Tag Archives: 3 stars

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

Reviews, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

View all my reviews

Review: Once Upon a Billionaire by Jessica Clare

Reviews, , , , , , , ,

Once upon a Billionaire (Billionaire Boys Club, #4)Once upon a Billionaire 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.

Jessica Clare’s Billionaire Boys Club is a relatively new romance series that I’ve enjoyed from the very beginning, with a 5 star read for me in its second book, BEAUTY AND THE BILLIONAIRE. So it’s with great sadness that I have to say ONCE UPON A BILLIONAIRE was so not of the same quality that if it had been the very first book, I probably wouldn’t have continued with the series. Although the romance ended up in the right place when all was said and done, its ill-conceived hero and heroine affected my enjoyment of their HEA to the point that I almost feel guilty for having liked any of it at all.

Griffin Verdi, aka Viscount Montagne Verdi, younger brother of the Duke of Calcaire in the ruling family of Bellissime, is a member of the Billionaire Boys Club, but that’s all due to his own financial skills, not his royal bloodline. His snooty family all but disowned him after he moved to America, but they’re still happy to spend the money he sends them. All he asks in return is to be left alone with his work and his passion for archaeology, but even that is more than they can manage. Now that he’s required to attend his beloved cousin’s wedding as she becomes the first Bellissime Crown Princess to marry a commoner, it’s just Griffin’s bad luck for his sole personal assistant to be too sick to accompany him there. Desperation forces the proud billionaire to turn to his good friend and fellow club member, Hunter, for help. And payback is what prompts Hunter’s girlfriend, Gretchen, to surprise Griffin with the one woman who could unsettle him to the point of madness.

Maylee Meriweather may hail from a no-account Arkansas trailer park, but that doesn’t mean she can’t handle her boss’s last-minute call to help Griffin on his trip. She doesn’t have the fancy clothes, fancy laptop, or fancy anything to keep up appearances in Griffin’s circle. All she has is a can-do attitude, plenty of gumption, and an otherworldly ability to take away a person’s pain after a burn or other related injury. But when nervous flier Maylee mixes mojitos with her “happy pills” on Griffin’s private plane, her bedraggled appearance and drug-induced behavior threaten to end any chance of them getting along before they even land at their destination. Still, there’s something about Maylee that Griffin can’t seem to resist. If he could just manage not to insult her with every word out of his mouth, they might find something together that goes well beyond their temporary working relationship.

The plot of ONCE UPON A BILLIONAIRE is a fairly standard romance trope: egotistical billionaire is thrown together with a sweet tempered woman totally below his standards, they clash on superficial differences but eventually succumb to their mutual physical attraction, ending up with an HEA only after the prerequisite Big Misunderstanding. It’s light and fluffy and utterly predictable, unlike the last two books in the series, and yet that’s not what bothered me so much. What made me nearly stop reading more than once was how both the hero and heroine were so broadly defined that it bordered on offensive in some spots.

Let’s begin with our billionaire hero, Griffin Verdi. From the first page of ONCE UPON A BILLIONAIRE, he comes across as the worst sort of condescending rich guy, barely civil to the other men he considers friends, and outright rude to Hunter’s girlfriend, Gretchen. It’s true that Gretchen gives as good as she gets, but it’s not like Griffin isn’t capable of basic courtesy to anyone not in his inner circle. Or is he? We’re led to believe that this innate boorishness stems from his royal upbringing, and yet he has a constant inner monologue about how much he hates his own relatives taking advantage of him and others without even so much as a simple thank you. So why wouldn’t he try to behave better than the people he resents? I suspect it was all in support of the conflict between him and his intended heroine. And yet for me, Griffin was nothing more than a faded copy of a Harlequin Presents hero. The arrogance and incivility were there, but any compelling reasons why a woman would find him irresistible in the face of such nonsense were missing in action. Even so, Griffin’s portrayal wasn’t half as problematic as what was in store for Maylee, the woman he supposedly learns to love.

Maylee Meriweather isn’t just from another world, she’s from an entirely different universe. Any woman not born and bred as royalty would be a challenge for Griffin, but a hick from the sticks is beyond the pale. Yet what I objected to wasn’t the extreme contrast per se, but the way Maylee was written as a cartoon character straight out of Dogpatch USA. She’s already a personal assistant to another billionaire, but she dresses like a bag lady and keeps track of her boss’s schedule on Post-It Notes. Every other word out of her mouth is “Lordamercy!” and she loves to tell everyone she meets that she was named for her Nana and PeePaw. Later we learn that her younger sisters are named Alabama and Dixie after their Daddy’s two favorite songs. (What, no brother named Skeeter?) Best of all, Maylee is a self-proclaimed “burn talker” who helps injured people by asking them to give the pain to her as she rubs the location of their burn. (Of course she is.)

This ongoing litany of outrageous personal details prompted a constant side-eye from me as the book went on, especially once it became obvious that Griffin would have been a complete jerk to Maylee without them. It really wasn’t necessary to portray her as an egregious example of nearly every possible stereotype of young women born and raised in the American South. And yet all that was missing by the time we met Maylee’s beloved drooling hound dog in Mama’s trailer back home was a moonshine still in the backyard and a visit to the local Waffle House. But because Maylee is the personification of the sweet but naive girl fresh off the turnip truck, she’s also able to win over every other person she meets with her kind and considerate demeanor, and even manages to help the Crown Princess of Bellissime herself with a curling iron burn on the night before the big wedding. Maylee also secretly hands out cash tips to everyone providing services to Griffin on his behalf, even though we’ve already been told that she’s barely getting by financially due to her need to send most of her salary to her family back in Arkansas. It’s this deep-seated kindness that ostensibly makes Maylee such a great personal assistant in spite of all her shortcomings in appearance and social behavior. It’s also apparently why she continues to take care of Griffin in spite of the cruel way he treats her right up until he decides she’s worthy of his affection after all.

Just because Maylee also gets the good end of the sweet Southern girl stereotype doesn’t make the rest of it even remotely acceptable. And just because Griffin finally pulls his head out of his ass after seeing himself in his mother and brother’s poor treatment of Maylee doesn’t mean his earlier abominable behavior is in any way excusable. There’s a way to depict a romance between a hero and heroine from vastly different worlds without potentially insulting readers, and then there’s what this book did. But I’m not quite ready to give up on the Billionaire Boys Club series, and I’m hoping very hard that the next book, ROMANCING THE BILLIONAIRE, will be a triumphant return to form. I don’t think I could handle this level of disappointment again.

Ratings:

Overall: 3
Sensuality level: 3

View all my reviews

Review: The Cry for Freedom by Jerri Hines

Reviews, , , ,

The Cry For FreedomThe Cry For Freedom by Jerri Hines

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was acquired by me for free on Amazon after the author contacted me directly to request a review at The Romance Evangelist.

When I first started reading THE CRY FOR FREEDOM, I was entertained by the introduction of our heroine, Hannah Corbett, when she met Marcus Durham, a mysterious handsome stranger who took a special interest in her while she was attempting to avoid yet another in a series of boring social events. As the story progressed, our Hannah morphed into a Mary Sue character whose only faults (headstrong, tomboy, more interested in the outside world than in parties and social gossip, etc) are the ones that our modern sensibilities would see as assets in the conflicts about to tear her world apart. Although at first it appeared to me that Marcus would be set up as Hannah’s eventual love interest, in THE CRY FOR FREEDOM, they only encounter each other sporadically as the conflict between those who support the Crown and those who want freedom from its rule morphs into full-out war.

THE CRY FOR FREEDOM features a whirlwind of activity as Hannah’s insular world is blown apart by enemies both within and without. After suffering incredible personal losses, Hannah insists on volunteering as a spy in the New York household of her own grandfather. Of course, in the grand tradition of all Mary Sues, she manages to overhear all kinds of incredibly useful information, thus proving wrong all those who thought her too young and inexperienced to be an effective asset. While Hannah’s life has been in upheaval, her brother Jonathan has suffered just as greatly, and we see periodically how the tragic events occurring in Virginia have affected his personal life as well. Meanwhile, the mysterious Marcus pops up here and again throughout the story, including in New York, where Hannah isn’t sure whether she could ever trust someone working on the same side of the people who tried to destroy her family. And then the book just…ends.

The Amazon blurb for THE CRY OF FREEDOM claims it’s the first in the Winds of Betrayal series, but for me, that description was incredibly misleading. This isn’t the first book in a series — it’s the first book in a serial. In a serial, each succeeding installment is structured like an individual chapter in a book, instead of a complete story connected to additional complete stories as the word “series” would imply. This distinction became all too obvious in THE CRY FOR FREEDOM, when just as it seemed Marcus and Hannah might have an actual romantic moment together, the next line was a title promotion of the third Winds of Betrayal book, followed by a brief excerpt. (Wait, wasn’t I just reading Book One? What happened to Book Two?) There is also a Book Four scheduled for release later in 2014, but for me, the Winds of Betrayal series/serial ends here.

Ultimately, THE CRY FOR FREEDOM had just enough plot to keep me reading, but not enough for me commit to additional books/chapters. Your mileage may vary.

View all my reviews

Review: Bound by Lorelei James

Reviews, , , , , , , , ,

Bound (Mastered, #1)Bound by Lorelei James

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at SMI Book Club.

BOUND is the first of a two book series by Lorelei James about the martial arts master Ronin and the sheltered but feisty Amery, and how they become lovers after a chance meeting in his Denver dojo. Amery has only recently escaped both the restrictive influence of her fundamentalist family and the dysfunctional relationship with the man she thought would love her enough to never stray. Ronin, on the other hand, is a complete mystery to both Amery and the reader, sharing only the barest details about where he came from and what makes him tick. Naturally, once he meets Amery, his dominant nature compels him to make her his own, even as she wonders what she’s gotten herself into while melting into his powerful embrace.

Here’s the part of the review where I would normally politely share what went on in BOUND and how it did or didn’t work for me. But honestly, this book has me in an emotional headlock about whether I actually liked it or not. A big part of the problem I had with this book was how it was so obviously designed to hook the reader into the budding romance between Ronin and Amery when there was almost nothing based in reality to make you think they should even be together. She knows absolutely nothing about him, other than that he says he’s crazy about her, while everyone else keeps warning her that he’s no good and will only put her in danger. Yet even that is all just supposition based on no real evidence, and we’re left wondering what the heck is going on with this guy anyway. And because this is only the first of the two books, it’s damn certain that whatever we do ultimately find out about him is what will send Amery off into the night, overwhelmed by righteous indignation at not being trusted with the secrets that Ronin is so obviously keeping to himself.

When that big reveal finally arrived near the end of BOUND, it was all I could do not to throw the book against the wall. (It was a print ARC, so I didn’t have to worry about damaging a valuable ereader, but I resisted all the same.) Of all the possible secrets swirling around Ronin, the one that made Amery insist their relationship (such as it was) was over for good was so ridiculous, so innocuous, compared to what we’d been led to believe, that I wanted to smack both of them for being Too Stupid To Live. How this book could be from the same author who wrote the Blacktop Cowboy books, one of my most favorite romance series?

When BOUND was focused on its more intimate moments, however, it was as good as anything I’ve read by Lorelei James, especially when Ronin had Amery fully immersed in his world of rope bondage. Those scenes kept the book from being a DNF for me, and helped me slide past all its other more troubling parts enough to want to read the second book.
So if you’re willing to look past weak characterizations, an apparent fetish with all things Japanese, and a ridiculous cliffhanger which exists solely for the sake of continuing the story in a second book, then you might enjoy BOUND. I can only hope that Lorelei James is back to her usual overall form in the follow-up book UNWOUND and that the sex scenes aren’t the only reason to recommend it.

View all my reviews

Review: Marked by Lauren Dane, Vivian Arend, Kit Rocha

Reviews, , , , , , , , , , ,

Marked (Beyond, #3.5; Thompson & Sons)Title: Marked
Author: Lauren Dane, Vivian Arend, Kit Rocha
Series: Metamorphosis #1, Thompson & Sons #1, Beyond #3.5
Genre: erotic romance anthology
Publisher: self-published
Format: ebook
Release Date: February 10, 2014

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

Publisher Summary:

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Lauren Dane takes you into a brand new world in ALL THAT REMAINS. Summer Killian falls fast and hard when Charlie arrives in Paradise Village. But the heat turns all the way up when she learns Charlie is also with Hatch – the man she loved three years before. While she’s not sure she’s cut out for a triad, neither man is going to give her up.

Take a ROCKY RIDE with New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Vivian Arend as she leads you back to the Six Pack Ranch. Anna Coleman might be the law around Rocky Mountain House, but bad boy Mitch Thompson knows that under the stiff RCMP uniform is a woman with a passion for speed and pleasure that matches his own, and he’s not giving up until she’s his.

Kit Rocha returns to Sector Four in BEYOND TEMPTATION. A promise to a dying friend backfires when Noah Lennox finds that the girl he was supposed to rescue is all grown up–and wearing O’Kane ink. He wants to protect her from the secrets of their past, but she wants him. And an O’Kane woman always gets what she wants.

My Review:

I’m usually wary about reading anthologies for review, since I’ve often found them to be more work than pleasure, but when I heard MARKED included another visit to Kit Rocha’s Beyond series, I knew I had to have it. It also helped to have only three longer novellas included, instead of a dozen or more shorter stories. Although the stories take place in different authors’ book series, each ties into the motif implied by the anthology name by including at least one or more scenes regarding tattoos and the meaning they have for the characters in that world.

BEYOND TEMPTATION is the first novella in MARKED, and if any story belongs in an anthology about the meaning of tattoos, it’s one featuring the O’Kanes and their infamous ink. I’m not sure, though, if a new reader to the Beyond series would be able to get into it as quickly as someone more familiar with that world. (I actually went back and read the first three books again first, just to be sure, and let me tell you, those books more than hold up to a second read.)

We met Noah and Emma briefly back in BEYOND PAIN, when he was the only one with the technical savvy and connection to get vital data back to the O’Kanes from the other sectors not under the gang’s control. At that time, it was obvious that the history he and she had shared in Sector 5 went deeper than just his friendship with her now-late brother. But it’s only BEYOND TEMPTATION that we eventually learn what had brought them together before and what threatened to keep them permanently apart. Emma’s brother had been trapped by his own addictions fed by the evil in Sector 5, and that legacy lurks behind every moment of sorrow for Noah and Emma. But as a newly inked O’Kane woman, Emma has the strength and security to go after what she wants, and she won’t let the mistakes of the past keep her from the man she’s meant to be with. It may be shorter than the usual Kit Rocha story, but the extensive world-building already established in the previous Beyond books helps make BEYOND TEMPTATION a thoroughly enjoyable read and an essential installment in the series. 4.5 stars

After experiencing the joy of being back in Sector Four, I was a little concerned that the rest of MARKED couldn’t possibly live up to my now-lofty expectations. Little did I realize that the second story, ROCKY RIDE, would be just as good, if not a tiny bit better. This was my first Vivian Arend story, and it began with a (somewhat literal) bang. In that opening scene, Constable Anna Coleman meets up with her secret boyfriend and local biker dude Mitch Thompson, out on an isolated country road for some incredibly hot and heavy sexual fantasy fulfillment. When their amazing sex is over, Anna retreats behind her policewoman persona once again, leaving Mitch to wonder how a girl like her will ever be brave enough to go public with a guy like him. But as Vivian Arend then so perfectly shows, the two of them aren’t that different after all, when the facades (and clothing) are all stripped away. Even when it seems like they can’t make a real go of it, especially when so many other people are against them based on their prejudice against him, true motives and true love ultimately win out, making their reconciliation all the sweeter. ROCKY RIDE not only made me want to continue Vivian Arend’s new Thompson & Sons series, but to go back and check out her Rocky Mountain Heat series which preceded it. 5 stars 

It’s a rare anthology where every reader loves every story, and Lauren Dane’s ALL THAT REMAINS was that one story in MARKED I did not love. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of Earth where a devastating virus has killed most of the women, and resulted in the birth of fewer female children being born to those who survived. This has resulted in a dramatically different society in which more people are in committed triads instead of couples, and where women and their sexuality are celebrated and protected from both censure and physical harm. Summer is a young woman living in Paradise Village somewhere in what sounds like it used to the northwest part of the United States. She has settled there in support of her sister Dulce, who lost her own two husbands and their shared children in a tragic train crash years earlier, and has never completely recovered from the loss. Summer has enjoyed intimate relationships with other men, but never been interested anything long term until she meets Charlie, a stranger to the area, and finds herself immediately attracted to him  Charlie is looking for a woman to complete his own triad, and much to Summer’s surprise, the second man in the relationship turns out to be Hatch, the man who was Summer’s first true love and who broke her heart when he left her behind several years ago. Now he’s back and wants to her to join her and his beloved Charlie in a permanent commitment, but there can be only sex between them until Summer can learn to forgive and Hatch can learn to leave his itch for wandering behind.

It was difficult for me to connect with ALL THAT REMAINS, most likely due to it not having enough pages to contain all the back story details. In a full-length book, I could have discovered for myself what life was like for Summer when she was growing up on the New Earth commune and falling in love with Hatch. and what happened to Hatch when he was traveling west to follow her after she’d moved to Portland with her family. But because ALL THAT REMAINS is a novella, all of that was told instead of shown, and it left me searching for an emotional grounding that all the beautifully written sex scenes simply couldn’t provide. 3 stars.

Review: Betting On You by Sydney Landon

Reviews, , , , , , , , ,

Betting on You: A Danvers Novella (Danvers, #4.5)Betting on You: A Danvers Novella by Sydney Landon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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

Although BETTING ON YOU is the latest entry in Sydney Landon’s popular Danvers series, the connection between its hero and heroine with the rest of the series is tenuous, at best.

Seth is the charming and successful local businessman from FALLING FOR YOU (book 3) who was used by Beth to make Declan jealous after their relationship-ending fight. Mia is a new character to the series, introduced as an IT specialist working for Danvers on an installation project for Seth’s office. She moves in the same circles as Seth, thanks to her own family’s placement in local society, but is determined to make her own way in the world and not be dependent on them, or any man they might recommend.

When Seth and Mia first meet in the room where Mia is installing computers, their instant connection is obvious, but both choose to try to overlook it for sanity’s sake. But when Mia’s mother uses her charity bachelor auction to throw Seth at Mia in a way she can’t ignore, the result is some incredibly hot sexual encounters that neither of them wish to end. Yet their liaison would be a real threat to Mia’s hard-won job at Danvers for as long as Seth is still a client on the project she leads. They both agree to hold off until the office installation is complete, but during that time, Seth starts having doubts about what Mia might be expecting once they can be together again. Can a real relationship work between them, or is it just too much, too soon?

There’s no denying that Sydney Landon can write great sex scenes between characters that we want to root for. But what was missing for me in BETTING ON YOU was a sense that the hero and heroine really wanted this future for themselves. Seth, especially, was a great disappointment to me in both word and deed. He was the one who had pushed Mia into what he was certain they both wanted, and assured her their desire was mutual. Yet the minute he had to cool his jets and wait until it was safe for both of them, he started behaving like someone who had really just been looking for sex all along, despite everything he’d been saying. Mia seemed more grounded and realistic about what their relationship had actually been, and was hurt by Seth’s behavior but prepared to move on with her life. Yet when he finally realized that he needed to make things right with her, it seemed like her forgiveness was just a little too easily given.

All the problematic elements of this story including the insta-lust and the rushed ending could have been avoided with a longer story, but this is a novella, and those are the traps so many of them fall into. For me, BETTING ON YOU was a nice quick love story with some very well-written sex scenes, but I’m hoping that any future Danvers books will take the time needed to establish a more enjoyable and plausible happy ending for everyone.

Ratings:

Overall: 3 stars
Sensuality level: 4 (light BDSM, semi-public sex)

View all my reviews

Review: I Take You by Nikki Gemmell

Reviews, , , , , , ,

I Take YouI Take You by Nikki Gemmell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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

I TAKE YOU is the story of a woman whose life and happiness are in stasis, frozen from the time that her husband became paralyzed from the waist down after a terrible accident not long after they were married. Connie had married Cliff because she felt expected to marry exactly this sort of man (handsome, charming and incredibly rich) to order be successful in her own life. But Cliff cares more about making more money and manipulating Connie’s sexual submission than in actually making her feel loved or appreciated. Desperate for any sort of emotional connection in her marriage, Connie agrees to letting Cliff exploit her in ways that become increasingly destructive to her own sense of self. It’s only at the lowest point in her existence that Connie is able to find love in the arms of another man, and in the process, rediscover herself.

Although I haven’t read the previous two books in Nikki Gemmell’s Bride trilogy, none of the books are directly connected to each other so that didn’t affect my ability to enjoy reading I TAKE YOU. What did affect my enjoyment was the fact that this book is so very obviously the author’s version of D.H. Lawrence’s LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER, a book that may be a famous love story but is not necessarily known as a true romance with a happy ending.

Unlike Mellors the gamekeeper in LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER, Mel the gardener in I TAKE YOU is not encumbered with a wife whom he does not love, though as a divorced man, he still carries the bitterness of the failed relationship with him as he and Connie embark on their dangerous affair. But Lawrence’s Sir Clifford has suffered a complete character assassination here, as Gemmell twists him into the most evil of husbands, one who refuses to accept Connie in his life as anything other than yet another of his acquired possessions, and will stop at nothing to force his sexual will on her to satisfy his desires, while crushing any she might have had of her own. With Cliff as the unredeemable villain, we can’t help but cheer Connie on as she clings to Mel as her only salvation from a life she’s lived for everyone but herself, and any possible shades of gray in her actions are completely wiped out in the face of such a horrible alternative.

I TAKE YOU’S opening scenes at the country mansion are first-rate erotica and easily the best part of the entire book. It was also good to see Connie and Mel get the happy ending that D.H. Lawrence had previously denied them. But D.H. Lawrence’s ghostly presence combined with Gemmell’s use of the third person present tense (‘The car is driven… Connie sits upright…The driver fumbles…’) made this a very difficult read for me overall. Still, it did prompt me to reread LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER, a book I would recommend more than this one.

Ratings:

Overall: 3 stars
Sensuality level: 4 (public exhibition including forced genital piercing, cuckold play, adultery)
View all my reviews

Review: Some Like It Sinful by Robbie Terman

Reviews, , , , ,

Title: Some Like It Sinful
Author: Robbie Terman
Series: A Perfect Recipe #2
Genre: contemporary adult romance
Publisher: Entangled Edge
Format: ebook
Release Date: 11/25/2013

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

Publisher Summary:

Their attraction is sinfully delicious…

A struggling business and one act of vandalism may have brought them together, but bakery owner Chloe Nelson and professional hockey player Griffin Lange get along like chocolate and pickles. Chloe needs the famous (and famously unattached) Griffin to attract people to her pastries, and Griffin needs the curvaceous and fiery Chloe to keep him out of trouble. A fake relationship to keep the media interested seems like the perfect plan.

But when temptation throws them into bed together, a new plan arises. Why not make the fake real? Griffin’s winning every home game, and Chloe’s business has never been better. Both know it’s only physical—and only temporary. But can they drop their defenses for love, even if it means getting a little bit sinful?

My Review:

Some Like It Sinful is the second book in Robbie Terman’s new series about Chicago chefs, but as a new reader, I had no problem with it as a stand-alone. It tells the story of how a pastry chef struggling to start her own business unexpectedly acquires a famous fake boyfriend when the local hockey star agrees to work at her bakery after a failed prank at the team owner’s charity auction.

Chloe Nelson bakes the best desserts in Chicago. If only she had the customers to show for it. It’s bad enough that a behemoth bakery chain is about to open a new location right across the street from her little shop. But when her sister, the assistant District Attorney, shows up one morning with a resentful hockey player in tow, Chloe isn’t sure if having this man as her new unpaid assistant is a good idea.

Griffin Lange has been a hockey star for so long that he doesn’t know how to do much else. He sure as hell doesn’t know how to behave in public, or he wouldn’t have tried to drive that model Porsche in the middle of a crowded arena event. The Brawlers don’t need this kind of publicity, so when the DA’s office offers him a private deal for community service instead of jail time, he takes it, thinking it’ll be easy and safe. Being around Chloe every day is neither easy nor safe for Griffin’s disposition, no matter how much she might rev his engine in other ways. He called her his girlfriend so the other players wouldn’t know he’d made a deal to stay out of jail. What neither he nor Chloe could predict was how the whole city would respond to this pretend relationship, or how it would change the future of not only his team and her business, but their chance at happiness together.

The best part of Some Like It Sinful was the romance between Chloe and Griffin, and how they learned to grow past their own preconceptions about love and commitment to find what they were looking for in each other. Griffin’s relationship with his grandma was just the right amount of touching and sweet, and Chloe’s banter with her close friends gave me extra perspective on why she was pushing Griffin away even as she knew he could be the one guy who could make her truly happy. I also enjoyed the subplot about how someone was trying to sabotage Chloe’s bakery after the business started picking up, and it was great to see that play out alongside the ongoing romance between Chloe and Griffin.

What kept the book from being a more satisfying read for me was the series of increasingly implausible events that were used to move the story forward. The way Griffin came to work at Chloe’s bakery was more than a little suspect, although when that unorthodox arrangement returned to make trouble for everyone, I ended up tolerating its existence a bit more than I had at the start. But the way Griffin’s team reacted to the news of his (fake) girlfriend seemed more than a bit over the top for me, and then later when Griffin’s position with the team was significantly altered, I was fairly certain that this was not something normal hockey teams would do. By the time the Brawlers’ season was over and Griffin and Chloe found their happy ending together, I could only laugh and say “Well of course, he did!”

Some Like It Sinful is a nice easy read without too much angst or heart-rending drama. Although I was new to the series, it was fairly obvious to me who the stars had been for the previous book, and who was being set up for future books to come. Robbie Terman has a way with light-hearted romance that makes Some Like It Sinful a fun way to spend a few happy hours. 3 stars

Review: Colters’ Gift by Maya Banks

Reviews, , , , , , , ,

Colters' Gift (Colters' Legacy, #5)Colters’ Gift by Maya Banks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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

Colters’ Gift is the latest entry in Maya Banks’ Colters’ Legacy series and with Colters’ Legacy, the additional novella included as a bonus, it concludes the story of the Colter family and their multiple generations of brothers who share and love a single woman together forever.

We last saw Lauren Wilder in Colters’ Promise, when she was rescued from an abusive relationship by her brother Max and the two men he had hired to protect her. In that story Max, happily married to Callie Colter, convinced Lauren to leave New York for Clyde, Colorado, where she could be looked after by the whole extended Colter family. Now months later, Lauren is just starting to regain her confidence and feel like herself again, while her two bodyguards, Noah and Liam, are still in New York trying to find the man who had abused Lauren. What they don’t know and Lauren hasn’t shared is that her ex-boyfriend Joel Knight is a dangerous criminal kingpin who uses his wealth and influence with corrupt law enforcement officials to do whatever he wants, including drug trafficking, prostitution, and worse. When Noah and Liam realize the danger Lauren is in, they return to Clyde both to protect her and claim her for their own. But Joel hasn’t given up looking for Lauren, and when he finds her, the entire Colter clan rallies to eliminate the danger to her and themselves once and for all.

So much of Colters’ Gift was taken up with the threat to Lauren’s life that the romance between her and the two bodyguards suffered by comparison for me. I hadn’t gotten a sense from the previous book that either Liam or Noah had harbored deeper feelings for her, let alone ones so strong that they were willing to share her. Of course the idea of being shared wouldn’t be out of the question for Lauren after seeing how happy her in-laws were in their relationships, but it almost seemed like it was being forced into the plot just to keep with the overall menage theme of the series. What I found especially odd was how the story just seemed to end suddenly with Colters’ Gift, and then the actual happy ending for everyone was in the bonus novella, Colters’ Legacy. It would have made more sense to me to just have that in the one book, but perhaps there were other issues not obvious to the reader forcing that decision.

As a longtime reader of the Colters’ Legacy series, I was happy to have final closure on the characters’ lives, but beyond that, Colters’ Gift was just an okay read for me. There really wasn’t anywhere else for Maya Banks to go with the story and I’m glad she was able to end it on a positive note with everyone happy, safe and loved.

Ratings:

Overall: 3
Sensuality level: 4 (MFM menage including anal sex, multiple threats of sexual violence)

View all my reviews

Review: Steady Beat by Lexxie Couper

Reviews, , , , , , , ,

Steady Beat (Heart of Fame, #4)Steady Beat by Lexxie Couper

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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

STEADY BEAT is the fourth book in Lexxie Couper’s Heart of Fame series, but I had no problem reading it as a stand-alone. The band previously known as Blackthorne has been on hiatus since their eponymous leader found his one true love in LOVE’S RHYTHM, the first book in this series. Their talented drummer, Noah Holden, is at loose ends since his swimsuit model girlfriend, Heather, dumped him for their dog-walker three months earlier, and worries that his ADHD will keep him from ever being able to have a real relationship outside the band. When “Blackthorne sans Blackthorne” meets in a local bar to discuss an offer to reform for a lucrative movie soundtrack, it’s their waitress, Pepper Kerrigan, who seizes on the perfect opportunity to get an audition as their new lead singer. What she ends up with is an immediate attraction to Noah and the chance of a lifetime. But can the new band survive both their sparks and the unforeseen return of Heather into Noah’s life?

As much as I try to avoid using this phrase in a review, I can’t help but say it for STEADY BEAT: I wanted to like this book more than I did. The premise was like catnip for me, featuring a shy and gifted heroine with a lifelong dream to sing with a band, meeting a sexy and sweet drummer who sees in her the woman who could be the steady love he’d thought he’d had before. The way Pepper and Noah meet borders on unbelievable, but Lexxie Couper makes it work, mostly because Noah is such an ingratiating hero who made me want to believe that this was all for real.

I’m generally inclined to give insta-lust a pass if what follows provides insight as to why these two people would have such a compelling attraction and shows the fallout from what happens next, especially when the couple have such disparate backgrounds as these two do. What I’m not inclined to ignore is when the insta-lust morphs into a seemingly magical cure for a genuine medical ailment such as Noah’s acknowledged ADHD. Meanwhile, we have a heroine who self-identifies as “chronically shy” but has somehow succeeded previously as a band manager and now wants to be the new lead singer for the reformed version of a world-famous rock band. I honestly didn’t know if I should be relieved or disappointed that Noah didn’t cure Pepper’s shyness in the same way she settled his attention span deficit, since it was that shyness that threw an unwelcome twist in the ending that the whole story had been moving toward since the first chapter.

There was much for me to enjoy in STEADY BEAT, most of which was related to Noah’s interactions with his band mates and how they ultimately came to like and trust Pepper as a member of their group. But as compelling as the romance was between Pepper and Noah, their happy ending didn’t blunt my disappointment at her inability to follow through on what she had claimed were her career goals all the way up until the end of the new band’s first gig. The somewhat abrupt ending of the story made Pepper’s sudden decision even more frustrating for me, and I wished that there had been an additional chapter or epilogue so we could see that her choice clearly made in haste was one that had actually worked out well for everyone involved.

Ratings:

Overall: 3
Sensuality level: 3.5 (hot passionate sex between the main characters but nothing kinky)

View all my reviews