When her boyfriend stands her up as she waits to attend a Broadway show, Audrey Brookstone is crushed.  She decides to see the play on her own.  Then a sexy foreign stranger arrives and asks to attend the play with her.  She agrees.  She finds him very attractive, but she is about to get much more than she bargained for.  Too late, she discovers that Milo Stanisbeck is the prince of Cazbekistan, and he wants her to be his courtesan.  Can she resist his seduction and escape with her freedom and a great deal of money, or will she succumb?

I didn’t know much about Captured when I received the book for review.  I figured it would be a hotter version of the old Harlequin “woman meets a prince and reluctantly falls in love with him” trope.  That doesn’t really sum up Captured, however, unless you’re thinking vintage Harlequin.  Audrey has her own business, but she’s not fulfilled in either her work or love lives.  Work has been slow, and her boyfriend is never there when she needs him.  She’s ready for something better, so when she meets sexy Milo Stanisbeck, she lets herself take what she wants, believing she’ll never see him again.  To her shock and terror, she’s drugged and awakens on an airplane, en route to Milo’s home country.  From that point on, she alternates between helpless rage and attraction to Milo, despite the fact that he drugged and kidnapped her.

Milo doesn’t really see the problem.  He’s a prince, he’s giving her everything she could possibly want in an attempt to please her, and he’s agreed not to force her, so shouldn’t she want him?  At first he comes across as sexist, manipulative, and way too arrogant.  Dara Edmondson adds a connection to a sick child—which was never fully explained, much to my frustration—and some inner debate to make Milo more sympathetic, but his awful behavior in the beginning soured me toward him for the duration.  Even his reform at the end didn’t make me like him.  The plot, after the kidnapping part, is pretty standard (and even sweet) man-tries-to-win-reluctant-woman-over, until an action part near the end.

 While fans of reluctant women, non-consensual relationships, and super Alpha males might enjoy Captured, the initial drugging and kidnapping scene, as well as some of Milo’s behavior, bothered me so much I couldn’t appreciate the rest of the story, or the happy ending.