Tag Archives: 4 stars

Review: False Match by Lynne Silver

Reviews, , , , , , , , , ,

False Match (Coded for Love, #3)False Match by Lynne Silver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

This review contains spoilers for Heated Match, the first book in the Coded For Love series. You could try to read False Match as a stand-alone book, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Now that Dr. Samara Jones has been rescued from the evil Dr. Paulson, she is safe and yet still has no freedom in what she chooses to do next. She is blackmailed into contributing her considerable skills as a geneticist to the Program in return for not being prosecuted as Paulson’s co-conspirator, but no one there truly trusts her. It’s only when Chase Stanton is assigned as her tour guide / babysitter that there’s someone willing to offer friendship, and perhaps even more.

When the Program discovered the traitor in their midst back in Heated Match, they also discovered that he had falsified his studies to force Chase and Loren’s father to leave Loren’s mother for Chase’s, convincing her that the latter woman was his true genetic match. But the likelihood of a person having two perfect matches is highly unlikely, and Chase worries that perhaps he’s not genetically enhanced at all. Samara is the one person who can help him discover the truth without anyone else finding out, and their continuing close association eventually leads them to a love that is immediately threatened by those who intend to recapture Samara in their goal to breed terrorist warriors.

Most of False Match involves Samara and Chase learning to trust and love each other even while their growing attraction is threatened by the emerging secrets of what Samara had done when Adam was Paulson’s captive. It was an interesting change of pace to have a hero and heroine who weren’t compelled to fall in love by their DNA and it made their HEA all the sweeter. Lynne Silver ends this story with a heart-stopping epilogue cliffhanger that ensured I would be seeking out Desire Unmatched, the newest book in the Coded For Love series. I can’t wait to read it.

Ratings:

Overall: 4
Sensuality level: 3 (hot sweet love scenes between the H/h)

View all my reviews

Review: Conquered Match by Lynne Silver

Reviews, , , , , , , , , ,

Conquered Match (Coded for Love, #2)Conquered Match by Lynne Silver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

This was a short but intense look at what genetically enhanced soldier Ryan does to punish his wife Thea for leaking details of the Program to the press. We discover that Thea has been the one to dictate the terms of their relationship ever since they had been found to be a perfect genetic match for each other. Ryan had always been content to let her be in charge, not realizing Thea was trying to force his hand into being the dominant one. Now that she’s betrayed him and everyone else, Ryan finally knows what needs to be done and is ready to give Thea what she needs to fix their marriage and ease the anger that led to her stunning betrayal.

Although this story was dramatically shorter than the previous one, what occurs between Ryan and Thea was portrayed well, conveying all the immediacy of Ryan’s reaction to Thea’s actions and the deep tenderness behind the decisions Ryan makes to heal them both. Thea has needed this domination from the beginning, and Ryan knows that giving it to her now is what can make things right. I wished there had been more to read, but was happy for this brief visit back to the world of the Program while waiting for the next full length book to arrive.
Ratings:

Overall: 4
Sensuality level: 4 (light BDSM including anal sex)

View all my reviews

Review: Heated Match by Lynne Silver

Reviews, , , , , , , , , ,

Heated Match (Coded for Love #1)Heated Match by Lynne Silver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

Lynne Silver’s Coded For Love series tells the stories of men who were genetically bred by the US Government in a secret program designed to create unstoppable warriors who would only be able to mate successfully with the women who were their perfect genetic counterparts. The Program has continued in secret for decades and it’s only recently that the public has become aware of what’s been going on, thanks to a Program wife who leaked the story to an outside source. At the same time, there are various groups both here and abroad who are trying to kidnap any one of the men for their own evil experiments. This sets up the compelling plotlines and intense romances which follow in each book.

Heated Match starts the Coded For Love series off with a sequence of incredibly intense scenes as two people who’ve never met before discover they are each other’s perfect genetic match. Adam is supposed to be protecting a diplomat’s infant son from being kidnapped at the boy’s high profile 1st birthday party. As one of the highest performing “super soldiers” in the Program, he should be focused on his task, yet there’s a woman there who has got him more sexually aroused than he’s been in years. Loren has crashed the birthday party in the hope of discovering more information about the Program, but there’s something about one of the bodyguards that has her thinking more about sex than getting the scoop for her story. When the diplomat’s son is kidnapped, the resulting investigation exposes Loren’s familial connection to the Program, and its leaders’ machinations work to bring Loren and Adam together to fulfill the genetic destiny neither of them is ready to embrace. What no one realizes is that the Program and all its participants are in mortal danger from someone in their midst who has been betraying them for years.

The Program that Lynne Silver has created in this series reminded me of Lora Leigh’s Breeds series, but not in a derivative way. We have the “fated mates” setup to bring Adam and Loren together, and the prerequisite secret family affiliations that neither of them had known existed before they met. During this initial story we discover much of the plotting and betrayals that had occurred during the creation of the Program, and they lead us to the moment where everyone’s future depends on finding the diplomat’s kidnapped son. As passionate as the scenes were between Adam and Loren, the suspense elements of the plot often threatened to overwhelm my enjoyment of their destined romance. I wanted more of them, and less kidnappings and torture, but the overall story arc was captivating enough that I would definitely be reading the next book in the series.

Ratings:

Overall: 4
Sensuality level: 3.5 (multiple passionate scenes of H/h who can’t stop having sex)

View all my reviews

Review: Roman Holiday 1: Chained by Ruthie Knox

Random, , , , ,

Roman Holiday 1: Chained (Roman Holiday #1)Roman Holiday 1: Chained by Ruthie Knox

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at The Romance Evangelist.

Ruthie Knox has only been a published author for a year or so, but in that short time, she’s vaulted to the upper reaches of my list of favorite romance writers. So when the opportunity came to review her new serial book Roman Holiday, I was happy to say yes.

Ashley Bowman had been raised by her grandmother in an aging but beloved vacation rental home community in the Florida Keys and had always assumed that the houses and land would one day pass to her in return. But when Ashley returns from Bolivia to find her grandmother dead and buried, she also discovers that Sunnyvale Vacation Rentals now belongs to the type of man she dislikes the most: the predatory Miami land developer. Maybe chaining herself to a palm tree just ahead of an approaching hurricane wasn’t the smartest choice, but it’s stopped the demolition, at least temporarily, and gotten the attention of that slick handsome Cadillac guy who refused to answer all her calls before now.

Roman Diaz looks the part of the evil businessman that Ashley has already assigned to him, but inside he still feels like he’s faking it until he makes it. He’s worked hard to climb up the food chain in the Miami development scene, and building his dream project in the heart of Ashley’s beloved Sunnyvale is the keystone to reaching the next level of his life goals. Now if he can only convince Ashley to unchain herself from that tree before something bad happens to her and derails his plans forever.

Ashley is just this side of appearing to be too scatterbrained and impetuous for me to like at first. Trying to protect her presumed inheritance from the bulldozer isn’t the first badly planned action she’s ever taken in her life – it’s just the most recent and most ill-advised. If the story was just about her, I’d probably bail right here, despite my love of Ruthie Knox.

But Roman… ah, Roman. He’s another story entirely. There are unplumbed depths to Roman that he clearly would like to remain unexplored. If Ashley appears to wear her emotions on her face, Roman is the reverse image. He’s cultivated a veneer of success that may not bear extended scrutiny, and having to deal with anyone who looks too closely is what appears to unnerve him the most.

In Roman Holiday, Ruthie Knox is setting us up for an opposites attract romance, and based on her track record, I’m more than ready to follow her on this road trip. It should be fun to watch the immovable object of Ashley meet the irresistible force of Roman, and see how they manage to fumble their way to a mutual happy ending.

View all my reviews

Review: Take Me At The Ballgame by Cassandra Carr

Reviews, , , , , , , , ,

Take Me at the BallgameTake Me at the Ballgame by Cassandra Carr

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

You can find the full review for this book at Night Owl Reviews.

Full disclosure: I shared a hotel room with Cassandra Carr at Romanticon this year and we got along well.

The bulk of this story is taken up with all the times Sydney and JT enjoy each other sexually in the privacy of the press box, and there’s not a thing wrong with that. The scenes are engaging and neither of them comes across in any negative way. On the contrary, JT shows an refreshingly positive side defending Sydney when another person spots them in a compromising position and attempts to make the most of his discovery. Neither JT nor Sydney expect more from each other than what they have at that moment, and what they have is some well-written sexual encounters that made reading Take Me At The Ballgame a brief but enjoyable treat.

View all my reviews

Audiobook Review: Overheard by Maya Banks

Reviews, , , , , , , ,

Overheard
Title: Overheard
Author: Maya Banks
Narrated by Chandra Skyye
Publisher: AudioGO
Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins
Release Date: 8/1/2013

A copy of this audiobook was provided to me by Audiobook Jukebox for an honest review.

Overheard is the second entry in Maya Banks’ Unbroken series, telling the story of a woman who is tired of settling for men that can’t give her what she wants in bed, but gets exactly what she’s missing when one of her male friends overhears her sharing her sexual fantasies with a trusted girlfriend.

Gracie has finally had enough with her latest crappy boyfriend and has kicked him to the curb. She’s lucky to have a set of lifelong friends to lean on while she tries to figure out how to get a good man in her bed. One of those friends is Luke, a man who has always seen Gracie as an attractive woman but never figured he’d get the opportunity to turn their friendship into something more personal. Then he overhears Gracie telling their mutual friend Shelly all the things she wants to do with the right man, and he knows that he’s just the guy to make it all come true. What happens next between Gracie and Luke shows them that sometimes overhearing what wasn’t meant for you can be both the best and worst thing ever.

I’ve found that Maya Banks’ writing usually lends itself well to an audio version, and Overheard is no exception. The story is short and intense, but we are given everything we need to know about what motivates Gracie and Luke, and how their previously platonic friendship was able to morph almost seamlessly into a sexual relationship (at least at first) and how their love growing into something deeper was a natural and realistic progression. Chandra Skyye does a good job of differentiating voices between the various male and female characters. I did find her deliberately Southern-style accent a bit grating at times, but that’s a matter of personal preference.

Overheard is another scorching but sweet tale of sex and love in the Maya Banks tradition and it was an enjoyable listen I won’t soon forget.

Review: Game For Trouble by Karen Erickson

Reviews, , , , , , , , ,

Game for Trouble (Game for It, #2)Game for Trouble by Karen Erickson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at Romancing Rakes For The Love Of Romance.

Game For Trouble is the second book in Karen Erickson’s great new sports romance series about the attractive single men on the San Jose Hawks professional football team and the women with whom they fall in love. The first book – Game For Marriage – featured Jared, the team quarterback and Sheridan, a local artist who was corralled with him into a sham marriage for the sake of repairing his playboy reputation. In this second book, Jared and Sheridan are safely settled and deliriously happy together, and their obvious bliss starts to grate on Nick Hamilton, the Hawks’ usually happy-go-lucky tight end and best friend to Jared. When Nick sees what his friend has, he wants it for himself, and the only woman who can give him what he wants is Willow Cavanaugh. Unfortunately for Nick, she also happens to be the one woman who has vowed never to give him a chance to break her heart again. Willow doesn’t know that Nick dumped her years ago because her high-powered lawyer father had threatened his budding football career. But now that she’s trying to start a new business away from her father’s influence and money, it’s Nick who has the building she wants to lease, and he’s going to use every bit of leverage to convince her that this time he’s not going anywhere without her.

The romance trope where the hero blackmails the heroine into spending time with him against her better judgment can be tricky if it’s not handled well. In Game For Trouble, Karen Erickson’s sure hand keeps everything balanced perfectly so that we see Nick’s feelings for Willow are more than met on her end, even if she’s afraid to express them directly at first. Jared and Sheridan work well in this story as secondary characters, and any necessary details about their own relationship that a new reader would need to follow along are provided without resorting to massive and annoying data dumps.

The heart of Game For Trouble is the second chance at love for both Nick and Willow, and how their mutual and individual pasts must be learned from, instead of just gotten past or forgotten, for them to be able to love each other freely and completely at last. There are more than a few misunderstandings along the way, but there are also delicious scenes of groveling and makeup sex afterward. The love Nick and Willow have for each other is genuine, and their final reconciliation is a satisfying coda to the story. I adored Game For Trouble and I’m looking forward to reading Karen Erickson’s next entry in the Game For It series.

Favorite Quote:
Watching Sheridan smother Jared with kisses made him realize that what he really wanted was his woman back in his life. For good. He was tired of the fight. Tired of letting her go without protest. Sick and damn tired of giving up too damn easy. For once, he was gonna fight for what he wanted. Who he wanted.
And he wanted Willow.
He’d always wanted Willow.

View all my reviews

Review: Snowbound with the CEO by Shannon Stacey

Reviews, , , ,

Snowbound with the CEOSnowbound with the CEO by Shannon Stacey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at Romancing Rakes for the Love of Romance.

Rating: ~4 hearts: I loved it!

Review:
One of my favorite romance tropes is the office romance with characters who are secretly attracted to each other, and when one of those characters is the boss, the ultimate revelation of the secret is all the more appealing for me. In SNOWBOUND WITH THE CEO, we get the caring and considerate boss and his efficient executive assistant, neither of whom dares make a move on the other for fear of ruining their successful work relationship. It takes the intervention of Mother Nature to force them together in a secluded hideaway where they finally feel safe enough to make the next move toward happiness.

Adrian Blackstone is the adorable CEO with a heart who never dared acknowledge his attraction to his assistant until he saw her off the clock at the hotel bar after they were both stranded by a fast moving blizzard. Rachel Carter has been crushing on Adrian for over a year but knows that doing anything about it would end the best job she’s ever had. The protected bubble of their forced hotel stay helps them finally act on what they both want. But when the roads are clear and they have to return to the real world, what seemed so clear before might not be what they can actually have.

SNOWBOUND WITH THE CEO is much like a category romance in its setup, plot, and conclusion, but because this is Shannon Stacey, the writing never falls into cliché. We get to see why the hero and heroine are so drawn to one another, and why their return to the office makes them both behave in ways that each completely misinterprets as a rejection of the other. The misunderstandings are understandable and never too frustrating, making the ultimate resolution between them all the sweeter at the end. As an avowed lover of epilogues, I was also quite happy with the one presented here. My only real dissatisfaction with the story was that it was so short, even shorter than the category romance which is so strongly resembles. But the length doesn’t prevent SNOWBOUND WITH THE CEO from being yet another satisfying read from Shannon Stacey, and I’ll continue to read pretty much anything she writes.

Favorite Quote:

She tried to pull away, but he held her fast. “Whoa. First, your job is not in jeopardy. You are invaluable to me. You could probably whack me over the head with a wine bottle and steal my wallet and I wouldn’t fire you. Second, I like the Greek god thing. And third, since I’ve only heard you call me Adrian in my mind — sometimes when I’m dreaming and sometimes when I’m in the shower — I want to hear it from you more often.”

View all my reviews

Review: Wicked and Dangerous by Shayla Black and Rhyannon Byrd

Reviews, , , , , , , , , ,

Wicked and Dangerous (Wicked Lovers, #7.5)Wicked and Dangerous by Shayla Black

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

The connection of “Wicked All Night” to her Wicked Lovers series is tenuous at best (Decker works for the Santiago brothers whose love story was told in “Ours to Love”) but the fast pace and scorching hot sex scenes of that series are more than present here and I was a happy reader all the way to the whirlwind ending. 4.5 stars

“Make Me Yours”
Although I wasn’t familiar with this author or series, the quality of the writing and the story kept me riveted all the way through. My only frustration came from how Ryder would continue to push Lily away even though they both knew they could never be apart forever. But I was entertained enough that I will be seeking out the first book in the series (“Take Me Under”) to read about the other characters living in Moss Creek, Louisiana. 3.5 stars

View all my reviews

Review: The Training by Tara Sue Me

Reviews, , , , , , , ,

The Training (The Submissive Trilogy, #3)The Training by Tara Sue Me

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at SeductiveMusings.blogspot.com.

This review may contain spoilers for The Submissive and The Dominant, the first two books in the Submissive trilogy. You could read The Training as a stand-alone book, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

After the riveting start in The Submissive and a somewhat tepid retelling of the same story from the hero’s POV in The Dominant, we now get the touching conclusion to Abby and Nathaniel’s love story in The Training. Our hero and heroine have finally realized that they should give their chance at love one more try, and they both work hard to overcome their doubts about themselves and each other. During this time of reconciliation, Nathaniel and Abby learn to harmonize their need for a part-time Dominant/submissive relationship with their fragile new status as boyfriend and girlfriend, but the road to the perfect balance is not easy, and it takes some help from Nathaniel’s mentor in the BDSM lifestyle to show them the way forward.

Although I loved The Submissive, I found The Dominant somewhat less enjoyable since it was basically the same story, although I did appreciate being able to understand what had gone before from Nathaniel’s point of view. What helped make The Training a success for me was having both Abby’s and Nathaniel’s POV available, each moving the story forward rather than simply recapping what had already been described from the other’s perspective. I got a much better handle on their individual concerns and motivations, and was relieved that the author was able to avoid the spectre of “head-hopping” which derails so many books with multiple first person narratives. Best of all, the ups and downs that occur between Nathaniel and Abby throughout The Training only help to make their Happy Ever After even more enjoyable when they finally get that happy balance that they’ve worked so hard to achieve together. (And yes, I did cheer when I saw there was an epilogue. I love epilogues and this one was sweet.)

The Training is a satisfying conclusion to the Submissive trilogy and I recommend it to readers who love a tender romance along with their kinky sexy-time reads.

Ratings:

Overall: 4
Sensuality level: 4 (heavy BDSM including anal sex and caning)

View all my reviews