Author Archives: sadie

Book Review of Bittersweet Magic (The Order #2), by Nina Croft

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I won a copy of Nina Croft‘s Bittersweet Magic through Fresh Fiction.

Description from Goodreads:
Five hundred years ago, to avoid being burned at the stake, Rosamund Fairfax made a deal with a demon. Thirteen tasks in exchange for her life. Now, the debt is nearly paid. Only one final task and she’s free. The mission: find a key hidden inside a convent. Roz is going undercover!

For Piers Lamont, vampire and head of the Order of the Shadow Accords, bad news comes in the form of a sexy nun, a missing key and an old mistress who wants him back. That his ex-mistress also happens to be a demon intent on taking over the world and subjugating mankind, just makes things that bit more interesting.

For five centuries, Roz has had one aim in life—her own survival. That’s about to change. She has always known there are things were living for, now she’s going to discover that there are also things worth dying for; friendship, humanity and maybe even… love.

Review:
Ok look, this review will be a bit spoilery and it is going to be ranty because I am raging inside. This book made me so angry I almost couldn’t finish it. I’ll say upfront, the plotting is a bit rushed, but the writing is fine. I have no problem with the quality of the writing or editing. What I have a problem with is the asshole, raping ‘hero’ and love based on nothing at all.

Some will argue that there was no penis/vagina penetration, so there was no rape. But the man TWICE brought her to orgasim without her consent, in a situation when she couldn’t refuse, and then thought he wiped her memory of it so she wouldn’t even know. That’s fucking sexual assault and how dare anyone, Nina Croft I’m talking to you, pass that off as the basis for fucking love!

Now, let’s talk about that love, yeah? He’s a smug, sexually harassing asshat to her from the moment they meet. Then she’s panting and all but begging him to take her while thinking about how she couldn’t control her body. Sorry, show women at least enough respect to presume we can control ourselves like adults. And what was she attracted to? What? He was not appealing. And somehow, despite his frankly revolting attitude they fall in love. I felt no chemistry, even outside of how horrid he was. The love was ridiculous and completely unbelievable. It was also morally objectionable, need I remind you of the lack of consent, but we’ll set that aside.

I was seriously angry about the H/h relations in this book. But I also have to complain about the twist at the end of the book that was beyond the pale. As if the baddy would give up all her hard earned plans for that. Again, give women a little respect and show them to have at least one ambition beyond a freakin’ godly dicking! And the too stupid to live, i’m gonna run off to the rescue with no plan and then have a miraculous deus ex machina save at the last second? Please, get outta here with that crap.

I won this book and I always appreciate a free read. But I wish I hadn’t. i wish it had gone to someone who would have liked it more…or at least been less enraged by it.

Book Reveiw: Captured by the Alien Savage, by Marina Maddix & Flora Dare

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Captured by the Alien Savage, by Marina Maddix & Flora Dare was a freebie on Amazon. I’ve had it for a couple months, but I picked it up and it read now because I recently noticed that all the alien romances seem to feature blue aliens. On a lark I did a quick google search and came up with more than 50 of them. I even wrote a half joking blog post about it. I ended that post with the question, “…where’s my chartreuse alien, or mauve, or red?” Well, given that two days later I happened across a, I kid you not, pink alien romance in my TBR, I had to read it.

Description from Goodreads:
Just when I think nothing else could go wrong…I see her. 

My crew and I are on a desperate mission hunting a villain, but he’s always one step ahead. Now we’re stuck in orbit over a primitive planet called ‘Earth’ without enough fuel to get us home. And worst of all, every last one of us is about to go into heat. 

That’s bad. Very bad. 

Our only hope of survival lies somewhere on the surface. I can’t afford any distractions, least of all a beautiful, curvy human female who my body tells me is my fated mate, my amavar. But that’s impossible! My mate can’t be human… can she?

Review:
I think…no, I’m fairly sure that this MUST be parody. And as parody it’s pretty good. It’s hilarious even. I mean he’s a hot pink (occasionally flushing to purple) alien stud who features a penis, with a retractable carapace, that when unleashed swells in the middle, vibrates AND GYRATES. He can even use it as a homing device to find his mate, literally being let by his cock. They fuel their ship on diet coke and have to return home quickly or they’ll all go into a mating frenzy and kill each other. It’s like all the normal alien erotica tropes on steroids. As parody I call it a success. If someone wrote this to be serious….um, sorry.

When I'm Bad I'm Better

Book Review of When I’m Bad, I’m Better, by K.F. Johnson

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I won a signed copy of K. F. Johnson‘s When I’m Bad, I’m Better through Goodreads.

Description:
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and in this present-day drama, neither was the facade these four cousins expended a lifespan constructing. They say good girls finish last…but when they’re bad, they’re better!

Valerie’s just recovered from a career ending accident when her fiancé adds insult to injury by cheating on her with her closest relative. Devastated, angry, and now financially strapped, she’s ready to break all the rules…or is she?

Yasmin’s a successful attorney whose failing marriage has left a void that only a side romance has been able to fill. When a crime unexpectedly turns her life upside down, decisions will have to be made…or they’ll be made for her.

Vanessa’s an aspiring singer who’s tired of living in the shadow of her identical twin’s success. She’s not getting any younger, success doesn’t come cheap and fame costs!

Amina’s a beautiful bombshell who uses what she’s got to get what she wants; but she’s harboring seedy secrets that are anything but pretty. As skeletons begin to resurface, she needs them dead and buried…before she is.

Review:
With friends and family like these, who needs enemies? Geez. There’s a lot of drama packed in the pages of this book. I enjoyed the characters, though I don’t think I’d go so far as to say I liked them. It is interesting however to see into the mind of some of those unlikable characters and understand their position, even if it only truly makes sense in their own warped point of view. It’s a reminder that nothing and no one grows in a vacuum.

I really appreciated that this is a book by and about people who too rarely get their time on the page. All the main characters are people of color, in fact I don’t think there’s a white face in the book, but there are also queer and trans cameos too. Plus, this is a book about women. Men are in it. They’re often the motivation for the women’s actions, but this is a book about women— strong, self-reliant black women. I like the way that tips the standard tropes on their head. So often in books it’s women who are only present as reasons for men to do things, to go on quests or get angry or defend their honor or virtue, etc. Here, while the motivations are very different, it’s the men who play the more passive role, spurring women to actions, good and bad.

The narrative style is gritty and regional. A lot of the dialogue would send a grammar nazi into convulsions, but who really speaks with proper grammar everyday of their lives? Again, this is a realism you don’t often see allowed in literature. On the other side, the fact that the narration isn’t in standard English doesn’t absolve the author of the responsibility of editing. There are several occurrences that are clearly mistakes, mostly around punctuation and homophones. But’s it’s largely pretty clean.

I have a few personal pet peeve kind of complaints. As a general rule, and I’ve said this before, I truly dislike when authors compare their characters to celebrities as a means of telling the reader what they look like. I haven’t watched television in almost 5 years and have only seen a handful of movies. I have no clue who the new generation of stars are or what they look like. It is wholly ineffective for relaying information to me and only leads to feeling alienated as a reader. (And yes, I sadly do realize how old that makes me sound.) This is the primary means of character description in this book, everyone having a celebrity lookalike. We’re kind of given a reason for this, but it didn’t help me at all.

Next, while I understand that not everyone views sex, monogamy, parenting, relationship in the same way and I wouldn’t want them to, and I understood that for a variety of reasons (the least of which was romance) this was important to the characters, a lot of the book is dedicated to who is sleeping with whom and who is or isn’t injured because of it. I appreciated the subtle ways the author created a perception of castes among people, degrees of legality and hierarchies of betrayal, legitimizing some things and people and not others, but I did get a tad tired of the constant who is f_cking who and if I’m honest, I didn’t much care for the author’s style of describing sex. Again, personal preference, but there you have it.

Lastly, the book ends on a cliffhanger and I just hate that. All in all, it’s worth picking up though

I just love autographed books!