Category Archives: Reviews

Review: The Payment Series (Prized, Possessed, Purgatory) by Cassandra Carr

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The Payment Series (Prized, Possessed, Purgatory)The Payment Series by Cassandra Carr

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the author for an honest review at Night Owl Reviews, where you can find the full text.

Review excerpt:

Just because Payment was a rough read for me doesn’t mean it couldn’t be enjoyable for others. But please heed the disclaimers and be aware that this is not BDSM-lite by any stretch of the imagination. There are hundreds of graphic sexual acts forced upon its heroine, including grossly unsanitary ones that you might not otherwise expect. They work within the context of the story, but they may not work for all readers. Be sure you know what you can handle before you decide.

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Review: Flying by Megan Hart

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FlyingFlying by Megan Hart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review.

Megan Hart was one of the very first writers I found when I started looking for quality contemporary erotic romance books in the past few years, and she’s still one of the best. To be fair, what she writes is more erotic women’s fiction than romance specifically, since there is absolutely no guarantee that any of her books will have a true Happy Ever After for her main characters, but enough of her books have qualified that she’s one of my favorites in the genre. However, and I’ll acknowledge this is on me more than her, her last few books haven’t been as enjoyable for me as her earlier works, and I was becoming concerned that I might have to stop reviewing her books, as we just didn’t seem to mesh well anymore.

So it was with some trepidation that I started reading FLYING, although the blurb made it sound like something I would absolutely love. I’m so happy to say FLYING is Megan Hart back to where I love her – ripping my heart out for a heroine who could just have easily been me, in a situation that only she could make me understand and want to see end in a better place than where it began.

Stella is hanging on to her sanity by her fingertips, and it’s only by spending weekends away from home with strangers she picks up on airplanes and airports that she can temporarily forget all the loss in her life. Matthew starts out as yet another sexual escape for Stella, but ends up being someone who could make her break all her rules, including the one about never letting another man into her heart.

I had a tremendous amount of sympathy for Stella and refused to judge her for how she had chosen to cope with what had happened to her family. So when she found herself falling for Matthew, I was more worried about how she could possibly survive another loss than about any repercussions in her real life. But as damaged as Stella might be, Matthew is even more, and although I loved them together, I was so proud of how she finally called him out for not valuing her as much as she had him, and how she forced him to take the next step toward a genuine relationship with her if that’s what he really wanted. So when she went on to finally deal with all the dangling ends in her real life after the events which had blown it apart, I was cheering and happy even before the surprise happy ending, because I knew that she was going to be okay with or without Matthew.

The only problem I had with FLYING was what kept me from giving it a full 5 star review, and that’s the deliberate use of the third person present voice for all the scenes where Stella is living through one of her “flying” sequences. I realize that was done to help set those off from her “real” life, and it definitely works in that respect. But that type of writing is extremely difficult for me to read, and when the entire first chapter of the book was in that style, it took me several days to finish, resisting my impulse to DNF the whole book at that point. Once the second chapter began in third person past voice, I was able to read and enjoy the rest of the book without issue. It’s likely most other readers won’t have this problem reading third person present, but if you do, just hang in there and finish that first chapter, because FLYING is definitely worth every effort.

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Review: Arrest by June Gray

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ArrestArrest by June Gray

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher for an honest review at Seductive Musings.

This review may contain spoilers for DISARM, the first book in this series. You should not try to read ARREST as a standalone, as it assumes you are already familiar with events of the previous book that are not always fully explained in this one.

I enjoyed reading June Gray’s DISARM romance novelettes after they were released as a full length book back in 2013, so when that book was acquired by a major publisher, I was happy that there would be two more books in the series. ARREST picks up where DISARM left off, with Henry and Elsie newly married and embarking on the rest of their Happily Ever After together. But just because they got past all their previous obstacles doesn’t mean that there aren’t new ones now that they are finally married. The primary source of their problems now is Henry’s new career as a law enforcement officer. It was bad enough when he was still in the US military and being sent into a war zone for months on end. Now Elsie has to worry about him every day and night, forever dreading a future where he doesn’t come home safely at the end of his scheduled shift. Their shared adjustment to this new reality, combined with his reaction to Elsie’s independent career as a web designer and the usual dips and bumps that happen in a marriage, constantly threaten their happiness even as they both know that they could never survive away from each other. The story of ARREST is how each crisis in Henry and Elsie’s marriage ultimately makes them stronger together, and better able to deal with whatever life throws at them next. But the journey isn’t easy and when Henry begins to rely on his old destructive coping mechanisms, it will take both of them working as hard as they can to get to the true happy ending they’d thought they already had on their wedding day.

As much as I enjoyed the previous book, the way Henry was always retreating from Elsie when he was upset did get to be tiring after a while, so I was worried that I might not be as sympathetic to him when all the new bad things started happening to them both in ARREST. However, I was quite happy to be proven wrong in my concern, as it appeared that Henry has indeed grown emotionally since then. The love he and Elsie have for each other is never questioned, and it never wavers. But as they and we already learned before, love isn’t enough to keep them together if they can’t communicate and compromise, and in ARREST, Henry and Elsie must both relearn those painful lessons if they’re going to stay married and happy together.

ARREST also has the advantage of hanging together better as an complete story from the start, as opposed to the previous title. We are shown once again how their past continues to affect their present, but also how they are aware of how easily they could fall back into a vicious cycle of hurting each other, however inadvertently. Being able to see Henry and Elsie take real steps toward a fully reciprocal relationship made reading through all their pain and sadness worth it for the true happy ending awaiting them both. ARREST is an excellent example of how the “marriage in trouble” trope can be realistic without being too depressing. But I’m relieved that the next story in the series will be about someone else, so I can be content in the knowledge that Elsie and Henry have finally earned their HEA and won’t have to suffer any longer.

Ratings:

Overall: 4
Sensuality level: 3.5

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Review: The Virgin’s Guide to Misbehaving by Jessica Clare

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The Virgin's Guide to Misbehaving (A Bluebonnet Novel)The Virgin’s Guide to Misbehaving by Jessica Clare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher for an honest review at Seductive Musings.

Although this isn’t my first Jessica Clare book, it is the first one I’ve read in her Bluebonnet series, where different couples find love in a tiny but interesting fictional Texas town. I didn’t have any problem diving into the story of a hero and heroine from vastly different worlds who found themselves more compatible than anyone could have predicted. Elise and Rome’s romance is both sweet and hot, and it kept me interested even as another character in the book did her best to try to make me stop reading altogether.

Elise is quiet and shy because she spent her formative years suffering from a self-image severely damaged by a large facial birthmark and scoliosis. The birthmark was mostly removed by lasers, the scoliosis mostly fixed by years in a body brace and major surgery, but some external and internal scars remain. So when Elise finds herself irresistibly drawn to a handsome stranger covered in piercings and tattoos, she’s as surprised as anyone at her decision to pursue what would be the first real romantic relationship of her life. But will he give her a chance?

Rome has learned to trust no one after the multiple betrayals of his family resulted years spent in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. His checkered past and intimidating appearance have kept everyone at arm’s length, until pretty little Elise sneaks past his defenses and convinces him to embark on a passionate affair. But when Elise’s over-protective brother discovers the truth, what will it take to keep the lovers together when it seems like everyone else is working to keep them apart?

For me, reading THE VIRGIN’S GUIDE TO MISBEHAVING was a constant battle between the parts of the story I loved and the parts that made me want to throw my ereader against the wall in frustration. Rome and Elise really are a beautifully matched couple. Each has been taught not to trust other people, albeit for entirely different reasons, and even as they realize they want to be together, they each still take turns bracing for what they believe will be an inevitable betrayal by the other. It was wonderful to see how Rome proved he wouldn’t take advantage of Elise’s naivete, and how Elise in turn showed him how he was worthy of her love and the respect of others. Their intimate scenes exquisitely raised the sexual tension and deepened their emotional attachment each time they came together, and by the end of the book, we could see that they’ll continue to grow in their affection and trust as a united team against anyone who would dare threaten their happiness. But Rome and Elise weren’t the problem for me.

The reason I found this book to be as annoying as it was entertaining can be summed up in one word: Brenna. Brenna is the fiancee of Elise’s brother, Grant, and she is as wild and crazy as he is buttoned down and straitlaced. She may be a good person, but she is not a good friend to Elise. Brenna is the reason why Rome thought Elise didn’t like him. Brenna is the reason why Grant finds out about Rome and Elise before they are ready to go public, even after Elise specifically asked her not to tell anyone. And then to top it all off, when Rome leaves town in a misguided attempt to protect Elise from her brother’s wrath, Brenna is the reason why Elise uses a truly reprehensible trick to force Rome into coming back.

I’ll admit it’s possible that if I’d read Brenna’s book before this one, I might have a more rounded picture of who she is and why she behaves as she does here. But as a new reader to the series, I found Brenna to be such an incredible distraction that every time she appeared to mess things up, I wished I could tell her off and make her go away for good. If Brenna is in all the other Bluebonnet books, then frankly, I’m not interested in reading them. Thanks to her, I was only just able to finish THE VIRGIN’S GUIDE TO MISBEHAVING so I could enjoy Rome and Elise’s lovely HEA, including a satisfying epilogue that emphasized just how good they would always be for one another. But if you can stomach a relentlessly wacky secondary character like Brenna, you might like this book even better.

Ratings:

Overall: 3
Sensuality level: 3

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Review: Fall From India Place by Samantha Young

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Fall from India Place (On Dublin Street, #4)Fall from India Place by Samantha Young

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at Seductive Musings.

This review may contain spoilers for previous books in the On Dublin Road series. You can probably read FALL FROM INDIA PLACE as a standalone, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

I’ve been a big fan of Samantha Young’s On Dublin Road series from the very beginning, with each book in turn reminding me why New Adult romances have become so popular in the first place. Her characters have genuine roadblocks in their lives that don’t appear just to gin up extra drama, and their coping mechanisms are completely understandable in the context of each story. And although each story is set in the same world with previous couples continuing to appear as recurring characters, each one is also unique in terms of what brings the main couple together and what threatens to keep them apart.

In FALL FROM INDIA PLACE, the timeline has advanced several years past the last book in the series, and many of the previously featured couples are married with young children of their own. Hannah Nichols, the younger sister of Braden and Ellie, is now all grown up at 22, teaching high school English by day and a weekly adult literacy course at night. Her job and extended family appear to be enough to keep Hannah content, but there’s a lingering sadness there, thanks to the only man she’d ever wanted but could never really have.

Marco D’Alessandro was introduced in BEFORE JAMAICA LANE as the busboy at a local Italian restaurant and Hannah’s first school girl crush. We only got a brief glance at them together back then, but it’s clear in this new book that something significant happened between them in the interim when when Hannah finds Marco’s picture in a box of old things that her mother has asked her to clean out. It’s at that moment that FALL FROM INDIA PLACE begins to tell Hannah and Marco’s entire story in both the past and and present, showing exactly how what they shared before could be the one impossible obstacle to finding that happiness again for good.

One of the things I loved about FALL FROM INDIA PLACE was how we got a complete picture of the adult Hannah living in the present day before Marco was ever mentioned. We see that her love life is practically non-existent, even as her friends from school keep trying to fix her up with eligible men. We also see how she channels her kind and loving nature into her job and interactions with family, while never really having much to do for her own happiness. So when Marco suddenly reappears in Hannah’s life after five years missing in action, it’s like a bolt from the blue for both her and the reader: Where has he been? Why did he leave? How can she possibly take him back? And that’s when both we and Hannah start to get a much better picture of who Marco was, why he left, and how that made him the man he is now. When Hannah agrees to give March another chance, it becomes obvious that the time apart has made them both better suited to each other in a way they never were before. But the secrets they both still carry from that time are on a collision course toward an inevitable confrontation that will either help them heal completely or split them apart forever.

What surprised me the most about FALL FROM INDIA PLACE wasn’t that I was able to eventually figure out what secret each of them was keeping back and how those two secrets would be in such horrible conflict with each other, but that I was actually happy with that outcome and how it was ultimately handled. It proved that being able to see where the story is going to end up isn’t a bad thing when the path there is written so beautifully and the actual events play out in a way you might not have expected. That’s what I’ve loved about every book in this series, and why FALL FROM INDIA PLACE was such a wonderful read for me. I can only hope that Samantha Young can keep up this consistent level of excellence in all the books to come.

Ratings:

Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 3

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Review: In Your Corner by Sarah Castille

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In Your Corner (Redemption, #2)In Your Corner by Sarah Castille

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review.

This review may contain spoilers for On The Ropes, book 1 in the Redemption series. You should be able to read In Your Corner as a standalone book.

ON THE ROPES was one of the first Mixed Martial Arts themed romances I read back in 2013, and it’s still one of the best. So I was excited to learn that there would be additional books featuring other characters in the world of Redemption. IN YOUR CORNER picks up two years after the events of ON THE ROPES, and tells the story of that couple we saw break up so painfully before: Jake and Amanda. Back then, anyone could see that although they were from different worlds, they still had not only an undeniable sexual chemistry, but also an emotional affinity as two people who had learned the hard way not to trust anyone but themselves for protection and safety, especially of the heart. So when Amanda pushed Jake away for good after he made a terrible snap judgment in a moment of weakness, we knew they weren’t quite done with each other. And now it’s two years later, and they’ve both grown and changed in ways that will prepare them to write the ending to that story at last.

When Amanda discovers that Jake is her new client at the stuffy corporate law firm where she’s been working herself to death in an attempt to make partner just to please her never-satisfied parents, the shock is almost too much to bear. She’d never known Jake was from a well-off family with a large and successful business. Now he needs a lawyer, and quickly, but he quickly makes it clear that he won’t allow it to be her. His seeming rejection of Amanda triggers a series of events that begins with her being forced to quit her job and ends with her broken and bleeding in a dark alley just down the street from Redemption. Jake and his fellow MMA fighters at Redemption try to rescue Amanda from the downward spiral that pushed her into that near-fatal alley. But will Amanda finally ask for the help she needs even when refusing it means losing Jake for good?

Jake had tried to forget Amanda after their painful breakup, but losing both her and his brother Peter was too much to bear. Being forced to take over the family business after Peter’s death has isolated Jake from everything else good in his life, especially the people at Redemption who were his true family after his parents had rejected him. But now that Amanda is back, Jake isn’t going to make the same mistake a second time. And when he’s done, he’ll have everything he always wanted before: the professional MMA career, the camaraderie of his Redemption family, and Amanda.

As much as I loved ON THE ROPES, I was even more blown away by IN YOUR CORNER. I think it’s because unlike Max (Torment) in the previous book, there’s no mystery about who Jake is or what really makes him tick. He’s a guy who came from wealth, but never found happiness until he discovered his love of MMA at Redemption and got his life turned in the right direction. There’s really no secret about who Amanda really is, either.. She’s spent her whole life striving for the wrong goals, all because her father wanted a son and both he and her mother were too busy with their own legal careers to spend much time making sure their only daughter was actually loved and cared for. It took the dramatic events put into play by Jake’s rejection of Amanda as his lawyer to force them both to give a chance at happiness together one more try, but it took all their good friends to keep pushing them back together every time one or the other started falling back into their old patterns of rejection and hurt feelings.

Usually a romance where the hero and heroine keep splitting up and coming back together would annoy me, but IN YOUR CORNER neatly avoids the usual traps which would otherwise doom the book to failure. As corny as it sounds, each time Jake and Amanda seem to be taking a step back, they really do end up taking two steps forward, and the small successes start adding up. By the time we reach the final black moment where it appears Amanda will lose everything she’s fought for, including Jake, all the lessons she’s learned the hard way start to kick in, and she is able to step back from the abyss this second time. Both Amanda and Jake realize that they need to love each other as they are, and accept that what they have together is exactly what they need. Along the way, we learn more about the various characters who populate the Redemption world, and the impending setups for future romances in the series. Redemption may be an MMA training center, but its name represents more than that for the people who have made it a success, and IN THE CORNER is show how true that is for both Jake and Amanda. It’s a moving and passionate look at a couple who learn to fight for what they want until they win, both in and out of the Redemption ring, and one of the best books I’ve read this year.

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Review: On The Way Home by Skye Warren

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On the Way HomeOn the Way Home by Skye Warren

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided to me by the author for an honest review at Seductive Musings.

On the surface, the premise of Skye Warren’s ON THE WAY HOME seems simple. Clint is a soldier returning from a recent tour in Afghanistan, where he’s witnessed the worst of humanity, thanks to the undercover operation he was supporting there. Now all he wants to do is get back to a normal life, although he’s not quite sure if it’s still there for him. Della is the flight attendant on his plane home who has been warned she can only save her captive sister if Clint is handed over as compensation. Fate practically delivers him into her hands without much effort on her part. But how can she give this handsome stranger to someone she knows will kill him? And what will happen if she changes her mind?

There have been so many dark and angsty New Adult romances released in the past few years that I’ve just about sworn off them for good. But the beauty of reading is that there’s always at least one writer out there who can make me love something I’ve vowed to hate forever. And apparently for dark and angsty New Adult romance, that writer is Skye Warren. Della’s tragic history is never played for sympathy or cheap sentiment, only as a necessary backdrop to why she would even consider turning Clint over to a known murderer. Clint is shown as the more sympathetic character whose weariness has caused him to let down his emotional guard, however briefly, and his temporary weakness may well be a fatal misstep. But when Della decides to reach out just once to take what she sees within him, it’s the shock of their unusually compatible souls recognizing each other that forces the reader to cheer for them both to prevail. The road to their happy ending takes a series of twists and turns that might seem improbable in a less skilled writer’s hands, but it all makes sense by the end, and that feeling of rightness makes the journey there worthwhile and completely satisfying. Their road to love was dark, but not too dark, and it was beautiful to see Della and Clint both find security and happiness in each other. ON THE WAY HOME is yet another extraordinary story from Skye Warren and I loved every moment of it.

Ratings:

Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 3.5

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Review: Best Erotic Romance 2014, ed. Kristina Wright

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Best Erotic Romance 2014Best Erotic Romance 2014 by Kristina Wright

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at Night Owl Reviews. The full text of the review can be found there.

One of the things Cleis Press does best is their yearly anthologies of short erotic stories, usually pegged to a specific theme or conceit. So with Best Erotic Romance 2014, I knew there would be some wonderful sexy times between couples who truly love each other, and that’s exactly what I found.

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Review: Twisted – Bondage With An Edge Anthology, ed. Alison Tyler

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Twisted: Bondage With an EdgeTwisted: Bondage With an Edge by Alison Tyler

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at Night Owl Reviews. The full text of the review can be found there.

Although I enjoyed reading the whole book, there were a few selections that I would definitely consider as favorites. They were the stories where I was immediately engaged without having any idea what would happen next, and pleased by where the story ended up: “Foundation Stone” by Jax Baynard, “Rope Drought” by Teresa Noelle Roberts, and “Broken” by Alison Tyler. These three stories explored a variation on the bondage theme that I found unique without being over the top, and each made me wish that they had more pages. Not because I found what was there to be incomplete, but so I could stay in the worlds they’d created for just a bit longer.

If you’re a fan of short erotic fiction, and bondage is one of your reading kinks, you can’t go wrong with Twisted. It’s a perfect example of what makes the Cleis Press erotic anthologies so reliably good.

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Review: Kept – An Erotic Anthology

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KeptKept by Sorcha Black
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by one of the authors for an honest review at Night Owl Reviews. You can find the entire review posted there.

Overall, Kept was an entertaining read, and all of the stories were memorable. I’d recommend it to anyone who prefers their PNR/SF romance with a capture fantasy twist.
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