Tag Archives: erotic romance

Book Review: Hell Gate, by Veronica Eden

I received a copy of Hell Gate, by Veronica Eden in last month’s Supernatural Book Crate.

Open the gate…if you dare.

The first thing I’m warned about when I arrive at the girls’ home is to stay away from the abandoned graveyard. Local urban legend claims it’s host to a gate to Hell.

Then I was dared…

The legend is as real as the monsters I’ve summoned by activating the gate. Demons guard it, waiting for skeptical idiots like me to do the ritual. Three sinfully hot, dangerously powerful demons.

Valerian.
Matthias.
Alder.

Ruthless.
Deadly.
Terrifying.

The gate’s three wicked protectors won’t let me get away without paying their price.
I’m at their mercy, fighting to survive them and the supernatural world they drag me into.
But none of us are prepared for what is awakening within me.

A long buried secret and hidden ancient magic will change everything.
The match is lit and together we’re all going up in flames.

I gotta be honest. This was a big ol’ meh for me. It was competently written, and I imagine it’ll find its audience. But I was bored with it. I just felt like Lily spent too much of the book whinging about her rough childhood, and then the rest of the book was just the men telling her how amazing she was, over and over again. So, yes, I get it, she’s a special special snowflake and not like the other girls. Can we move on now?

Further, I was a bit weirded out by her barely legal-ness. She’s 17 (there’s an 18th birthday in there somewhere, but it’s unclear where). The sex starts as just sex but very quickly progresses to things like double penetration to accommodate three mates. Maybe it’s a symptom of getting old and having teen daughters, but I was just a tad squinked out by a new-to-sex woman so quickly progressing to kink-queen. Plus, the men where forever telling EACH OTHER what to do with her—move her this way, make her beg, etc.—but never speaking to her at such moments. I felt like she was just a doll for them to act upon with one another.

Lastly, the plot is weak. Sure, I get that porn-with-plot exists. But I didn’t sense that this 400+ book was aiming for plot-less erotica status. It had a plot. It was just a paper-thin one.

All in all, it’s probably a taste thing. I liked the characters well enough and the world was interesting, but I was meh about this book. It’s probably fine, just not for me.

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Review – Hell Gate by Veronica Eden

Hell Gate by Veronica Eden

Book Review: Alien Abduction for Beginners, by Skye MacKinnon

I had a couple of hours worth of mindless, repetitive tasks ahead of me. So, I sought out a short audiobook to get me through. Which is how I ended up borrowing Alien Abduction for Beginners, by Skye MacKinnon through Hoopla.

Not all aliens are good at abducting humans.

Havel, Matar and Xil have failed too many times to count. Luckily, there’s help available for failed kidnappers: a diploma offered by the Intergalactic University. To complete their course, these three sexy aliens need to abduct a human female – and they’re graded on it.

The problem is, the human female has no intentions of being abducted, not even to help them get the universe’s most recognised abduction qualification.

I picked this up knowing it was going to be a silly, sexy space romp and I was cool with that idea. I wasn’t looking for anything more.

But it pretty much fails. It has too much plot to be erotica and, frankly, not enough sex. But there isn’t enough plot to be called a romance, even an erotic romance. The comedy aspect is almost entirely of the cultural misunderstanding sort and falls much closer to stupid than endearing. And while I liked the males, I couldn’t really tell them apart most of the time.

Plus, I disliked Jake Bordeaux’s narration. It was stiff and gave me a vague sense that he was making fun of the story even as he narrated it. Bridget Bordeaux did a better job with the female characters. But much less of the book is from a female perspective. All in all, it got me through my chores, but that’s about it.

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Book Review: Mint Freeze, by Laurel Chase

Last week, I suddenly remembered that you can buy signed copies of books from authors on Etsy. So, I purchased several. Mint Freeze, by Laurel Chase was one of them.

Talk about rags to riches. Cinderella had nothing on me.

I have a sparkly new crown, a remodeled ancient castle, and I’m mated to six of the most delectable princes a girl could conjure.

But my happily-ever-after honeymoon still seems a long way off.

There are plenty of magical creatures in Haret and Earth who would kill to see me dethroned – literally – and we can’t let our guard down yet.

Still, my men promised me a break and a bucket list, and my mates always deliver their goods. We’ll just have to get our sugar in small bites.

I’m Carlyle Licorne, and I’m ready for my next sugar fix.

The Sugar Bites series features Carlyle and her six men, navigating the new Haret as only she can do – with snark, sugar, and shanking.

These fun novellas follow the main Haret Chronicles, but they can be read before those books, too.

I am just infuriated. I can’t even tell you if this was a good book or not because I’m so distracted by, yet again, picking up a book labeled book one and finding out that THAT IS A LIE. I have complained about this before. Hell, I wrote a blog post way back in 2016 complaining about this very thing.

I started this book and very quickly sensed that I’d been dropped into a story. Characters appeared without introductions. There was no world-building or even descriptions, places were named but nothing else. And the plot was 100% based on events that apparently happened in the past, outside of this book (one presumes the previous series).

So, a quick Goodread search provided me two pieces of information. I was reminded that the blurb says,

These fun novellas follow the main Haret Chronicles, but they can be read before those books, too.

And that the The Haret Chronicles is a 7 book series. And since I’m deeming the above statement untrue, that makes Mint Freeze book number 8, no matter what the cover and blurb say. Because even at page 107/130 (82% into the book) I came across quotes like this,

What we’re doing—what you’re doing—it means everything, Carlyle.

My heart gave a lurch. I knew it. God, did I know it. I lost sleep over the pressure of what I was supposed to be able to do, and the fear that I wouldn’t be enough.

But, if you’ve not read the previous books (like I haven’t, trusting that ‘book one’ on the cover) you have no idea what they were doing or what she was supposed to able to do.

The book is entirely like this. I could have chosen a hundred other quotes. I chose that one because it’s so late in the book and illustrates the point that the reader is never given the information missing from the previous series and it’s pertinent to understanding this book. YOU CANNOT READ THIS AS A COMPLETE WORK.

You, in fact, can’t read these books before The Haret Chronicles, as the blurb claims, and feel as if you’ve been given any sort of satisfying story. Period. I literally just spent 130 pages with characters I didn’t care about—since the reader is apparently expected to already know and care about the characters, that opportunity isn’t given here—chasing a plot I knew nothing about, in order to…yeah, I got nothing. I don’t even know what the end goal was. Plus, it’s a cliffie on top of everything else. I mean, I read the book. But I feel nothing but frustration having done so. And I can’t imagine that was the author’s intention.

What’s more, over half of this novella appears to just be pulled directly from past books and fed to the reader as memories. So, I don’t even think this is a new story. Having not read The Haret Chronicles, I can’t know if it’s literally a cut and paste (from previous books) job or if it’s freshly written. But it felt like a cut and paste job.

So, if you’ve read The Haret Chronicles, this is probably a fun little addendum and you’re experience with Mint Freeze was probably completely different than mine. I can see what role the ‘sugar bites’ are supposed to play, after all. If you haven’t read The Haret Chronicles, don’t believe the lie that you can read this first. Put this book down and go start at the beginning.

The writing seems fine. The three characters included here (Carlyle and two of six of her mates) seem likeable enough. The sex scenes were fine. I might have liked the series if I hadn’t unknowingly started it at book 8.

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