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Review: Fall From India Place by Samantha Young

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

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ratings:

Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 3

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Review: On The Way Home by Skye Warren

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On the Way HomeOn the Way Home by Skye Warren

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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

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

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

Ratings:

Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 3.5

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Review: Best Erotic Romance 2014, ed. Kristina Wright

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Best Erotic Romance 2014Best Erotic Romance 2014 by Kristina Wright

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

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

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

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

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Review: Kept – An Erotic Anthology

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KeptKept by Sorcha Black
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

Overall, Kept was an entertaining read, and all of the stories were memorable. I’d recommend it to anyone who prefers their PNR/SF romance with a capture fantasy twist.
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Intimidator (Preyfinders #2) by Cari Silverwood

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Intimidator (Preyfinders, #2)Intimidator by Cari Silverwood
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

3.5 stars

A copy of this book was provided by the author for an honest review at Night Owl Reviews

Although I enjoyed the Precious Sacrifice novella, I was less taken with this sequel. I enjoyed the premise of how a Preyfinder acquires his target, and the backstory of how Willow and Ally came to be near-recluses in their grandmother’s house in the middle of a neighborhood they both should have left behind years before. But the level of violence was quite a bit higher in Intimidator than it was in the previous story, most likely due to the comparably greater length, and I don’t have a particularly strong stomach for such things. The scenes with the alien enemy’s “nerve chewers” were especially distasteful for me, and I actually forced myself to skim through them, as much as I hated missing out on likely important plot points, especially near the end of the book. But if you have a greater tolerance for this type of thing, then it shouldn’t affect your appreciation of Intimidator. It will be interesting to see where this series goes next. I wonder how long the inevitable story between Talia and Brask will be teased out, or if they’ll finally get their own story in the next book.

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Review: Naughty Bits Part II: The Training Session by Joey W. Hill

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Naughty Bits Part II: The Training SessionNaughty Bits Part II: The Training Session by Joey W. Hill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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

Wow. After I finished reading Part 1, I knew when Logan and Madison’s first real scene together was going to be amazing, but THE TRAINING SESSION blew me away. I think it helped Madison to have Troy there as a buffer while she got used to seeing Logan in his true element as a confident and unforgiving Dominant. The first quarter of Part 2 is this training session where Troy learns how to control his reaction to what he receives from both Logan and Madison, although by the end it wasn’t clear where Troy’s training stopped and Madison’s started. When the scene is over, Madison realizes she can’t go back to the person she was before. Not just in terms of her sexual nature, but in the way she approaches life as a whole.

As Madison lets go of all her old rules and expectations, she begins to relax more within herself, starting to feel more liberated even as she grows closer to Logan. This freedom to embrace her true nature without fear immediately improves her interactions with customers who come into the Naughty Bits shop. Not only does her new approach result in better sales, but more importantly, she can now sell customers what they really need, even when they don’t know what that is when they first walk in. Madison’s new open attitude also gives her the courage to walk right into Logan’s hardware store next door to request a second date. Logan assures her there will be no sex, but by the end of their first evening alone, there will be no question about what is yet to come. For the only rule Madison has now is what her sister said in her last letter: Trust Logan.

Every expectation I had for this next installment was more than fulfilled, as I loved seeing Madison finally take the necessary steps to liberate herself from all the bad memories and inhibitions that had held her back her whole life. Not only does she learn to stop fearing what she feels, but in the process, she learns to be the person that her shop customers need to guide them toward their own emotional and sexual liberation. Each scene between Madison and Logan showed exactly how he is slowly leading her to trust both herself and him to always take care of her completely. As for me, I will continue to trust Joey W. Hill that each future installment of NAUGHTY BITS will be just as compelling as the previous ones.

Ratings:

Overall: 5 stars
Sensuality level: 4.5 (multiple BDSM scenes with 2 and 3 people, including oral sex and anal play)

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Review: Since I Saw You by Beth Kery

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Since I Saw You (Because You Are Mine, #4)Since I Saw You by Beth Kery

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

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

This review may contain spoilers for previous books in the Because You Are Mine series. You can read this book as a standalone, but I believe you’ll enjoy it more if you’ve read the other books first.

When I found out there would be one more book in Beth Kery’s Because You Are Mine series, I wondered if it could live up to the others, especially now that Ian and Francesca had finally gotten their HEA. But I should have known Ian Noble’s brother Kam would have no problem bringing the same intensity to his romance with Ian’s coolly efficient right-hand woman that I’d come to expect in this series, and not just because he’s practically his half-brother’s double. For despite all the similarities between Ian Noble and Kam Reardon, Kam is most definitely his own man, and that’s what makes him irresistible to Lin and to this reader as SINCE I SAW YOU brings this wonderful series to a satisfying close.

My impression of Kam in the previous book, BECAUSE WE BELONG, was that of a man who didn’t give a damn about what anyone thought of him. After all, he already shared a common blood bond with his two half-brothers, Ian and Lucien, thanks to the criminally insane father. But unlike Ian and Lucien, Kam had been in direct contact for most of his life with the evil man who’d spawned the three half-brothers and many more like them. Only by appearing to reject his own beloved mother could Kam protect her from that man’s retribution, but in the process, Kam began to doubt his own ability to love and protect anyone else in his life. There had been another woman he’d thought loved him for himself, but she’d ultimately let him down. So when Kam first spots Lin Soong walking toward him for a prearranged business meeting in SINCE I SAW YOU, he has remind himself no woman like her would ever want a life with him, even as he knows he must get this woman in his bed as soon as possible. But as Lin becomes an all-too-essential part of his new life in Chicago, can Kam keep himself from crossing the line between business and love?

Unlike Kam, Lin has spent her entire life keeping her own wants and desires locked safely away where they can never derail her successful career and devotion to Ian Noble, the only man she ever thought she wanted. Lin already knew even before Ian had found love with Francesca that he’d never be more to her than her boss and friend. But when she sees Kam Reardon for the first time, his physical resemblance to the man she can never have nearly takes her breath away. There are other similarities in personality and temperament, but it’s Kam, not Ian, who will stop at nothing to make Lin his own. Now Lin has to decide if it’s worth blowing up her carefully constructed life for someone who is either the best or worst thing that has ever happened to her.

Lin had been portrayed throughout the series as an emotionless superhuman, so it was gratifying to see her reactions to Kam as he quickly shook her sense of self down to its foundation. Even as she attempts to “civilize” him, he continues to expose the wildness she’s spent a lifetime keeping locked away. The passionate result of their physical alliance soon terrifies them both. But as they realize just how similar they really are, it’s trust that Lin and Kam need to find with each other, for only then can love survive whatever happens next.

What I loved the most about SINCE I SAW YOU was how the romance between Lin and Kam was the driving factor for the entire story, even as the various external pressures loomed large in the background. After the rollercoaster suspense of the previous book (which I did enjoy immensely), it was a relief to discover that what was most important in this book was learning more about what motivated both Kam and Lin in their lives up to the point when they first saw each other, and how they needed to trust their feelings for each other now over what had hurt them both in the past. Their understandable concerns about a lasting commitment may have led to the Big Misunderstanding that nearly split them apart, but it made sense in what had been slowly revealed during the story. Best of all, both Kam and Lin were able to realize their mistake in time to produce a beautiful scene of mutual apology leading to their own satisfying HEA.

SINCE I SAW YOU is a captivating example of a romance between driven personalities from different worlds who share a common goal of success in both business and love. It was a beautiful conclusion to one of my favorite recent series, and my only regret was that it had to end.

Ratings:

Overall: 4.5
Sensuality level: 4 (multiple D/s scenes with main characters including semi-public sex, anal sex, and bondage)

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Review: Giving In by Maya Banks

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Giving In (Surrender Trilogy, #2)Giving In by Maya Banks

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

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

This review may contain spoilers for LETTING GO, book 1 in the Surrender trilogy. You can read GIVING IN as a standalone, but I believe you’ll enjoy it more if you’ve read the previous book first.

GIVING IN continues the story of a group of friends and family devastated by the untimely death of Carson Breckenridge and how their lives have changed since then. In the previous book, we saw Carson’s best friend finally acknowledge his long-suppressed feelings for Carson’s widow after three long years of mourning. Here in GIVING IN, Jensen Tucker, the man who replaced Carson as partner in his successful management consultant firm seeks to rescue Carson’s still-grieving sister from the emotional black hole she’s been in for most of her life. What neither Jensen nor Kylie could have anticipated was that Jensen needed rescuing just as much as Kylie, and that together they would find the path toward real healing and true love.

Kylie Breckenridge and her beloved older brother Carson had already survived a horrific childhood, thanks to his success at planning their escape and unwavering determination to keep them both alive. But Carson is gone, and Kylie feels abandoned all over again. Now there’s no one who can understand what she went through and why she can’t bring herself to live the full and happy life he’d always wanted for her. What Kylie doesn’t realize is that there is someone who senses what she feels and what she really needs, and it’s the one person who makes her angry enough to fight for what she wants, even as she resists him every step of the way. That person is Jensen Tucker.

Jensen may have only recently arrived in Kylie’s world, but he can already see that letting her continue to drift through life would be the same terrible mistake that her late brother and their friends have already made. Now Jensen is determined not only to drag Kylie out from behind her walls of self-protection, but to seek her complete emotional surrender to him as the only man who can protect her from everything she’s been hiding from for much too long.

Although I’m a big fan of how Maya Banks incorporates BDSM into many of her other books, including LETTING GO, it was just as satisfying to see GIVING IN focus more on the non-physical aspects of Dominance and submission, and how one can provide the emotional grounding for the other, even when the roles are switched. Jensen is willing to do just about anything to prove to Kylie that he can be trusted unconditionally, including suppressing his innate desire to dominate her. But Jensen’s need to be Kylie’s protector is tangled up in the damage from his own violent childhood from which he’s never completely recovered. When this unresolved trauma triggers Jensen into doing the one thing he’d promised Kylie would never happen, his heartbreaking decision to keep her safe becomes the catalyst for her to finally give him the surrender they both need for a genuinely happily ever after together.

GIVING IN is a remarkable story of two damaged souls who find their perfect counterpoint in each other. It never flinches from showing the long-term effects of domestic violence and child abuse while always keeping the delicate romance between its hero and heroine front and center. Up next is TAKING IT ALL, and it will finally address all the problems we’ve seen between Chessie and Tate caused by his repeated work-related absences. As sad I as I’ll be to see the Surrender trilogy end, I still can’t wait to read it.

Ratings:
Overall: 4.5 stars
Sensuality level: 3.5

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Review: Hard Time by Cara McKenna

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Hard TimeHard Time by Cara McKenna

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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

In a landscape filled with billionaire Doms and their blushing virgin submissives, HARD TIME is a refreshing alternative, thanks to Cara McKenna’s unerring ability to take any guy in an otherwise completely undesirable situation and transform him into a legitimate romance hero. This time the hero is a convicted felon and his heroine is the town librarian working part-time at the medium security prison where the hero has been locked up for nearly beating another man to death.
Annie Goodhouse had a comfortable middle-class life she took for granted until the day when her worthless boyfriend crossed the line into abuse, puncturing her eardrum with a smack to the head when he was drunk and she was convenient. Her self-recrimination at letting it happen spurred her to get as far away from her ex as possible. And there isn’t a place farther both in distance and existence than the cold and impoverished town of Darren, Michigan.
Now years and miles away from her old life, Annie has given up on men and sex with them, although she feels the loss now and then. The last place she expected to rekindle her desire was at the Cousins Correctional Facility on her first day as its new part-time librarian. But there was something different about Prisoner 802267. In a room of frightening faces, he was an irresistible flame and she was the moth who should have known better. Annie can’t help being drawn to him, not only because of his good looks and polite behavior, but because as a prisoner, he won’t be able to control her in the way a free man could. But this was someone who had not only tried to kill another person, but still insisted that given the same situation, he’d do it again. So why is Annie even considering letting him into her head and her heart?
After nearly five years behind bars, Eric Collier is ready to stop being a number and start being a better man, one who deserves a woman like Annie. His single-minded pursuit of her is clearly ill-advised and incredibly risky for them both. Still, Eric’s ten year prison sentence ensures that they can never exchange more than heartfelt letters and furtive glances. But when Eric receives an early parole, he and Annie must learn how to begin and sustain a real relationship on the outside. As they deal with all the obstacles between them and happiness, they are soon confronted with the same forces which sent to Eric to prison before, now threatening to send him back. It’s up to Annie to convince Eric not to make the same mistake twice, even if it means losing him for good.
What I loved the most about HARD TIME was how Cara McKenna immediately set up my anticipation for what would happen and then made me believe that it could. The opening list of the prison’s rules of behavior became a framing device for Annie’s descent into madness as she violated nearly all of them in pursuit of her passion for Eric. And in this book, Cara McKenna also somehow turned the simple act of selecting clothes to wear into an erotic experience. Eric is no Dom, but his ability to dominate Annie with her full and ongoing consent just by asking her to wear a specific color or item of clothing was more sexually explicit for me than a hardcore BDSM scene. McKenna’s writing here is just that good.
Although I was happy to be back in the same world as McKenna’s previous book, AFTER HOURS, I didn’t mind not having an update on the hero and heroine from that book. I was completely caught up in the illicit nature of Annie and Eric’s secret romance behind bars, and the major adjustments they had to make once they were able to openly acknowledge their love. Cara McKenna books are always a treat for me, but this one was so lyrical, so emotional, so real, that I couldn’t put it down for more than a few minutes at a time.
Books like HARD TIME are why I make a point of not throwing around 5 star reviews for every book I love. Because I want it to mean something when I do. Cara McKenna’s HARD TIME is a five star read in every possible way, and it will be near or at the top of my Best Reads of 2014 by year’s end.

Ratings:

Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 3.5

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