huge paragraphs with little real-time dialogue exchange. So, I Googled for a book review (because no one on Goodreads reviewed such) and found that, yep, such writer faux pas was utilized up until the very end. Add that to the fact that the writing didn't really hit any more comedic high points (really, can you strike any high comedy once utilizing a town called "Appalachimahoochee?"), and yeah.
No go. The way I see it, I have 505 other books waiting on my bookshelf, and no way am I wasting another minute on a book that apparently fails (as other reviewers have noted) on the romance end, the comedy end, and on the story telling end.
Okay, soooo.
Yeah.
This book was kind of a bomb.
I was moderately okay with the novel for the first fifteen or twenty pages or so, irked, but tolerate of the seemingly never-ending internal monologues of the hero and heroine's introduction. They were, dear God, the very definition of epic. But, alas, I tolerated, thinking simply that the writer was utilizing this as an information-dump, allowing the readers to know the characters intimately before story lines emerge.
And then page fifty-four arrived, and still not secession to Long Ass Internal Wordage, so I thumbed ahead with a glance, and still, huge paragraphs with little real-time dialogue exchange. So, I Googled for a book review (because no one on Goodreads reviewed such) and found that, yep, such writer faux pas was utilized up until the very end. Add that to the fact that the writing didn't really hit any more comedic high points (really, can you strike any high comedy once utilizing a town called "Appalachimahoochee?"), and yeah.
No go. The way I see it, I have 505 other books waiting on my bookshelf, and no way am I wasting another minute on a book that apparently fails (as other reviewers have noted) on the romance end, the comedy end, and on the story telling end.
September 2, 2014
I found a bunch of this authors books at a thrift store and I liked the 'unique' plot on them. This was one of them. It was okay. I found myself skipping over sections because the amount of internal monologues in the middle of dialogue got on my nerves. I kept having to go back a page or two to remember what was last said cause of the characters internal debates with themselves. About halfway through the book, I just started skipping over the monologues to read just the dialogue. Most everything I was reading in the internal dialogues was previously 'said' and like the author just needed to fill pages.
The ending was predictable (especially Gus and the Countess' ending) and cliche. But overall it was a cute concept but could have been executed better.
The ending was predictable (especially Gus and the Countess' ending) and cliche. But overall it was a cute concept but could have been executed better.
November 11, 2013
I wasn't really familiar with the place, but I was really hooked with the life of Ruby Runyon. It's a common plot nowadays to have the male lead be this rich and famous person. I really enjoyed the plot, the realizations and lessons in life. RomCom really is my favorite. I liked the sense of humor injected in the story. Oh! and the ending was so nice :) Happy endings <3
September 25, 2009
Modern
June 17, 2011
A pleasant cruise and a light read.
http://florida-house.ecrater.com/p/11...
http://florida-house.ecrater.com/p/11...
November 16, 2011
Beginning was slow, but by the end I was in to it. I liked Gus and Arabella better than Keaton and Ruby though.
June 29, 2013
Super fun! She is an accidental stow-away, but I love how as time goes on, the reader really gets to know and understand each character.
May 21, 2015
Left much to be desired.
July 23, 2015
One of Elizabeth Bevarly's best. She writes funny, relatable characters better than many romance novelists.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews