Tag Archives: erotic romance

Book Review: Vicious Lost Boys (1-4), by Nikki St. Crowe

I picked up a copy of Nikki St. Crowe’s The Dark One to start the Vicious Lost Boys series I’ve heard so much about. Only to get it home and realize that I must not have been paying enough attention because I bought book 2, instead of 1. So, I purchased an ecopy of The Never King and Their Vicious Darling and borrowed The Fae Princes from the library (though there was a several-week wait for it).

The stories were all wrong — Hook was never the villain.

For two centuries, all of the Darling women have disappeared on their 18th birthday. Sometimes they’re gone for only a day, some for a week or a month. But they always return broken.

Now, on the afternoon of my 18th birthday, my mother is running around the house making sure all the windows are barred and the doors locked.

But it’s pointless.

Because when night falls, he comes for me. And this time, the Never King and the Lost Boys aren’t willing to let me go.

Reviews:

The Never King

You know, I didn’t hate it. 100% it is problematic as hell. And I’ll fully admit that the particular kinks (and the sex, honestly) are not the sort I particularly go for in my erotica. However, I acknowledge that St. Crowe made it more than apparent that they are the ones that Winnie enjoys, and I respect Winnie for going for it. I liked that, even in a kidnapping situation, she creates agency for herself. She’s practical. She makes a plan and executes it. I’ll read the next one.

The Dark One

I’m still enjoying this series. Though I am admittedly just kind of tolerating the sex, as it’s not a set of kinks that I particularly click with. But the way St. Crowe lets Winnie use it, both for her own pleasure and in the Machiavellian sense, is appreciable. I like watching her take the initiative and the Lost Boys bend to her whims while their perspectives shift. The plot (past the erotic element) is fairly predictable, and (as is often the case with such books) I’m not thrilled that the FMC is made to seem special, in part, by being treated well while every other woman is seen and treated as worthless. But all in all, to my great surprise, I’m continuing the series.

Their Vicious Darling

I’m still generally enjoying this series, though I think some of the lustre has worn off. I’m basically skimming the sex scenes by this point because they aren’t what is keeping me reading, and I’ve started to find them redundant. (Yes, I realize this is an erotic series, but still.) What is keeping me reading is the familial love. This series has such a good representation of it, both blood-related family and found family, and I’m really appreciating how characters go to bat for their family. I’ll finish the series out. But I’m in the queue to get the last book from the library. Which tells you I want to read it, but not so badly that I need it right now.

The Fae Princes

I’m happy to have finished the series. I really appreciate the growth that happened here in the found family, with the men even being willing to express love for one another. I still found the sex kind of meh, though there’s less here than in previous books. And oddly, the whole thing felt a little rushed to me despite being 250+ pages long. But all in all, I finished pretty happy.

Other Reviews:

Nightmode Reading: Vicious Lost Boys

Book Review: Baby & the Late Night Howlers, by Kathryn Moon

I picked up a copy of Kathryn Moon‘s Baby & the Late Night Howlers as an Amazon freebie after seeing it recommended several times on Tiktok.

Baby’s heat is coming…

After years of assuming she was a beta, discovering her omega designation in a biker bar surrounded by alphas isn’t exactly fulfilling any fantasies for Baby. She only wanted to get laid, not get knotted, bitten, and bonded. Now Baby’s entire life is about to turn upside down.

With the sexual frenzy of her heat on its way, she needs to find a pack, a nest, and alphas she can trust.

The Late Night Howlers have given up hope…

After years of waiting for an omega to choose them, this motorcycle club of alphas is ready to move on with their lives. Until one sweet woman takes a chance on them.

A rundown bar and apartment building is no place to spoil a new omega but the Howlers are determined to do right by Baby when she needs them. All they have to do is keep her satisfied while resisting the mouthwatering temptation to bite and bond her, permanently.

When a rival MC comes sniffing after Baby, her safety is put at risk and the Howlers may be torn apart forever.

I will admit that I’m always a little iffy going into an Omegaverse novel. So often, the whole idea of the omega is predicated on the submission of women. (Omegas aren’t always women, but they often are.) And that submission can be glorious, or it can be abusive, and I do not enjoy this latter dynamic AT ALL. So, it’s a bit of a crap shoot every time I pick one up.

Baby & the Late Night Howlers is explicitly a Sweet Omegaverse. And it is. Baby’s—God, I hate the name, BTW—Baby’s men worship her, and that was fun. But Moon still managed to use the same old, cliched, over-used abuse of women by patriarchal, villainous men who see women as objects as the primary tension of the book, and that was equally as disappointing.

In fact, that’s my main complaint with the book. While Moon came up with a fun Omegaverse world and likable characters, everything—EVERYTHING—about the book is 100% predictable. By the end of the first few chapters, I could have outlined how this plot would unfold and, with the introduction of each character, exactly which role they’d play. Which wasn’t particularly attention-holding. Further, since Baby had so many men and each needed attention, sex, and to bond, it got redundant, and I eventually got bored with the sex.

I did like that Baby was a bit older, as were her eventual bondmates. The sweet parts of this Sweet Omegaverse were indeed sweet, and the writing is quite readable. But all in all, I’m going to call it a middle-of-the-road read for me.

Other Reviews:

REVIEW – Omegaverse Reverse Harem // Baby and the Late Night Howlers

Baby & The Late Night Howlers by Kathryn Moon – A Book Review

Book Review: A Soul to Keep, by Opal Reyne

I purchased an e-copy of A Soul to Keep, by Opal Reyne.

All Reia ever wanted was freedom.

Known as a harbinger of bad omens and blamed for Demons eating her family, Reia is shunned by her entire village. When the next offering is due and the monstrous Duskwalker is seen heading their way, her village offers her an impossible choice – be thrown into the prison cells or allow herself to be sacrificed to a faceless monster.

However, he is not what he seems. His skull face and glow eyes are ethereal, and she finds herself unwittingly enchanted by him.

All Orpheus ever wanted was a companion.

Each decade, in exchange for a protection ward from the Demons that terrorise the world, Orpheus takes a human offering to the Veil – the place he lives and the home of Demons. The brief companionship does little to ease his loneliness, and their lives were always, unfortunately, cut short.

He’d thought it was a hopeless endeavour, until he met her. She’s not afraid of him, and his insatiable desire deepens within every moment of her presence.

But will Orpheus be able to convince Reia to stay before she’s lost to him forever?

I enjoyed this, though it won’t top any favorites lists for me. I thought the world interesting, as well as the way Duskwalkers (and maybe demons) could craft themselves. I appreciated that Reia had a backbone and was the initiator of most of the sexual progress in the relationship.

I also thought Orpheus was adorable. He was super sweet, if a bit of a doormat. (Though I don’t think the reader is supposed to interpret it that way.) There is definitely some Himbo energy there. But it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief to overlook both that Orpheus eats people and takes people as sacrifices and still see him as the hero.

My main problem, personally, was the sex. I’m all about the monster sex, don’t get me wrong. And the sex was hot, not gonna lie. But it felt very much like it was written to match the trends of what is popular in spicy romance today, and, frankly, a lot of what Orpheus said/did/thought during sex didn’t actually fit him, the character as written. Sex-scene-Orpheus and rest-of-the-book-Orpheus felt like different characters. So, there was a disconnect for me.

I also thought the book could do with one more mechanical editing pass. There were several instances of missing or misused words. No, I don’t mean because it’s Australian English. But I’d occasionally be pulled out of the narrative to figure out what word was missing from a sentence to make it make sense (it was usually an article or pronoun) or if the author actually meant the sentence to include same or some because it said, “same some” and only one or the other would make sense (that sort of thing).

All in all, though, I enjoyed more about the book than I didn’t and will likely read book two at some point.

Other Reviews:

A Soul to Keep by Opal Reyne