Review: Addiction (The Hunted #2) by Ivy Smoak

Print Length: 479 pages

Publisher: Ivy Smoak (November 9, 2015)

From Goodreads.com:  Temptation has quickly turned into addiction. Penny fell hard for her mysterious professor, but secrets have torn them apart. After all, scandalous affairs are meant to go down in flames.

Now that he's not speaking to her, she feels numb. And what hurts the most is that he appears to be completely fine. As she struggles to accept that their relationship is really over, her best friend's crude advice is in the back of her mind- the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.

Will she be able to move on, or is her addiction to her alluring professor only just beginning?

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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

I remember the first book in this series, and how much I hated it, but it's been awhile so when I saw this on KU I decided I would take a chance and see if the writing/plot had improved. 

And no. It had not. 

Once again despite being a college student (Penny turns 20 in this book) and a college Professor (James is 27) these two are so unbelievably immature that I wanted to scream. The book starts with Penny being depressed because it's been two weeks since James aka Professor Hunter has had anything to do with her. Not a text, not a phone call, not even so much as a look. In case you didn't read the first book - he got mad at her for "lying" to him by not disclosing the fact that she was 19 and a college sophomore when he thought she was older. Never mind the fact that they had only been dating for a MONTH and he was pressuring her to move in with him, oh and never mind the fact that he was still legally married at the time. Anyway - deciding to take the advice of her equally immature roommate Melissa, Penny decides to have sex with Tyler at her birthday party, before telling him that she's totally over Professor Hunter and wants to be in a relationship with him. Poor Tyler who really did genuinely like her, she toys with his emotions over and over. Of course just when she's starting to have a good time Professor Hunter crashes a college party to 

1. Accuse her of being drunk

2. Demand she leave with him so they could "talk". 

Sorry Professor, but you never had the right to be so high-handed with her, and you gave up the right to demand anything when you ignored her for two weeks. Of course Tyler when he steps in to stand up for her ends up in a physical fight with James and somehow Penny ends up getting punched in the stomach, slips on alcohol and hits her head. And Tyler, stunned into disbelief by what has happened simply stands back and allows James to pick her up and abscond with her back to his apartment. Where he has sex with her the next morning. 

Speaking of sex - if I had to read one more badly written sex scene between these two I might have screamed. I don't know where this author got her information, but when a man orgasms inside a woman it DOES NOT FLOOD HER STOMACH. And don't get me started on how many times James "lowered his eyebrows slightly" throughout this story. Good Lord.

Oh and one other glaring thing for me was the fact that over and over James tells her that he is an addict. And how he used to constantly indulge in whatever it was he was addicted to - and yet aside from not being able to leave Penny alone and not being a hot then cold jerk towards her, we never see him as having an addiction to anything. He doesn't do drugs, he only drinks on occasion. The whole idea of him being an addict was preposterous and frankly insulting to anyone who has known or loved an addict in real life. 

However, I am a total glutton for punishment and the next book has me intrigued. After all the secrets he has kept and the lies of omission, I can't imagine what else the author could dream up to throw at us (or how Penny is going to rationalize staying with him once she learns the truth). 

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                                      Addiction is available from Amazon.com