Tag Archives: erotica

Book Review – Eternal: Micah’s Mate, by Tianna Xander

You guys, I promised myself that this year I wouldn’t find myself in mid-December scrambling to find the last few books for my yearly Author Alphabet Challenge. I was gonna have read a book by an author for every letter of the alphabet early this year. And I was on target to do it too. I had read everything except X and maybe U by about August. But man that X-author just kept right out of reach and here it is December 16th and I’ve just now made a desperate grab for an X-authored book, just like every year. Thus I read Eternal: Micah’s Mate, by Tianna Xander. I’m happy to be able to say it completes my challenge, but disappointed that I let it get this far into the year again. Maybe next year will be the year I get it complete early.

It feels like the whole world is against her – but that doesn’t mean there’s no time for love.

I was sure I’d end up alone forever. But as soon as I bumped into six-foot-six of tall, dark, and handsome male vampire perfection, my plans were thrown on their head. Being wanted for murder sucks – but after meeting Micah, things suddenly don’t seem so bad after all…

Micah swore to protect my father’s interests… even if that means babysitting his sassy and snarky daughter. He knows I have an attitude – but he’s still drawn to me. And between his skills and my interdimensional magic, we might just be able to make it out of this in one piece…

This simply isn’t very good. The mechanical writing and editing seems fine, but the plotting and story are a mess. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this isn’t a story. It’s a series of random events connected only in that the main character is there for all of them. There is no story to become invested in because there is no story to follow. It’s just what random thing will happen next with no foreshadowing, buildup, or explanation before falling instantly into irrelevance. New characters are being introduced all the way until the end, which means the reader has no connection of care for them. Nothing has any emotional impact, because nothing is given any time to develop. There is very little world-building and a ton of inconsistencies even in what there is. Honestly, if I hadn’t needed an X-author for my yearly Author Alphabet Challenge I’d have DNFed this pretty early on.

Book Review: Unhinged, by Onley James

I picked up a copy of Unhinged, by Onley James, as an Amazon freebie.

Adam Mulvaney lives a double life. By day, he’s the spoiled youngest son of an eccentric billionaire. By night, he’s an unrepentant killer, one of seven psychopaths raised to right the wrongs of a justice system that keeps failing.

Noah Holt has spent years dreaming of vengeance for the death of his father, but when faced with his killer, he learns a daunting truth he can’t escape. His father was a monster.

Unable to ignore his own surfacing memories, Noah embarks on a quest to find the truth about his childhood with the help of an unlikely ally: the very person who murdered his father. Since their confrontation, Adam is obsessed with Noah, and he wants to help him uncover the answers he seeks, however dark they may be.

The two share a mutual attraction, but deep down, Noah knows Adam’s not like other boys. Adam can’t love. He wasn’t born that way. But he refuses to let Noah go, and Noah’s not sure he wants him to.

Can Adam prove to Noah that passion, power, and protection are just as good as love?

This book has any number of toxic and problematic elements. The way it talks about children who have been victims of traumatic events and develop socio- or psychopathy as broken and irredeemable is hugely problematic. The way it talks about those adults is equally problematic. The relationship between Adam and Noah is toxic and problematic. The circumvention of the legal system and the enactment of vigilante justice is problematic. The uncomfortable parallel of the evil pedophiles doing as they want despite the immorality and illegality of it and the (apparently) not evil psychopathic murders doing as they want despite the immorality and illegality of it is unavoidable and problematic.

There are more problematic aspects to this book than not, honestly. But it’s fictional and oftentimes the unspoken compact between the author and the reader to ensure the main characters remain safe (even as they struggle) and have a happy ending makes the book safe enough to allow the reader to say, “I acknowledge this would be reprehensible in real life, but in this fictional setting I’m going to set that fact aside and enjoy the fiction of it.”

That’s the intersection I stood at while reading Unhinged. It’s a crazy, fun read and I enjoyed a lot of it, with the exception of one big thing. Personally, I couldn’t abide the layering of Noah’s history of catastrophic child sexual abuse with his adult sex with Adam. They are separate events, true. But personally I just don’t want child rape in my sexy-time books, in general. I don’t like to associate those two things in my mind AT ALL.

Certainly it qualifies for everything I said in above paragraph. But I try to avoid rape in the books I read for entertainment, even a history of it. I absolutely don’t want to read about a kid getting raped (or an adult remembering being raped as a child) and then turn the page and immediately feel the flutter of sexual excitement from the subsequent sex scene. I want those two things MILES apart. I do not want them associated in ANY WAY.

That’s a personal hard limit for me and Unhinged all but smashes them together. Noah uses sex to help deal with his emerging memories of abuse, so the reveal and discussion of the abuse was almost always immediately followed by a sex scene. Which means the reader is still remembering the child abuse while feeling the titillation of the sex scene. No thank you from me on that front.

But unless every book in the series follows the same plot-line then I can say that I liked the rest of the book enough to continue the series. I liked Adam’s ‘I just can’t human well’ crazy possessiveness. I liked Noah’s acceptance of it. I liked the brothers snark. The sex was sexy. There was a large aspect of this plot I disliked having to engage with. But I liked the overarching series-level story and look forward to getting to know the other 6 brothers.

Other Reviews:

Review: Unhinged (Necessary Evils #1) by Onley James

https://neverhollowed.com/2021/10/22/review-unhinged-by-onley-james/

Book Review: Defiled, by Ann Denton

I accepted a review copy of Ann Denton‘s Defiled through Love Books Tours. It is the second book in The Feral Princess series and I reviewed book one, Defiant, last month. You can find that review here. The book was also featured over at Sadie’s Spotlight.

Elena

When Black tries to force a ring onto my finger, I bolt.
I escape the pack leader’s clutches with Jonah, my best friend with benefits…who has become so much more.
But then my body betrays me. My stupid wolf shifter hormones send me spiraling into my first heat only hours after I flee.
Desire blazes through my veins until it’s so wild and fierce that it takes over my reality.
It makes me hallucinate while I’m with Jonah and wish for things I don’t want.
Like Black.

Black

Elena was stolen from me.
No one steals from the Lobo pack, and no one ever steals from me.
I’m going to hunt down whoever took her and punish them until they can’t even scream for mercy.
The moon goddess better hide her face because I’m about to show the shifters who stole Elena that my soul can be as dark as my name.

Jonah

She picked me.
The most perfect woman in the world chose me.
I should be on cloud nine, but instead, I’m terrified.
How the hell am I going to protect her with furious shifters from two different packs hunting us down?

My feelings are pretty middle of the road about this book. Most importantly, by the time I reached the end, I was re-invested and interested in finding out what happens in book three. So, obviously, I didn’t hate the whole thing. But there was a large chunk of the middle in which I simply wanted to stop reading the book entirely. I hated Black. I’m still not a fan, if I’m honest.

Yes, he’s an anti-hero that isn’t supposed to be overly-likeable. But part of the fantasy that make dub-con readable for me is that the imposed upon party secretly wants or enjoys what is happening. That’s what makes it dubious and not straight out coercion and/or rape, in my opinion. But here we had three people, two of which legitimately thought they were going to be killed by the third, even as they had sex. There was no joy, secret or otherwise, in it for me. Black was just cruel and even the author’s attempt to make him broken, instead of villainous didn’t fully redeem him for me. I couldn’t find anything to appreciate in the angry, “I don’t want her to enjoy it” sex they had and I thought the turn around from enemies to not was too abrupt. I really needed there to be a conversation between the parties. So much of the drama is based on assumptions and miscommunications and I feel like the author is just skimming past it, instead of addressing it. But it is a scene I really want to read.

Having said all that. I still adored Jonah. He’s the lubricant that makes everything work. I liked that Elena loves him so fiercely and that Black is also being forced to appreciate and accept him. I still find the writing easily readable and look forward to reading book three, if in a somewhat baffled at myself sort of way.

Other Reviews:

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