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Review: Naughty Bits Part III: Bound to Please by Joey W. Hill

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Naughty Bits Part III Bound to PleaseNaughty Bits Part III Bound to Please 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 Seductive Musings.

So much happened in this penultimate installment of NAUGHTY BITS that it’s hard to know what to cover in this review. Madison has become more comfortable working in the shop and being around Logan, yet there’s still the nagging feeling that she’s not quite ready to submit completely to either one. Now that the reality that her sister Alice isn’t ever coming back has finally sunk in, Madison is ready to move past all her previous failed relationships toward a new life where she embraces the submissive self she’s denied for all these years. But first, she needs to try just one last thing, one more variation that will require the full cooperation of Troy, Mistress Slade, and Logan himself. Because how can Madison be entirely sure she should be Logan’s submissive if she hasn’t tried being a Domme first?

Logan must be the most patient man that ever lived, for he never hesitates to do everything Madison needs to give her the confidence to choose him as he has already chosen her, as she was already chosen for him by Alice. That’s really what BOUND TO PLEASE is all about: showing the reader the value of choice and full consent, both by demonstrating it in its full flower, and also by proving its innate value when we see another relationship entirely absent of consent. It’s an essential lesson for both Madison and the reader, and provides the sense of security required for both Madison and Logan to take another step closer to the happy ending waiting for them in the final installment. Their HEA may be inevitable, but it won’t be a sure thing until it finally arrives. And after these first three fantastic chapters of NAUGHTY BITS, Part IV is sure to be just as amazing.

Ratings:

Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ratings:

Overall: 3
Sensuality level: 3

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Review: Fall From India Place by Samantha Young

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

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ratings:

Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 3

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Review: 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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Review: Naughty Bits, Part I: The Lingerie Shop by Joey W. Hill

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Naughty Bits, Part I: The Lingerie Shop (Naughty Bits #1)Naughty Bits, Part I: The Lingerie Shop by Joey W. Hill

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.

Serial novels have been a popular trend in romance for a while now, and frankly, it’s one I’ve grown tired of. These days I’m limiting myself to serials written by my favorite authors, and with no more than five parts. NAUGHTY BITS qualifies on both counts, although I’ll admit I would probably waive the five part rule for Joey W. Hill. She’s one of my all-time favorite writers of contemporary BDSM erotic romance, and this first installment, THE LINGERIE SHOP, has already assured me that her talent for plot and character development will lend itself well to this new format.

As you might expect, most of THE LINGERIE SHOP is setting up the premise for why our heroine finds herself running her late sister’s sex boutique in Charlotte instead of being back in Boston at her boring but safe finance job. Madison and her sister Alice had exceptionally close until the day Alice pushed too hard about Madison’s sex life (or lack of one) and Madison responded by moving away and avoiding all contact. It took Alice’s terminal illness and subsequent death to force Madison back to Charlotte and the shop she’d always mocked. Now all Madison has is the store, her memories and her regrets. But Alice’s bequest extends beyond the building and its contents. She’s also made sure that Madison will finally find sexual submission with a man who can make it all happen. It’s now up to Madison to decide if she’s ready to finally accept the gift her sister always wanted her to have.

The man that Alice has found for Madison is Logan Scott: hardware store owner, woodworker, and sexual Dominant. Even before Madison knows who Logan is and what he will mean to her, she’s mesmerized by his looks and demeanor. She knows he represents what she’s always both wanted and feared. Logan knows Madison been too afraid to embrace her submissive desires, but that the decision must be hers, and hers alone. All he can do is point her in the right direction and hope that he can earn her trust along the way.

In THE LINGERIE SHOP, we see how Madison had always been threatened by Alice’s embrace of her own sexuality, even though Alice was right about why the men in Madison’s life had never measured up. We also see how Logan had fit into Alice’s life and why he is the perfect man to help Madison embrace her hidden self. By the time we reach the end of this first part of NAUGHTY BITS, we have a good idea of how our heroine got here and what our hero has to do to make her his by the end of the final installment.

What I loved best about THE LINGERIE SHOP was how it neatly avoided the problems that have made me burned out on serial novels in the first place. So many of the serials I’ve read have consisted of a relatively simple plot, doled out in tiny portions that either end on an insane cliffhanger, or at what appears to be a predetermined page length, regardless of where the story is at that point. But THE LINGERIE SHOP has absolutely none of these problems. First of all, it’s well over a hundred pages, qualifying as a novella in its own right. And it ends at a logical stopping point, after Madison has used Logan’s offering of the erotic cards and handcuffs, and sets the stage for THE TRAINING SESSION, Part 2 of NAUGHTY BITS. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Ratings:

Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 3.5 (several BDSM-related discussions, brief descriptions of BDSM club activity, heroine’s solo sexual activity and related thoughts/dreams)<

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Review: Betting On You by Sydney Landon

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

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ratings:

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

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Review: Unbound by Cara McKenna

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UnboundUnbound by Cara McKenna

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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

In a genre filled with dominant billionaire alpha heroes, Cara McKenna’s UNBOUND bucks the current trend with one of the most wonderfully developed beta heroes I’ve ever read and a fully realized heroine more than capable of giving him exactly what he needs, even at possible cost to her own future happiness.

Merry’s life has been turned upside down by the death of her beloved mother and her own dramatic weight loss. Not knowing what to do next, she decides that a solo hike through her mother’s home country of Scotland will be an excellent way to make a break between the old and the new, and perhaps come to some conclusions about her future. Everything is going great until Merry drinks the wrong sort of water and in her weakened state, literally stumbles across the cottage in the middle of nowhere where Rob is hiding from the world.

Rob has a whole list of very good reasons why he’s deliberately isolated himself from everything and everyone, and those reasons don’t go away just because a nosy and overly talkative young lass from America can’t leave him be. But Merry likes his looks and demeanor, and is determined to discover why such a soft spoken and good looking man would want to be a hermit. As their mutual curiosity soon grows into desire, it’s not certain whether Rob and Merry are prepared to handle the aftermath when all the secrets he’d hoped were buried forever begin to emerge.

I’m not sure how I can discuss how much I loved this book without sounding like the worst sort of fangirl. Cara McKenna is near the top of my auto-buy list and when I found out she was writing the story of a beta hero who was also a hermit, I knew this was a story I needed to read. One of the things I loved about UNBOUND was that although Merry’s extreme weight loss was part of the motivation for her trek through Scotland, it wasn’t a major focal point in the book, as so often happens with this type of character development. Compared to Rob, Merry is actually in a good place emotionally, which is how she’s able to recognize Rob’s melancholy and help him get past his sense of shame in confronting his deepest desires. It’s Rob who ultimately makes this a five star read for me, as Cara McKenna slowly uncovers why he needed to hide and how Merry helps him see that it’s time to embrace civilization — and love — once again. Their love story is both passionate and poignant, and the ending made me cry. UNBOUND is a perfect example of why Cara McKenna continues to be one of the best writers working in any genre today.

Ratings:

Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 4 (D/s role play including light bondage and verbal humiliation)

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Review: The Training by Tara Sue Me

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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)

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Review: Covet by Tracey Garvis-Graves

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Covet

This review originally appeared at Seductive Musings

Review: Covet by Tracey Garvis-Graves

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

I was a big fan of Tracey Garvis-Graves’ debut romance On The Island so when I saw she was writing a new book that wasn’t strictly romance, I wondered if it would be just as good a read. The first chapter of Covet was included as a bonus in Uncharted, the follow-up novella to On The Island, and from the moment I read the first page, I was hooked. But I could not have anticipated just how much of an emotional read Covet would be once I had the opportunity to read the whole book.

I’m not ashamed to admit it: Covet didn’t just make me cry, it made me weep so uncontrollably that my husband kept trying to comfort me as I continued to read. Even now, it’s been weeks since I finished reading it, and I’m still starting to get all welled up again. This doesn’t mean that Covet will or should affect anyone else like that, but I’m telling you so you know what you might expect if the story of Claire and the two men she loves gets to you in the same way.

Claire Canton had a marriage and family so picture perfect that even their closest friends were envious. But now she is clinging to that life by her fingernails as the weight of her loneliness drags her ever downward. Her husband, Chris, had his whole identity wrapped up in being the family provider and as long as he was working, they were happy. When the bad economy finally reached his company and he spent the next 18 months unemployed, it was only by Claire’s determination and love that they managed to keep the family together and solvent, while she begged and threatened Chris in an attempt to pull him out of his dark emotional hole. Antidepressants are finally starting to make a real difference, but Chris’ desperation to get another job in his field leads him to accept the worst possible solution – a job that keeps him away from Claire and their children for days and weeks at a time.

After Daniel pulls Claire over for a burned out taillight, neither of them are able to forget the seemingly innocuous encounter. Daniel is initially drawn to Claire because she looks so much like the ex-wife who left him after an unspeakable tragedy. Claire is attracted to Daniel not only because he is “ridiculously good looking” but also because he gives her more attention in that one traffic stop than she’s gotten from her husband in months. As they are thrown together more and more, the physical attraction deepens into something they don’t know how to handle, and that’s when Covet becomes the story of how love can be both the best and worst thing ever.

What happens to Claire and Daniel and Chris is not particularly unique, but the way Tracey Garvis-Graves presents it with the thoughts and emotions of each character provides the compelling sense of psychological tragedy as Claire comes to love both men and Daniel struggles between what he wants and what is right. The series of events that lead up to the final denouement are shocking but not out of place, given what we’ve been shown all along the way, and the ending made sense, even if it wasn’t what I might have wanted. But above all, I was and am Team Claire, and she’s why Covet affected me so strongly and why it’s now the number one candidate for the best book I’ve read this year.

Ratings:

Overall: 5
Sensuality level: 3

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Review: Burn by Maya Banks

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This review originally appeared at Seductive Musings:

Review: Burn by Maya Banks

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

This review may contain spoilers for Rush and Fever. You could read Burn as a stand-alone book, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Now that Gabe and Jace are both settled in committed relationships with the women who fulfill their need for dominance and control, only Ash is left as the last single man standing. The loss of Jace as his regular threesomes partner has been especially hard for Ash, as he’s never really wanted to be intimate with a woman one on one. When he sees the beautiful girl sitting at the cafe with a sketchbook in hand, he can’t help but appreciate her beauty. But when he realizes that the ill fitting choker around her neck is actually a collar, his attention is immediately focused on the possibility of making her his own submissive.

Josie is trying to live a carefree artist’s life after experiencing so much personal pain and loss in her past. She thought that a Dominant/submissive relationship with Michael would give her the caring and support she never really knew as a child. Ash helps her see that she’s been doing all the giving while getting none in return, and he convinces her to try letting him take care of her in all the ways she truly deserves.

“Burn” is the story of how Josie learns to trust and Ash learns how to love. Along the way, we see exactly why Ash has cut himself off from his dysfunctional family and the return of a threat that first appeared in “Rush”, the first book in the Breathless series. By the end of “Burn” we discover just how far Ash is willing to go to protect the ones he loves, and how his need for control has the potential to ruin all their lives if he doesn’t figure out just how far is too far.

After reading the first two books in the Breathless series, I was ready to find out more about Ash, as I suspected that he was equally controlling and Dominant as his friends but was better at keeping it under wraps. The progression of the trust and love between Ash and Josie is somewhat more realistically paced when compared to the previous books, although all three do feature the combination of “insta-lust” and a compressed timeline. My feeling about it is that this works within this series, since these men are in their late thirties and finally ready for a permanent commitment once they find the women who are perfect for them.

When he begins his D/s relationship with Josie, it’s obvious that Ash is trying to learn from the mistakes both Gabe and Jace had made when they were in the same situation, yet he still manages to mess up on the one point that Josie treasured most – her sense of financial independence. Although I understood why she was angry, I was annoyed that she completely flipped out without even talking to him first, but then realized that her actions were necessary to set in motion the final confrontation with the threat to them all that had begun back in the first book. Maybe I’ve just been reading too many Maya Banks books lately, because it seemed like the plot gears were more obvious in “Burn” than in the previous books, and the way the threat was ultimately resolved seemed almost anti-climactic when compared to the build-up toward its end. But the sense of family between all the characters was just as enjoyable as in the previous two books and it was great to see Josie welcomed by all the people Ash considered as his real family. At the end of “Rush”, we see all the characters settled and happy, with all the loose ends tied up in a way that doesn’t feel forced. and that’s part of what makes it a satisfying read.

If you’re new to the books of Maya Banks, the Breathless series is a great place to start. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all three of them and look forward to more great stories from Maya Banks in the near future.

Ratings:

Overall: 4.5
Sensuality level: 4

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