Tag Archives: erotica

Book Review of King’s Killer, by Ki Brightly & M.D. Gregory

I received an Audible Code for King’s Killer, by Ki Brightly and M.d. Gregory.

Description from Goodreads:

Walking the Line Between Good and Evil
Physician’s assistant by day, doctor to the Kings of Men MC by night. Grant Arthur’s life is tough to balance, but he does what he can to help his brother, Aaron “King” Arthur, the president of the motorcycle club. Trapped as an outsider to the club by his brother for safety, Grant prefers the quiet life, until the Kings visit him in the middle of the night with an injured member. With them is Kai Woodrow, rugged and dangerous, who Grant can’t tear his gaze from.

A Killer Who Gave Away His Heart
Reaper kills for a living. He’s the man King calls when he needs to send a gruesome message. Unfortunately, Reaper’s also human, and has all the needs of a man. He’s been in love with Grant since they shared a foster home as teens, but he knows how protective King is. Reaper could never betray his president and friend, even if Grant’s the only one who sees him as Kai. He settles with quietly stalking Grant, until one night they bring him an injured club member.

One Wild Night
When Grant is nearly hurt, Kai can’t resist living in the moment, even if it’s bound to get him killed by King—or someone worse. The world doesn’t stop turning because he finally kissed Grant, but with any illegal motorcycle club, trouble comes along for the ride. When Grant is kidnapped, Kai would move heaven and hell to find him, and destroy the people who took him.

Review:

Soooooo…..no.

The writing in this book is fine. However, despite a strong start it was a total flop for me. The reason being the sex. At one point while listening to this book I strolled by a mirror and noticed that I actually had my lip physically curled into a sneer. I was that displeased with it.

Here’s the thing. I have no problem with the Master/pet, Sir/boy, D/s (whatever you want to call it) relationship as a kink. HOWEVER, in a book it really has to be tied in somehow. In King’s Killer, not only did nothing in the narrative suggest either man was into this sort of sex (and at no point had either felt the other out to see if the feeling was mutual), prior to the first sex scene the reader is given the distinct impression at least one of them is against it and the other has only ever really had one night stands. There is a scene in which Grant is speaking to another King, who is into whips, chains and such, and Kai thinks to himself that Grant is too good to get involved with such things. So, when Kai later literally pulls out a chain during sex it felt HORRIBLY incongruous.

Further, part of what Kai is supposed to love about Grant is that he can be his more gentle self. Kai is supposed to be the only man he doesn’t want to see him as a monster. So, the first thing he does once he gets him in bed is slap him and start calling him Boy in a distancing manner? No, it doesn’t fit the narrative AT ALL! I sneered every time he said it.

I cannot stress enough how out of place this dynamic felt to the story. In fact, I strongly suspect it was only included because the whole Sir/Boy thing was a fad for a little while. I just started skipping through the sex scenes.

Similarly, Kai and Grant were supposed to have known each other since they were children. Exact time frames aren’t given. But it’s more than 10 years, at least. Since Kai is older, he’s fantasized about Grant since he was 16, and Kai is 27 in the book. But the two seem like practical strangers. In the beginning Kai insists on keeping his distance from Kai because he’s loyal to Aaron and Grant is afraid of Kai. Then out of nowhere, with no instigating event, the two suddenly threw themselves at one another. What changed? NO idea.

Lastly, I need to address the narrator. He did a fine job. Mechanically I have no complaints. But I think he was the wrong choice for this book. He sounds about 12. I looked him up. He seems to be mid-twenties (or there about), but he sounds young. This made the already unappealing sex scenes super awkward and uncomfortable for me.

All in all, I felt like this book tried to accomplish something it wasn’t able to. It didn’t have the foundation to carry the dynamic the authors set out to develop (or fell into developing).

I also have a few odd little notes. I’m a little befuddled by one author naming a character after themselves. It may be spelled differently, but I listened to the audio (narrated by Kaeomakana Tiwanak). So, that made no never mind to me. And I think there was a point late in the book where Grant was referred to as Arthur more than once. I was confused, maybe I was misunderstanding something.

Book Review of Into the Mist (Falcon Mercenary Group #1), by Maya Banks

I borrowed a copy of Into the Mist, by Maya Banks, through Hoopla.

Description from Goodreads:

Hostage recovery specialist Eli Chance has a secret. He was born a shifter. A freak of nature.

While on a mission, Eli’s men and their mercenary guide are exposed to a powerful chemical agent, and suddenly his secret has become easier to hide. Now he’s not the only one with the gift. But for his men, this “gift” is becoming more and more of a curse.

Tyana Berezovsky’s brother Damiano was the guide for Eli’s team and was the worst affected by the chemical. As he grows increasingly unstable, Tyana fears she’s going to lose him to the beast he is becoming.

Tyana will do whatever it takes to help him, even if it means using her body to go after the one man she thinks holds all the blame—and possibly the cure. Eli Chance.

Review:

Anyone who has read my reviews very often will have come across at least one in which I’ve said that I used to think I hated the romance genre and refused to read it. Then, one day, I Realized that it wasn’t actually romance I hated but the gender representations common in romance books. I’ve learned that if I’m selective, I can quite enjoy romance.

Into the Mist is not one of those books. It is full of all the gendered BS that I hate and avoided for so very long. Tyana is supposed to be strong and talented and skilled, but she’s a walking disaster of TSTL. Her primary character development is being a rape victim as a child. And sadly, that’s more than anyone else in the novel gets.

The paranormal aspects of the book are so sketchy and poorly thought out that I finally just decided that they’re there as window dressing to world the characters live in. And that world is so ill-defined that I didn’t even know if shifters were out or not. So, basically the world existed simply to give the characters different places to have sex. And the sex wasn’t even that hot.

All in all, as my first Banks book, I was disappointed. Additionally, the narrator did a fine job. However, I hated the fragile, breathy way she played Tyana. It only exacerbated my frustration with the book.

Book Review of A Demon and His Witch (Welcome to Hell #1), by Eve Langlais

I picked up a Kindle copy of Eve Langlais‘ A Demon and his Witch, quite a long while ago. And I upgraded to an Audible copy on my recent audio-book buying binge.

Description from Goodreads:

Burning alive is nothing compared to the heat of his touch.

Roasted at the stake as a witch, while her lover watches, Ysabel sells her soul to the devil in return for revenge. A fair trade until her ex-boyfriend escapes the bowels of Hell and she’s forced to team up with a demon to fetch the jerk back.

Remy’s seen a lot of things during his long tenure in Lucifer’s guard, but nothing can prepare him for the witch with the acerbic tongue–and voluptuous figure. Her mouth says ‘Screw you’, but her body screams ‘Take me’. What’s a poor demon to do when his heart makes things even more complicated by goading him to make her his, forever?

Before he can decide if his demonizing days are done though, he needs to catch the bad guys, save the girl and then find a way to convince her to love him and not kill him.

Welcome to Hell where you’re screwed if you do and damned if don’t. And just so you know, Lucifer’s got a special spot reserved for you…

Review:

I picked this up expecting a funny, fluffy, sexy romp. What I got instead was an entire book of the heroine forcefully saying she wasn’t interested and a ‘hero’ who never backed off, groping her when unconscious and such. The book is just CONSTANT innuendo and icky rape-culture insistence that regardless of what a woman says, if a man persists he’ll get the girl. It even uses several of the stock phrases, like, “her voice said no, but her tone said yes.”

If I’m honest, there was probably a time (years ago) when I could have read this and only noticed the funny bits (and there are some) and think, “it’s so hot he wants her so bad.” But growing up and learning to think even minimally critically about what I read blitzed it. This is frankly just gross. Which is a shame. I’ve read Langlais in the past and not hated it (here, here and here, all in 2013). Now I have to wonder if those books were better or I was just oblivious to their badness.

Mindy Kennedy did a fine job with the narration, but I wonder how many times she had to take a break and step away to keep her voice steady. I didn’t sense a single eye-roll in it.