The complete version of this review can be found at Night Owl Reviews
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at NightOwlReviews.com.
“Body of Work” is a wonderful story about how two people wary of trusting the wrong person again can’t help but keep coming back to each other, first for lust and then for love. The scenes between Cassie and Brian are easily the best part of this book, and their relationship is both touching and believable.
This review originally appeared at Seductive Musings
Review: Uncommon Passion by Anne Calhoun
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at SeductiveMusings.blogspot.com.
I’ve read everything that Anne Calhoun has published for nearly a year now, and every time I’ve been rewarded with yet another wonderfully engaging and passionate romance. Her latest book, “Uncommon Passion,” features a pairing between two people who could not have seemed more different at first glance, but ultimately show they have more in common than anyone could have known.
Rachel Hill was born and raised in an isolated religious community (I think it’s fair to call it a cult) where women were taught to always defer to men and where she could only be alone in a room with her father or the group’s religious leader. After living her whole life under these restrictions, Rachel realized that her intelligence and innate veterinary talents with farm animals were worth more than what her father and religion dictated. The first brave act of her life was to take the money owed her for decades of back-breaking work and escape to the real world for an independent future. The second brave act of her life was to take the money she’d saved for vet school and bid it for a night with a man at the charity bachelor auction. Rachel isn’t looking for a date. She’s looking for a man who won’t have any problems going right to the bedroom for some quick and casual sex. After all, she doesn’t want a relationship, she just wants to not be a virgin.
Ben Harris is a troubled cop living only for the quick emotional fixes of danger and sex, both of which he gets in unhealthy quantities. He gets the danger fix from his job as a SWAT officer, taking so many unnecessary chances with his safety that his superiors threaten to remove him from the job. He gets his sex fix in his side job as the door bouncer at No Limits, the local dance club where people go to get drunk and get laid, usually in that order. Ben wasn’t even supposed to be on the bachelor list that night at the auction, but when he and Rachel make eye contact, she knows he’s the perfect choice for what she wants to buy with her hard earned money.
The “date” between Ben and Rachel goes pretty much as anticipated, with a quick dinner and an equally quick trip to Ben’s bedroom for some hard and fast sex. Rachel revels in the act that she knows she would never have experienced without leaving everything behind. Ben is relieved that she didn’t demand much of him and even left without having to be asked. But later when he realizes that she’d been a virgin, he somehow feels compelled to go back to her to ask for a do-over. It isn’t long before what started as a quick easy lay between strangers becomes an emotional journey between two lost souls afraid to see that what they have is so much more than sex.
The romance trope of a world-weary man providing sexual instruction to an innocent virgin is a common one, and one that I always enjoy. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it with a woman who isn’t just an innocent to sex, but to adult life itself. Rachel is a truly remarkable heroine in that she has had to learn about so many things that most people take for granted. Her determination to experience everything an adult woman should have is what brings her to Ben’s bed and keeps her there when he insists on showing her everything she should know about pleasing herself and others in bed. Ben is over familiar with the adult world, to the point of seeming to have a death wish at times. Watching them become more attached to each other in spite of what they both insist they want is a wonderful experience and because this is an Anne Calhoun book, it is both beautifully written and incredibly moving. I loved every moment of “Uncommon Passion” and recommend Anne Calhoun as one of the finest romance writers working today.
Ratings:
Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 4
This review originally appeared at Romancing Rakes For the Love of Romance
Review: Kissing Under the Mistletoe by Bella Andre
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at RomancingRakes4TheLuvOfRomance.blogspot.com.
Rating: ~3 hearts: I liked it
Review:
If you’re a fan of Bella Andre’s incredibly successful Sullivans series as I am, you’ll already know about Jack and Mary Sullivan, and how Mary was left alone to raise their six sons and two daughters after Jack died much too young from a brain aneurysm. In the first 8 books of the series, we got to see each of the Sullivan siblings find their one true love. Now in “Kissing Under The Mistletoe” we finally get to see how Jack and Mary met and fell in love so many years before, along with a glimpse of how wonderful being together was in their first year of marriage.
Jack Sullivan is a dedicated and brilliant electrical engineer who along with his two good friends and co-workers, has created a new portable electronic device that he believes will be a top seller for his San Francisco company. But unless he can find a way in the next 24 hours to show that the Pocket Planner has some kind of sex appeal, his boss won’t even consider trying to sell any. A lesser man would be daunted by such a task, but Jack Sullivan refuses to give up. When he and his co-workers head out to Union Square in search of a place to sit and brainstorm, that’s when Jack has the most tremendous stroke of luck. For that’s when he finds both the solution to his marketing problem and the love of his life.
Mary Ferrer is a world famous fashion model who just happens to be in Union Square that evening for the final photo shoot in her long and successful career. She’s decided to retire after tonight because although she doesn’t regret having become a model, the day-to-day life just isn’t enjoyable for her any longer, and she’d like the chance to do more than just pose for pictures. Mary feels so completely alone since she left her family behind in their small Italian village and her mother disowned her as a result of that decision. She’s tried relationships within the fashion industry, but the last one ended up leaving her even more disillusioned about men and love than before. Yet when she sees the tall and handsome Jack Sullivan staring at her from the street, Mary can’t help but stare back in return, and it’s then that she decides to take one more chance at happiness and perhaps even love.
“Kissing Under the Mistletoe” does a great job in showing exactly why Jack and Mary were so perfectly matched from the start and provides all the back story about how each of them had gotten to that moment in Union Square when fate brought them together. I loved seeing how Mary had experienced a full and exciting life completely separate from her current identity as the quiet loving matriarch of the Sullivan family, and how finding Jack wasn’t an ending for her but a beginning to a whole new life that she’d already wanted before she’d ever met him. We’d seen through the previous books how much her children are like her, but now we get that same type of recognition for their late father, as Jack comes fully to life in this story and shows us just how much he loves Mary by both his words and actions.
The only thing I didn’t fully enjoy about “Kissing Under the Mistletoe” was how the epilogue detailing the first year of their marriage was more like a series of snapshots than an actual continuation of the complete story. Normally I’m a big fan of epilogues, but in this instance I found the change in writing style to be somewhat jarring by comparison, and I almost would have rather not had it there at all.
In any case, I am still happy to have read the story of the Sullivan parents, and am looking forward to the continuing stories of the Sullivan cousins now that all of Jack and Mary’s children have been paired up and married off. Bella Andre never fails to make me care about her characters and “Kissing Under the Mistletoe” is no exception. It’s a lovely romance, perfect for the holiday season.
Favorite Quote:
“Next time I invite you in,” she said with a small smile as she gave him his coat and walked him to the front door, “I’ll let you drink your coffee.”
He was standing on her front step when he said, “Next time you invite me in, I’m going to make love to you.”
This review originally appeared at Seductive Musings
Review: No Reservations by Stephanie Julian
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at SeductiveMusings.blogspot.com.
This review will contain spoilers for By Private Invitation, the first book in the Salon Games series. You could read No Reservations as a stand-alone book, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Stephanie Julian has become one of my favorite authors over the past year, due in no small part to “By Private Invitation,” the first book in her Salon Games series. In that book, we met the handsome successful Golden brothers, born to inherit an international hotel chain but choosing to go it alone so they could create Haven, their dream hotel in Philadelphia. Haven doesn’t cater to the very rich in the usual ways, as By Private Invitation showed us in intimate detail. There is a special salon in the most private area of Haven, and it’s in the Salon where sexual fantasies of all kinds can be fulfilled among those fortunate enough to be invited there.
In the first book, we got to see Annabelle Elder and Jared Golden fall in love after meeting at a Haven’s New Year’s Eve party. This second book opens during that same event, just after Annabelle has left the table to dance with Jared. Still sitting at that table is her best friend, Kate Song, who had insisted on getting Annabelle out to celebrate the New Year while leaving her own fiancé back at home. When Jared’s brother, Tyler, spots the beautiful Kate sitting alone, he can’t resist going over to find out why she’s not having a good time at his party. Their mutual attraction is immediate, but Kate is engaged to Arnie, and she tries to make it clear that she’s not available. It’s only months later, after Kate has broken off her engagement and she sees Tyler again at Annabelle’s gallery premiere, that they renew their acquaintance and begin the complicated dance that will either end with them together in love or alone and broken-hearted.
Although No Reservations doesn’t have the same sense of intrigue as By Private Invitation, especially with regard to the secrets of the Salon, the relationship between Tyler and Kate is just as riveting and the emotional payoffs just as satisfying. We get more background on why the Golden brothers have broken away from their family’s inherited expectations and how the Salon fits into how they express themselves sexually. Both Kate and Tyler are ambitious in their own career paths, even if it doesn’t always appear so to the casual observer. The ways they have to work to balance their budding relationship with their personal goals are what drives the bulk of the story as we wait to see how they can have each other without betraying their individual dreams of success. It’s a wonderful give and take, and the love between them makes all the setbacks and misunderstandings worth suffering through to the gratifying happy ending.
“No Reservations” is an enjoyable follow-up to “By Private Invitation” and I strongly recommend both books in the series. I don’t know if there will be another Salon Games book, but I do know that if there is, I will be reading it.
Ratings:
Overall: 4.5
Sensuality level: 4 (BDSM, MFM ménage)
This review originally appeared at Seductive Musings
Review: Everything For Us by M. Leighton
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review at SeductiveMusings.blogspot.com.
Everything For Us is the conclusion to the Bad Boys trilogy and is in no way a stand-alone book. This review contains significant spoilers for Down to You and Up to Me, the first two books in the series.
Everything For Us picks up not long after the rescue of Marissa, Olivia’s cousin who had been kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity in the previous book, Up to Me. After all the suspense, violence and exposed secrets in the first two Bad Boys books, this conclusion to the story of Cash and Nash Davenport is almost sedate by comparison.
Identity is an ongoing theme in this trilogy, where we were first led to believe that Cash and Nash were twin brothers, half-orphaned by the Russian mobsters who had killed their mother and gotten their father sent to prison for her murder. When we found out that Cash was posing as his dead brother Nash, it was obviously quite a surprise. But then we found out later on that Nash was actually still alive, and ready for revenge against everyone who had ruined his life and destroyed his family. Meanwhile Olivia had fallen for Cash at the same time he was still also posing as Nash, and her cousin Marissa was dating the person she thought was Nash when it was really Cash.
It really isn’t as confusing as it sounds when you try to explain it, but suffice it to say that in this third book, all the identity switching becomes the linchpin for what happens between Marissa and Nash, and how the threat from the Russian mobsters is eventually neutralized once and for all.
Marissa’s problem has always been that she was the rich snooty one who had been groomed by her equally rich and snooty father to think only of what was best for her family’s financial and political aspirations. She treated everyone she considered her inferior with thinly veiled contempt, including her cousin Olivia, with thinly veiled contempt. What Marissa didn’t realize is that the person she thought was Nash was dating her solely as cover so that nobody would suspect he was actually someone else.
Nash has returned to help rescue Marissa and reclaim the life his brother had been living for him over the past seven years. What he didn’t anticipate was that the part of that life he ended up wanting to claim most was Marissa herself. But Nash still has one big secret left unrevealed, one that has the power to end a relationship with Marissa once she knows the full truth.
Although Everything For Us is a satisfying conclusion to the complicated plot involving the Davenport brothers and the Russian mob, it just didn’t have the same driving force behind it for me as much as the previous books in the trilogy. After all the twists and turns that came before it, this conclusion to the story was almost anticlimactic by comparison. It’s as if the first two were the crazy rollercoaster ride and the third was the slow straight glide down to the end of the line. There is a lot of interesting character development for both Marissa and Nash, and their intimate scenes together are smoking hot and full of emotional depth. But the sense of danger was gone, and that made this book just an okay read for me.
Ratings:
Overall: 3
Sensuality level: 3
This review originally appeared at Seductive Musings
Review: Escape From Obsession by Dixie Lynn Dwyer
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review.
I am a regular reader of the “Ménage Everlasting” erotic romances published by Siren Bookstrand, so when I was offered the opportunity to review this new-to-me author, I jumped in with both feet. A MFMM erotic romance featuring three hot and broody military brothers is just the sort of book I love to read, and I had hoped that Dixie Lynn Dwyer’s “Escape from Obsession” would be no exception. Unfortunately for me, what good there was to enjoy in this book was constantly overshadowed by awkward phrasing, excessive repetition and an ending that I found implausible at best.
The story begins several months earlier in New York, when Gia is still Gianna, a young impressionable woman being controlled by her domineering boyfriend, Antonio, who is up to his neck in drug dealing and other major financial wrongdoings. When Antonio attempts to force Gianna to submit sexually to his business partner, Valdere, she realizes she is in a dangerous situation and only manages to escape when another angry business associate crashes into their apartment and the cops show up to drag Antonio off to jail. Gianna moves to Texas, settles in a new job and apartment near her beloved cousin, Teddy, and changes her first name to Gia in an attempt to stay hidden from anyone who might come looking for her there.
Teddy is already in a long term ménage relationship where he shares his wife Deanna with another man. Gia wonders how they can possibly be happy when she is still so horrified that Antonio wanted to give her to Valdere. It’s only when she finally comes out of her self-imposed social exile and joins in the fun at Casper’s, the local sports bar, that she meets a friendly bartender, Garrett McCallister, and realizes that she might be ready to trust a man again. A few days later, she meets Garrett’s brother, Wes, who is the football coach for her cousin’s son Dale, and just as attracted to her as Garrett was. The two brothers then contact their older brother Gunner, a Texas Ranger, once they both realize that Gia might be the one woman they have all hoped to find for a ménage relationship of their own. But Gia is still trapped in her fear of what happened in New York and what might happen again if she lets these men take her as their own.
The McCallister brothers are easily the best part of “Escape from Obsession” but the various ways they are described were also a major frustration for me. We are constantly reminded that they were “commandoes” (author’s spelling) in the “Marine Corp” and that they each have a matching “Royal Commandoes” back tattoo. Although such phrasing kept taking me out of the story, I did enjoy how each of the brothers treated with Gia with patience and love, especially in light of how she was so incredibly afraid to even go out on a real date with any of them. I found Gia’s reactions understandable at first, but as the story went on and on with her continuing to insist that men are pain and that no men could ever be trusted, I got impatient with her refusal to move on and wondered if she’d ever gotten any counseling after her experience in New York.
The other issue I had with “Escape from Obsession” was with the pacing and the plot choices as the story played out. I had a big problem with the moment when Gia decided to finally submit to the McCallister brothers, considering how understandably afraid she was of men attacking her and what had happened to her mere hours before they all had sex together for the first time. But the truly astonishing moment for me came toward the end when all the various threats in Gia’s life converge in a single horrific scene. I found that moment to be so preposterous that I wondered if book length constraints had forced the author’s hand, or if that was the resolution she really intended. At least at the end of it all, we know Gia will be happy and safe with her McCallister brothers, having finally escaped from her own obsession with her unhappy past.
Ratings:
Overall: 2.5
Sensuality level: 4 (MFMM ménage including anal sex, and multiple instances of attempted rape)
This review originally appeared at Romancing Rakes For the Love of Romance
{Michele Review} Always On My Mind by Jill Shalvis
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.
Rating: 5 hearts: Buy it now!
Always On My Mind is the newest entry in the Lucky Harbor small town contemporary series by Jill Shalvis, and a perfect example of why this series stands out in a category filled with so many other excellent competitors. In Always On My Mind, Jill Shalvis employs some of the most familiar romance tropes in such a way that they feel fresh and perfectly chosen to show how the past between its hero and heroine will become their present if they don’t heed the lessons learned this second time around.
Leah Sullivan has returned to her childhood home of Lucky Harbor to help run her grandmother’s bakery while that woman recovers from knee surgery, but doesn’t intend to stay longer than she can help it. In Lucky Harbor, everybody knows everybody else’s business, and the last thing she wants is to be in the middle of all that when her appearance on the reality show competition, Sweet Wars, reaches its final episode.
When Jack Harper finds out that Leah is back in town, he’s not sure if he wants anything to do with her. They had been close friends back when Leah’s family still lived in Lucky Harbor, and only Jack knew how hard her family life had really been. She’d hurt him when she left town and it appeared to him that she’d never really stopped running. Ever since then, Jack had used his dangerous firefighter job as an excuse for never committing to a lasting relationship with anyone. But that didn’t mean that Leah’s return would change anything, no matter what his ideas his mother Dee might have.
It’s clear from how Jack and Leah cautiously circle around each other in public that there’s more to their past than just a close childhood friendship, but it’s only when Leah claims a real relationship with Jack in an attempt to cheer up Dee that all hell breaks loose. The fake/pretend relationship romance trope is one of my favorites, and the way Jill Shalvis executes it in this story is something I haven’t seen very often. Because for both Jack and Leah, pretending they are dating and in love is genuinely painful, and it stirs up emotions that they both had thought were buried for good.
The town of Lucky Harbor with all its familiar characters and goings-on is the perfect setting for Jack and Leah’s story, providing a genuine sense of why each of them made the life choices which first kept them apart and now might finally bring them back together for good. But what I loved best about Always On My Mind was how Jill Shalvis neatly side-stepped the various plot devices that might have been used by a less sure-handed writer. Just because we all know there will be a Happily Ever After ending doesn’t mean that the route there has to be simplistic or obvious. There were several points during the book where I thought something specific was definitely going to happen as the various subplots wound down, yet I was happy to be wrong every time.
It’s rare for a writer with a long-running series to hit it out of the park every single time. But Jill Shalvis has done exactly that with Always On My Mind. I highly recommend it to both longtime fans of the series and new readers, as it’s now officially my favorite Lucky Harbor book.
Favorite Quote:
Leah stopped at the foot of the stage and looked up at Jack. “I was wrong,” she said.
Jack curled a hand around his ear, like he hadn’t caught her words.
“I was wrong,” she repeated.
“Oh, I heard you.” He smiled. “I just like the sound of the words on your lips.”
The full version of this review can be found at Night Owl Reviews:
Review: Too Hot to Touch by Samantha Cayto
Zoe needs to hire a temporary dishwasher for her Greek diner until her regular guy recovers from a broken arm. Sean needs a temporary job until he begins professional training for a full-time career as a truck mechanic. “Too Hot to Touch” is a short but thoroughly enjoyable story about how these two people discover first lust, then love, in each other’s arms.
This review originally appeared at Book Thingo:
Marriage Under the Mistletoe by Helen Lacey
Marriage Under The Mistletoe is the second book in Helen Lacey’s Crystal Point series for the Harlequin Special Edition line, and although this was a new author and series for me, I had no issues following the story of Evie and Scott without having read the previous book. (Kat’s note: In Australia, the book is published under the Blush line.)
Evie Dunn is the sensible sister of the Preston family, the one whom others depend upon even as she shoulders the responsibility for taking care of herself and her only son, Trevor, after the tragic death of her husband, Gordon, ten years earlier. Although she believes herself content with keeping her bed and breakfast running smoothly while attempting to be both mother and father to Trevor, the regret of burying her sexual side along with her husband does manage to poke its pointed head up now again.
That poke is never so fierce as when she first lays eyes on Scott Jones, the incredibly sexy American firefighter that she agreed to pick up at an airport several hours away from Crystal Point, and the younger brother of her soon-to-be sister-in-law. Scott is also several years younger than Evie, and the age difference makes her think that any attraction between them couldn’t possibly be mutual. But Evie’s assumption is dead wrong, as they both discover all too soon. Scott is visiting for the next three weeks to attend his sister’s Christmas Eve wedding to Evie’s brother, staying only until the New Year. How could there possibly be anything other than heartbreak if Evie and Scott give in to their heated attraction?
Although I enjoy reading romance in all its variations and genres, there is something special about the perfectly composed category romance. You know as a reader what you’re in for with the standard tropes (long distance lovers, older woman/younger man, and so on) but you also know that when you’re in the hands of a talented author, the resulting story will be an unique joy for you to savour. That’s how I felt about Helen Lacey and Marriage Under The Mistletoe.
All the obstacles in the path of Evie and Scott’s HEA seemed insurmountable at first, and watching how Lacey worked to show how each could be confronted and conquered was both marvelous and completely believable in the context of the story. The primary setting of Dunn Inn, Evie’s B&B, was an especially great way to frame the interactions between the hero and heroine as well as the supporting cast of characters, including the couple’s extended families, Evie’s teenage son and the inn’s various guests. It made me wish I could stay in such a warm and welcoming place, one that lent itself to romances both new and old.
YAY OR NAY?
In Marriage Under The Mistletoe Lacey gives us everything we could hope for in a traditional contemporary category romance, and more. I’ll be adding her Crystal Point series to my TBR list for when I want a few quiet hours to experience the joy of falling in love all over again.
This review originally appeared at Seductive Musings:
Review: Not Until You by Roni Loren
Copies of all eight parts of this book were provided to me by the publisher for an honest review.
Although this is not the first eserial I’ve read, it will be the first one I’ve formally reviewed. With that in mind, this review will consist of a short recap and critique for each of the 8 parts which make up Not Until You, and then a final review for the overall story.
Cela Medina isn’t your average 24 year old woman, not by a long shot. She’s just finished her doctorate in Veterinary Medicine, graduating with flying colors from Dallas University. And thanks to her overprotective family and seven long years of graduate school that barely left her time to sleep, she’s completely inexperienced in the ways of the adult world, especially when it comes to men. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t interested in learning more, and when she decides to seize an opportunity to be with her two hot male neighbors, Cela gets more than she bargained for.
Ian Foster is the self-made millionaire and sometime Dom who we met in “Still Into You” when he had hoped to start a BDSM relationship with Jace’s little sister, Leila, who was taking a break from her marriage but ultimately chose her husband, Seth, after they both realized they wanted to make things work. In “Not Until You Dare” we know him as Foster, Cela’s next door neighbor who shares an apartment with Pike, a laid back fun loving musician who is as much an opposite personality to Ian as you could possibly imagine. Their friendship provides a welcome counterpoint to the intensity of the relationship that progresses slowly between Foster and Cela throughout the story.
===========================
Not Until You: Part I – Not Until You Dare
In “Not Until You Dare” we get to see how Cela has spent her whole life doing everything her family wanted and had never questioned it, not until she was done with school, looked up and realized that she’d never done one thing fun for herself. She’s heard both her hot guy neighbors having loud sex with women they’ve brought home, and when they offer her the chance to experience it for herself, she decides to make this the one fun thing she’ll do before going home to join her father’s practice and slide back into the good family girl mold for the rest of her life.
I was a big fan of Ian Foster in “Still Into You” and happy to see him get his own story. Despite all her academic achievement, Cela was so sheltered that she almost read more as someone still in her teens, and that grated on me a bit at first. But I loved how Foster and Pike were able to finesse her into admitting all the things she’d never gotten to do, with an eye towards helping her make them happen. “Not Until You Dare is a great introduction to the story and had me looking forward to finding out exactly how their night together was going to play out.
“Not Until You” alternates between two points of view: Cela’s first person and Foster’s third person. The switching back and forth works well for the most part, although I would have preferred first person for Foster as well.
Ratings for Part 1:
Overall: 4
Sensuality level: 4 (no actual sex, just discussion and fantasy thoughts)
Not Until You Part II: Not Until You Risk
After hours of dancing wildly between Foster and Pike at a local nightclub, Cela agrees to go to a hotel with them both, still not quite sure she hasn’t just passed out from all the tequila they had drunk together while filling out her Never Have I Ever list. Foster’s Dominant nature immediately appeals to Cela, and keeps her from panicking as he and Pike give Cela a night none of them will ever forget.
Cela’s ability to submit so completely and quickly drives Foster wild, despite her air of innocence and obvious inexperience. But then he realizes there is one more thing she left off her Never Have I Ever list, and it’s the biggest one of all.
The sexual interplay between Cela, Foster and Pike is a delight to read and the contrast of the two men’s personalities is never more obvious than when they are teaming up to pleasure Cela. But Foster’s reaction when he discovers the extent of Cela’s innocence was frustrating for me to read, even though it did fit in to his belief in how to treat women in and out of bed. The fact that Cela insists that it was all just a one time fantasy fling doesn’t ease his discomfort, and Part 2 ends with that uncertainty between the two of them.
Ratings for Part 2:
Overall: 4
Sensuality level: 4 (M/F/M foreplay, light BDSM)
Not Until You Part III: Not Until You Crave
When Cela, Foster and Pike return from the hotel, they have to deal once again with the real world, which includes Cela’s overprotective older brother, Andre, and Foster’s real concern that what he needs from Cela may be more than she can give. I hadn’t realized until now that Andre is actually one of Jace’s two lovers who we met in “Melt Into You”, the second book in this series. He’s obviously never shared the true nature of his relationship with anyone in his family, but lets Cela know he will respect her decisions even though he’s worried about her well-being. He also warns Foster separately that he had better not mess around with his baby sister.
In Part 3 we also get to see more about Foster the businessman, who made it his life’s work to track down missing children after losing his own little sister to a kidnapper when he was just a kid himself. Both Cela and Foster try to avoid each other, but the pull between them is too great to resist and late-night texting ultimately turns into another sexual encounter which seems like another goodbye, this time for real. Eventually, Foster opens up to Cela about BDSM, the Ranch and his sexual needs as a Dominant, hoping this will scare her off once and for all. She wants to convince him that this is the perfect opportunity for a short term fling since she’s leaving town soon. But Foster is done with flings and one night stands. He wants a real commitment and he’s not willing to settle for less, so it’s goodbye once again as Part 3 ends.
I have to say that the whole hello again / goodbye again dynamic between Cela and Foster was starting to wear on me a bit, especially since they did it so often just in this one part of the story. But by this point, I liked the characters more than their actions, and was still curious to see how they would manage to resolve their differences yet again.
Ratings for Part 3:
Overall: 3
Sensuality level: 4
Not Until You Part IV: Not Until You Trust
Cela is starting to reconsider her plans to go back home and work for her father. The veterinary clinic where she’s been working part-time would love to have her stay, but she’s not sure what would keep her there now that Foster is apparently out of her life for good. Pike’s visit to the clinic is a welcome distraction and with Foster out of town, she’s more than willing to help Pike get settled in his apartment with the dog he decides to adopt. The moment when Foster arrives home unexpectedly to find Cela attempting to instruct Pike on how to show dominance over the recalcitrant dog is one of the funniest scenes based on gross misunderstanding that I’ve read in quite some time, and shows that Foster is not only still totally hung up on Cela but that she is more than ready to take what he’s ready to give her. And yet after another amazing night of sexual dominance and submission, this time it’s Cela who walks away, afraid of what she’s done and might do in the future.
Meanwhile all the plans that have been made regarding Cela’s future are still in motion, as her father announces he’s bought a house for her that’s right across the street from her parents. When she visits Andre at the loft he shares with Jace and Evan, she discovers the true nature of their triad relationship that he has hidden from his entire family. She also has an illuminating discussion with Jace’s brother, Wyatt, about her planned future in the family business. His experienced perspective helps her reconsider her decision to go along with what her family wants, and she decides that what she really wants is Foster. That’s when she blackmails Andre into taking her to the Ranch to confront Foster in his element and let him know she can stay as long as he wants her.
Another round of Cela and Foster coming together and splitting apart, and I’m wondering if the serial format makes this repetitive behavior more or less annoying. And yet, because I’m a sucker for true love and the Happily Ever After, I’m still ready to find out what’s going to happen next and how Foster will handle Cela confronting him on his home turf.
Ratings for Part 4:
Overall: 4
Sensuality level: 4
Not Until You Part V: Not Until You Beg
Cela is finally ready to take control of her present and future and she’s not going to let her brother or anyone else stand in her way. Foster is determined to try to move on from Cela, if he can just find the right submissive. What he doesn’t realize is that the scene that was arranged for him by Grant, the Ranch’s owner, is with the woman he keeps seeing in every other submissive with whom he tries to forget her. She knows it’s a huge gamble, but the possible payoff for both of them is worth all the risk. Foster wants a committed D/s relationship and that’s what Cela wants to give him. Whether or not they can succeed remains to be seen.
This was my favorite part of the story up to this point, as we finally get to see Foster and Cela working on becoming a real couple in the BDSM lifestyle. Foster works to train her as he would any other woman new to submission and Cela works on learning to trust in Foster and in her own strength and resilience. But the pressure from home and her family isn’t going away anytime soon, and Cela worries that Foster’s protective instincts aren’t really any different than her own family trying to run her life for her.
At least this part didn’t end with one or both of them pushing away the other, and that was a nice change. Instead we are left Foster promising Cela his own brand of punishment for lying to him about not having told her family that she wasn’t going to come home to stay after all. This was the best type of serial cliffhanger – one where we anticipate something really good about to happen instead of wondering why they were apart again when it’s clear it only makes them miserable.
Ratings for Part 5:
Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 4 (voyeurism, public BDSM play
Not Until You Part VI: Not Until You Surrender
Cela discovers that she hurt Foster when she lied to him, because it made him believe she wasn’t taking him or their new relationship seriously. She also seems to understand that his concern for her safety and well-being was genuine and not a way to control her the way her father has up until now. Yet when Foster attempts to mark her as his by requesting she wear one of the location tracking ankle bracelets made by his company, she reverts to her original worry that he’s trying to control her life just like her father and asks him for more time to consider his request. Foster, who is equally worried that she’s still not ready for his type of relationship, immediately assumes she’s done with him and has her escorted out of the building. The woman who arrives only moments later asking for Ian (!) confirms Cela’s belief that it’s really all over this time. When Cela finds out the next day that there’s no job available for her at the local clinic after all, she decides that changing her life wasn’t meant to be and prepares to return to the bosom of her loving family with all her future already planned out for her.
For me this was the most frustrating part of the story, not just because they keep making the same mistakes over and over again, but because they actually seem to learn why they are wrong, and then still do the same damn thing again. I really wanted to smack Foster more than Cela this time, as he went right to “oh you don’t love me, so you should leave and I’ll call my reliable sex buddy for comfort” with almost lightning speed. I would have liked to see her stick around and fight for him, but she’s so used to giving in to what her family wants that when it seems like her only option, it makes sense that she would take it. I don’t know how Roni Loren is going to get them back together yet again in a way that doesn’t seem completely insane, but I’m not ready to give up on Foster and Cela just yet.
Ratings for Part 6:
Overall: 3.5
Sensuality level: 4 (outdoor nudity and bondage)
Not Until You Part VII: Not Until You Believe
When Foster arrives from his out of town trip, he’s shocked to find Cela has moved back home, Pike attempts to school him on just how badly he’s messed things up with Cela and Foster realizes that he needs to find her and try to set things right. Meanwhile Cela is discovering that her planned out life is just as lonely and frustrating as she’d anticipated when she’d originally tried to rebel against her father’s plans. Her father refuses to consider any medical decisions but his own, and she might as well be living in her old room at home for all the independence she has in her aunt’s old house across the street. She tries to forget Foster by going out with Michael, a local dentist whom she had briefly dated in high school, but there’s just no spark between them.
When Cela’s longing for Foster becomes too much to bear, she puts on the HomeSafe ankle bracelet that Foster had given her as a reminder of him. Unbeknownst to her, this activates its tracking mechanism, which provides the impetus Foster needs to finally move to claim what is his. But Cela’s father isn’t going to let her go anywhere with him without a fight.
It’s both ironic and clever that the tracking device that had seemingly split Cela and Foster up for good was now the catalyst for bringing them back together again. Of course they were never going to be happy apart, but there was no way Cela was going to make the first move again after being hurt so badly by Foster’s ham-handed response the last time around. But this time neither one will be denied and when Cela stands up to her father on Foster’s behalf and Foster grovels to her most sincerely in return, it almost makes all the previous shenanigans between them worthwhile. All that’s left now is the triumphant finale where Foster and Cela get to have their happy ending, and I’m more than ready to get there.
Ratings for Part 7:
Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 3
Not Until You Part VIII: Not Until You Love
After all the misunderstandings and back and forth drama throughout this story, this is where it all comes to its final fruition. Foster has declared his love for Cela and she is almost ready to do the same… when the bottom drops out of Foster’s world. The goal he’s worked toward his whole life – finding out what happened to his kidnapped sister – is suddenly achieved, and that knowledge devastates him completely. When he retreats from everyone and everything, it takes Cela’s complete submission and unconditional love to pull him back from the edge of utter despair.
This was the payoff I was hoping for at the end of this story, where both Cela and Foster finally truly learn from the mistakes they’ve made along the way and grow into the full loving relationship that they both realize they can only find with each other. It’s a beautifully written and heartfelt conclusion with all the emotion and passion that comes from a love so hard won and richly deserved.
Ratings for Part 8:
Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 4 (more intense BDSM including bondage, flogging and anal sex)
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In conclusion, I enjoyed reading “Not Until You” and I think the serial format worked well for the story that Roni Loren wanted to tell. I definitely felt the pain of having to wait for each part to become available, but was happy to see that each one had its own individual story arc, as opposed to just cutting off the story when a particular page count had been reached. It was worth all the waiting to get to see Foster and Cela find happiness and I’m glad this format was available for readers to get their story. Roni Loren has outdone herself with “Not Until You” and the included excerpts from “Caught Up In You”, promise an equally great time to come in our next visit to the world of The Ranch.
Ratings (full story):
Overall: 4.5
Sensuality Level: 4
