Tag Archives: Romance

ARC Review: The Seduction Hypothesis

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The Seduction Hypothesis

Author: Delphine Dryden
Publisher: Carina Press
Publication Date: May 6, 2013
Description:

Seduction(1 Curious Sub + 1 Dom in Denial) – Inhibitions = 4 Naughty Nights
Wildlife biologist Lindsey thought attending a fan convention with her new boyfriend Ben was a great idea—until their relationship imploded. Lindsey still lusts after her ex—but if he wants her, he’s going to have to prove he can give her what she needs.

Ben will do anything to win Lindsey back, and when he sees her in her skimpy black vinyl convention getup, he realizes what she’s been craving all along. And he’s inspired to finally give in to his own dark desire to take complete sexual control…

Lindsey is surprised by her reaction to Ben’s kinky new seduction techniques, and suddenly sees the brilliant but boring code guru in a different light. After several erotic encounters in hotel rooms and stairwells, she’s falling for him all over again. And wondering if the intimate connection will last once they head home…

My Thoughts:

I fell in love with Delphine Dryden with the first book in her Science of Temptation series with Callie and Ian. I mean, c’mon, what’s not to love in that book? I’m a HUGE Big Bang Theory fan and Ian clearly resembled Sheldon (well, if Sheldon was a closet Dom…and trust me, I’ve never looked at Sheldon in quite the same way since reading that book, esp. after a particular November 2012 episode of the show when Sheldon spanks Amy).

The Seduction Hypothesis is a very different, yet just as fabulous book from Ms. Dryden. Not only does she switch from first person POV (as in Theory of Attraction) to third, but the set-up was different. Lindsey and Ben had been a couple, but broke up not long ago. There’s some angst there, both with regrets about the demise of the relationship, and Ben not understanding quite why Lindsey broke it off with him.

Lindsey is really into a particularly kinky manga series and planned on dressing like one of the characters for one of the events at the convention the friends all travel to. As it turns out, she’s a dead-ringer for the character and is asked by the crew to stand-in as their regular player had to cancel out on showing up at the convention (yeah, a little suspension of disbelief here, but it worked for me). Ben sees her all duded up and suddenly comes to realize there might be something to the kink thing that, in part, was what had led to their break-up.

He turns to Ian and Callie for some advice (with a quite amusing Cyrano DeBergerac-like scene) and then leaps into some pretty heavy-duty research into the lifestyle, discovering he can get into the whole kink thing. I love that neither one of the pair, but ESPECIALLY the dom, had very little experience with the lifestyle, so they both got to learn together. The new-dom thing isn’t explored very often (at least in my limited BDSM reading). It’s usually the sub being drawn into the lifestyle by an experienced, sexy Dom. Add in the fact that Ben really wanted to get back with Lindsey and ends up discovering a whole new side to himself, and I was absolutely in love with this book.

And, of course…the sex was awesome. Completely, wonderfully, awesome.

Can’t wait for another book in this series!

Book provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

–Review by Victoria

Heat Rating 5

ARC Review: Ten Reasons To Stay

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Ten Reasons to Stay

Author: Sabrina Jeffries
Publisher: Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books
Publication Date: May 6, 2013
Description:

TenReasonsIn “Ten Reasons to Stay,” previously published in the anthologyThe School for Heiresses, lessons go far beyond etiquette and needlepoint. Eliza Crenshawe’s lesson is to look before she leaps. But when she discovers that her new guardian plans to marry her off without so much as a Season, she forgets all that. She flees—on a horse she unwittingly steals (oops!)—from Colin Hunt, a newly minted earl who wants nothing more than for her to go home…or stay forever.

My Thoughts:

I’m a decent fan of Sabrina Jeffries, all things being equal. I think she has an amusing way of writing and some of her scenarios are quite hilarious. I quite liked this book, though of course it was tragically too short for me.

Eliza’s guardian is odious (not literally) and up to no good (what a shocker, right? Can’t these guardians ever be just decent folk, not either villains or secretly aching for the one in their protection?). Desperate to avoid the marriage he has arranged for her for his on nefarious reasons, she’s fled, intent on making it to London where she has someone who might take her in for a while until she can access her inheritance. Unfortunately, when she goes to borrow (read here steal, as Collin interprets it) a horse, Collin catches her.

Being a gentleman, even though a newly titled one, Collin is understandably unwilling to let the headstrong miss go with on her merry way, considering she has no protection from the cruel world (yes, I’m slightly mocking this morning over the Regency requirements of story-telling). He’s torn between believing she’s crazy (her story about her guardian IS a bit crazy, but it’s actually true as he comes to discover later on). And of course she DID try to steal one of his horses, something he’s not very happy about. He locks her into a room in his house and goes hunting for her guardian (who is also apparently the town magistrate – oops).

Over the course of the short book, these two develop some pretty genuine feelings and I liked both of them. This isn’t quite as good as the first couple of books in the School for Heiresses series, but then again the bar got set quite high for me after those books, at least when it comes to Ms. Jeffries.

My main complaint was how clearly the villain was, well, a villain. His motivation was obvious, even if Eliza didn’t initially figure it out (but Collin, once he believed her tale, did). And the trope is overdone in my opinion.

Still, this is a nice, short little piece keeping in Ms. Jeffries’ lovely voice and I will eagerly await another book from her. Totally deserving of 4/5 books from me.

Book provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

–Review by Victoria

heat Rating 4

ARC Review: Mindlink

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Mindlink

Kat Cantrell
Carina Press
Publication Date: April 1, 2013
Description:Mindlink

Determined to revitalize her imploding career, blacklisted movie star Ashley V takes on her biggest role yet: posing as one of ten scientists invited by aliens to a universal summit. But when the aliens seize, strip and implant the entire delegation to extract their knowledge, she is quickly found out and sent to a cell to await recycling.

The alien research director designated ZXQ-One devised a plan to let the humans volunteer their best and brightest in a gamble to solve his people’s energy crisis. But he fails to find anything useful and winds up imprisoned alongside the fiery human woman who refuses to give up, and who insists on calling him Sam.

After an accidental link between their implants lets them share their thoughts, they find themselves drawn to each other. Sam will have to trust in her human compassion and forgiveness for his role in her capture, and Ashley will have to trust him with her deepest secrets if they are to have any chance at survival…

My Thoughts

I was excited when I saw the blurb for this. Aliens, mental connections, another world…what’s not to like?

Unfortunately, at least for me, this story had problems. Not typos or even consistency, but it got bogged down in the beginning. You see, on the alien world, the majority of the Telhada (aliens) don’t have actual names, they have letters/designations. This led to a very definite distance which made it hard to feel close to the man who ultimately becomes “Sam” to the heroine, Ashley. This is likely deliberate on the author’s part because One (aka Sam) is very disconnected from his emotions, believing that to have them is to be weak and more like the Mora Tuwa (humans from Earth), who are considered less than the Telhada.

Ashley, the scientists and Natalie (a contest winner Earth snuck in instead of a geneticist as the aliens had requested) are quickly probed and thrown into cells to await recycling. Ashley gets to meet Sam quickly, as his failure to import the correct Mora Tuwa displeased the king greatly and he was slated for recycling as well. Recycling is exactly what it sounds like: parts are harvested and the rest of the bodies are broken down into organic material (rather Matrixy, now that I think of it).

There’s an escape (of course) and Ashley and Sam accidentally mind link (hence the title) and learn to share their thoughts. Thanks to that mindlink, they reach sanctuary and Sam comes to realize that all he’s known his entire life is little better than a lie and… quite a bit more. I can’t say more without spoiling it.

Ashley of course wants to go home, wanting to prove to the movie-watching world that she’s more than the bad girl she’d proven herself to be through some mistakes she’d made (think Lindsey Lohan). Who’d want to stay on an alien planet with a probe in their brains? Well, one of the scientists opts to stay when given the chance to go home, and ultimately Sam and Ashley find a way to be together and to make a difference in the lives of the aliens.

An okay read, but I’m not sure I’d be interested in returning to this world. The world-building was decent enough, though as said earlier, a bit overwhelming with the terms and off-putting names in the early portion of the book. But you definitely get the feel of a totally alien society.

So read it and may you enjoy it. :)

Book provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

–Review by Victoria

Heat Rating 3

ARC Review: Night Demon

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Night Demon

Lisa Kessler
Entangled Publishing
Release Date: March 13, 2013
Description:Night Demon

Gretchen Finch’s job would be much easier if she weren’t alone in the jungle with a brilliant recluse whose every glance sets her on fire. But the more she focuses on her work, the closer she gets to unlocking the mysteries of a terrible creature—the Night Demon—that threatens the world as she knows it. Though her scientific mind tells her it’s impossible, she’s beginning to believe the ancient Mayan tales as the sinister jungle comes alive around her.

Lukas Smith has spent hundreds of years searching for answers to his immortal Night Walker nature. As a series of ancient glyphs become clear, he’s about to find out more than he’d ever hoped, but the more he learns, the more his fate intertwines with the Night Demon, and the harder it becomes to hide his immortal secret from the beautiful, intelligent Gretchen.

Together, they must find a way to stop the inexplicable violence and mass destruction surging across the earth before the Night Demon destroys more than just mankind.

My Thoughts:

First let me say that this book is part of a series. When I got the book from NetGalley, I hadn’t realized that, nor did I actually realize that I’d read a novella that took place in this same world (Night Thief) until I actually started reading the book. I was nervous when I made the realization because while I liked Night Thief, it seemed to be a bit lacking and cliched.

My worries were for nothing. Night Demon is Book 2 in the series, but you don’t need to read Book 1 or the novella to be brought up to speed. You’ll get to see Kane and Rita (Night Thief’s couple) when they get into hunting down the evil titular demon. The beginning and middle were well paced and I loved the tension between Lukas and Gretchen. You know it’s a romance, but after a while I began to wonder if they’d ever work through Lukas’s issues (and yes, it was primarily Lukas holding back – the whole “I’m a vampire” thing sort of weighed him down, even after he ‘fessed up to what he was.

Night Demon gives the reader a chance to get a better look at some of the mythology and beliefs that were so important to the Mayan people, which made for a different world view than, say, someone who’d grown up with European or Egyptian mythologies as their basis for beliefs. I loved the idea of the cyclical universe, with mankind being on its second or third (at least) run through (Ms. Kessler even indicates that one of the mankinds that developed on earth existed during the time of the dinosaurs, which was awesome!).

While the book was fabulous and kept me reading page after page, the very end left me very wanting and knocked this down from what could have been a 5-star to a 4. While it certainly expanded the universe of the Night Walkers, it also raised a lot of questions I don’t like getting raised right at the end. Work them in earlier. I really didn’t like the ending and how it sort of dragged on and opened up a whole new can of worms/problems. But the last page or so probably guaranteed I’ll want to read #3 in the series. Just because it was seriously creepy.

So – check it out!

Provided by NetGalley for an honest review.

–Review by Victoria

heat Rating 4

Goddess Fish Promo Stop: For The Love Of Jazz by Elke Feuer

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For The Love Of JazzCover_Frost
Elke Feuer
Crimson Romance
Dec 24th,2012
254 Pages
Purchase: Amazon
RBM’s Disclaimer

Restoration architect Josie Fagan takes on a project with lawyer and senator’s son, Patrick Pullman. It’s the perfect match. She needs his endorsement to save her business and he wants to restore his ancestral Chicago home. Love wasn’t part of her plan. Neither was being asked to stay at his home, haunted by ghosts, or discovering she has a claim to his home – which she adores. When she finds out his family may be responsible for her aunt’s disappearance fifty years ago, it’s a race to unearth the truth before she loses not only her business and her heart, but her life.

Patrick can’t deny his attraction to Josie and is willing to take a chance on love since his broken engagement a year earlier. Things become complicated when he learns of their family connection and her claim to the home he loves. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, or that his family is involved in her aunt’s disappearance, so insists they work together. But, when he starts seeing his uncle’s ghost, and threats are made on her life, he’s forced to confront the possibility his family could be responsible.

EXCERPT:
Inquisitive green eyes made her heart melted like ice cream in the sun. Why couldn’t he remain his arrogant, pain in the ass client self all the time? It made it difficult to keep him at a distance when he wasn’t.

The problem wasn’t just the client, it was the job. The connections she felt to the house and Patrick were strong. No matter how hard she tried to keep them both at a distance, they were quickly making their way under her skin, like a bad habit intent on finding its way into her life. “Thanks,” she whispered and lowered her eyes from his probing gaze.

The hand on her shoulder moved to her neck and the pulse beating there quickened as it moved to her cheek. His thumbs caressed the side of her face and her melting heart beat rapidly against her chest with each touch he made. She needed to step away from him and the exquisite touch of his skin against hers, but her body refused to cooperate.

“You can talk to me if you need to, Josie.”

Blood bubbled at the sound of her name so low and intimate on his lips. She swallowed hard. Words escaped her, the gentle caress of his hand silencing her words. She held her breath as he closed the already short distance between them so their bodies were inches away from touching. His head lowered toward hers and her breath stopped even as her mouth went dry.

About The Author:
Elke Feuer lives in Grand Cayman with her husband and two kids. Reading, spending time with her family, traveling, and meeting people is her joy. Writing is her passion. She enjoys her job as a project manager, but her dream is to write full-time and stay home with her kids.

Jazz and salsa are her favorite music to write to. She sometimes wonders if she’s not Billie Holiday incarnate because of the strong connection she feels to her and jazz. It’s her favorite writing music along with salsa.

She stumbled into writing suspense, and to her surprise found she enjoyed it, along with writing about serial killers. Elke is fascinated by them, and what motivates them to kill. She writes time travel, historical, and contemporary novels to even out her dark side.

Connect With The Author:
Website | Facebook | Twitter

Elke will be awarding a commenter at each stop a $5 Amazon Gift Card, and a $10 Barnes & Noble Gift Card to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour,so click the banner and follow the stops!