Book review – Rent-A-Stud (Coopers Companions #1), by Lynn LaFleur

I’m giving it 3 stars, it had promise and failed to deliver. I like to suspend belief when I’m reading, but the dialogue between mother and daughter was pushing it too far. She buys her mother sex toys? And not just a fun vibrator, but an entire box of stuff (and wasn’t she a hard-up student anyway?!?) – and then talks in detail about mother’s sex life… Sorry, I don’t buy that. Also, and this really made me cringe, she nagged her mother into stripping naked and trying on new underwear IN FRONT OF HER. Ewwwwwwww.

And I did some numbers in my head. Zach has been a ‘popular’ escort for 10 years, so lets say he has sex with one new woman every 2 weeks (I’m being generous here, stay with me a moment…) – that’s an average of 26 a year – over 250 in 10 years. Yeah, he’s experienced < rolls eyes >.

I thought Zach fell for her too quickly and I really REALLY think she would be more put off by his slut-history – especially when she screws him WITHOUT a condom, and without even asking first. So ok, she couldn’t get pregnant, but HELLO…  she works in a hospital and has never heard of STDs? Yeah, right!

So apart from the terrible cover and the cheesy title (which is actually kinda fun), it was only the author’s great writing that held this together for me. 3 out of 5.

 

 

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Book review – Carnal Ecstasy (Lissa Matthews)

 

I think after the sheer perfection of Simple Need, it would be hard to match it, and I had high hopes for Carnal Ecstasy, the second book in this trilogy.

Dallon, part bar-owner, part-tattoo-parlour-owner and best friend of Vintner and Jaz is not looking for an emotional entanglement. He’s especially not looking for Carrie – the complete opposite of his ‘type’. She’s a good girl, a well brought up Christian who follows her parents instructions in everything. Until now. She’s rebelling – and first on her list of things to try is the gorgeous man that she’s just met.

“You don’t need to be messing with me, Carrie. You really don’t. If ever there was a black sheep, I’m it. My reputation is bad, very, very bad. It’s best that you go. Now.”

He wants her – wanted her from the moment she stopped him outside to ask for directions – but recognizes that she isn’t the type for his usual one-night stand. So he tries to resist her… and fails.

FedEx was going to bust through the doors, package him up and send him straight to hell by ten the next morning for asking his next question and already knowing the answer. “What else do you want?”

“You.”

She worries that she’s too innocent.

“Naughty girls are always sexy, but taking a girl like you,” he slid a hand down the lace to cup her pussy through it, “and turning her into a naughty one is even sexier.”

For the first time ever, Dallon shares his bed with a woman. All night.

She looked adorable and rumpled though. Her skin had that just-awakened flush, her eyes were still drowsy and heavy lidded. She was so warm and soft, and he wanted to melt into her at the same time he wanted to kick her out of his bed because she was a threat to everything he knew prior to meeting her. His one-night stands and easy lays were gonna come to a screeching halt if he didn’t get rid of her soon.

So… Carrie and Dallon hook up and have some hot sex. There’s a bit of character growth and a nice easy ending, but it didn’t grab me. It was just too… empty, a bit like a puzzle where you fill in the blanks.

I think it suffered from being so short, that there wasn’t time for any character depth. I didn’t get why Dallon was such a bad, bad boy. He has tats and piercings, and runs a bar. He didn’t come across as anything other than thoughtful and generous – and affectionate. He’s polite with her parents. Good with his friends, and loving with Carrie. And why did Carrie suddenly decide to rebel? Going from long-term celibacy to instant sex-kitten overnight, was a bit of a leap.

On the plus side, Lissa Matthews has a lovely relaxed style of writing, so if you’re looking for a quick, hot read, this ticks the boxes. 3 out of 5.

 

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Book review – The Courage To Love (Brothers in Arms book 1) by Samantha Kane

(read as part of KindleSmut readers group)

Kate Collier has to live a quiet life. With her soldier husband dead and a young niece to support, she takes a wealthy lover as protector, and then another. When one of them sets her up for a cruel gang rape and then spreads rumours about her, she is shunned by society.

Lord Jason Randall and Anthony Richards served in the Peninsula Wars with her late husband and they have long since been in love with Kate, but biding their time before they announce it. Now that she is free of a protector, they decide to stake their claim. They want Kate to marry them – both of them.

This book had potential. It had a number of great reviews and sounded hot, but… it didn’t really catch me. There was plenty of ménage style sex and a rather unsettling encounter between her 16 yr old niece and one of their friends – setting the scene for a future story – but not a lot else. I felt the language was a bit lazy too, especially in the guys dialogue. Plenty of effing and lots of cocks, as though they had no other ways to describe what they wanted. It bugged me as well that they were not more circumspect about their existing M-M relationship; this was set in a period where homosexuality was illegal. Locking-in-prison-illegal. My other grumble was that she recovered from her rape pretty easily, considering that she later fainted when she met her attacker. 3 out of 5.

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Book review – Ink Spots (Lissa Matthews)

 

I recently read another Lissa Matthews (Simple Need) that I adored, so I eagerly launched into Ink Spots. The male lead (tattoo artist Jaz) is a friend of Vinter (from Simple Need) and I liked the way the 2 stories were linked.

Jewellery maker Mandi works as a waitress by night in the popular club Katz and has been crushing on Jaz for months, not thinking for a minute that he’s even noticed her, let alone that he’d be equally smitten with her. It takes the club owner (Jackie) to push them into each others arms – telling Jaz it’s Mandi’s birthday. In a cute move, Jaz offers himself as a 24-hour birthday present for Mandi bringing a whole swathe of her deepest fantasies to life.

There’s lots of hot sex, but even though the two characters were very much into each other (no pun intended) I didn’t feel the connection that was so clear in Simple Need. Probably because they were too busy having sex to actually talk to each other… It’s a frivolous quick read, but in my opinion, it could have been so much better. I wanted to like Mandi, but she didn’t have any depth to her. I wanted to like Jaz – and I did a little bit – but not enough to care about either of them. 3 out of 5.

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Book review – His Indecent Proposal (Lynda Chance)

This was a difficult book to review. A quick read, it was based around a classic, tried & tested romance premise: obscenely-rich-but-lonely man (David) needs a wife in a hurry and makes a businesslike marriage proposition to a woman he barely knows (Jenna).

As if they were connected by an invisible wire, she could feel when he watched her. And he watched her often.

And it should have worked. Lynda Chance has a delightful writing style, so many lines and quotes leapt out at me, sucking me in and helping me to identify quickly and easily with the heroine.

She usually kept ramen noodles, microwave popcorn and cups of macaroni and cheese for such occasions. The problem was, she had been having a lot of such occasions lately. Her drawer was depressingly empty.

I wanted this to work. Jenna, a lowly accountant in David’s firm, overhears a conversation in the kitchen:

She heard the door shut, the shuffle of feet and an irritated male voice. “Goddammit, let it go. What the f*** am I supposed to do, post a job opening for a wife?”

… Before she could stop herself, she heard the words that impetuously popped from her mouth. “Do I apply in HR?”

But I hated David.

She looked at the handsome blond because he was infinitely the less dangerous of the two.

Rude to the point of being obnoxious, he wasn’t so much an Alpha as a Jerk! He took her to dinner, took her to bed and then to Vegas the next day to get married. He promises to pay her a large amount of money to stay married for two years and Jenna, saddled with a massive debt from college, reluctantly agrees.

He pushed Jenna around, refused to listen to her and gave her no reason at all to like him – and then suddenly he declares he’s in love and like magic, she is too. Sorry, but I just don’t buy it. 3/5 – only because of the excellent quality of the actual writing.

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