Tag Archives: PNR

Take Me

Book Review of T. A. Grey’s Take Me (The Untouchables, #1)

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Take MeI grabbed T. A. Grey‘s PNR novel, Take Me from the KDP free list. At the time of posting, it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:

SHE MAKES HIS BLOOD BURN

Dominic Blackmoore meets the woman who captures his mind and body with a look and he’s instantly taken with her. When he was ordered to take another mate quickly after separating from his ex, he loathed the idea. However, after catching sight of his bruid he quickly changes his mind. He finds her utterly captivating, sensually erotic, and yearns to learn everything about her. 

BUT SHE’S NOT HIS BRUID

The woman he’s mistaken as his bruid is none other than the event planner, Felicity Shaw, for his mating ceremony. Now Dominic will do everything it takes, even lie to the woman he craves, to keep her at his side. He needs to mate with his bruid in order to win his political campaign but he finds himself falling in love with Felicity Shaw. In the end he must choose between work or love. He may make the right decision, but is it too late to save his lies from hurting Felicity?

HE TAKES HER BREATH AWAY

Felicity Shaw wants more in life. She’ll even lie to get it, which is exactly how she lands a job with the illustrious Blackmoore family. However, it’s the head of the vampire household, Dominic Blackmoore, that has her heart racing and breath catching. The man consumes her unlike anyone ever has before. She can’t resist him though she tries. As she’s forced to work with Dominic she tries to keep away from him but he doesn’t make things easy. 

She may want him with a passion she’s never experienced before, but she will not be with him when he’s mating to another woman. It’s either her or no one. But one terrible lies seals their fates together in ways neither of them imagined, threatening their love and the very fabric of their relationship.

Review:

OK, so I’m not claiming this isn’t a quality book but there was very little in it that appealed to me. I simply didn’t like it. More often than not, the characters reacted to stimuli in ways that made me cringe and/or ignored the things I thought would be important in those same circumstances. My frustration level remained high for almost all of it.

To start with, Dom was a straight up dick. He kept spouting off about how he loved Felicity and would do anything for her, when he very clearly wouldn’t…didn’t. Even the change of circumstances that finally allowed them to be together wasn’t at his impetus and it’s pretty obvious that he would never have done it if things were left to him. Then when that change did occur it wasn’t at all clear that it wasn’t just another political machination. (What it was however was predictable.)

Further, he spoke disparagingly of his father’s tendency to keep mistresses while SIMULTANEOUSLY trying make the same arrangement with Felicity. He gave not one thought to the fact that if he got his way he would be selfishly consigning his mate to an eternity married to a man who refused her even the barest emotional (let alone physical) connection. Asshat! Asshat. Asshat. Asshat. And if I can’t bring myself to like, let alone sympathise with the hero there isn’t much chance of me liking the book.

Felicity wasn’t much better. I found her to be a weak-willed pushover. But even worse, she said repeatedly that she wouldn’t be with Dom until he was no longer with Julianna. Note, not I won’t be with you BECAUSE you’re with Jasmine, but until you’re not, which substantively isn’t much of a moral improvement over just being the mistress. It’s still destroying someone else’s relationship. The only real difference would be to HER pride and if in the long run, she has to play first or second fiddle. Bitch! Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. And if I can’t bring myself to like, let alone sympathise with the heroine there isn’t much chance of me liking the book.

I’m afraid my dislike began on page one, when it started with a dubiously consensual sex scene between two unknown characters (and I mean paragraph one, page one starting). I almost didn’t make it past that first chapter before tossing this on the DNF pile. I just didn’t care about the characters yet. Heck, I didn’t know the characters, circumstance, history, etc. So how exactly was I supposed to care? This was also problematic because since it was stated in this anchorless sex scene that it was their first time having sex together, in all of the subsequent almost sex scenes I knew it wouldn’t come to fruition. Totally ruined the sense of suspense.

I also had trouble with the writing. Again, I’m not saying it was bad, just didn’t appeal to me. I found the onomatopoeias (thump, boom, thwack) annoying, even more so since they were sometimes italicised and sometime capitalised. Either way I found they broke the flow of the narrative.

There were a lot of editing mistakes—typo-type/grammar mistakes, but also the more annoying content errors. For example, Felicity was said at one point to be 75 years old, at another she was said to be 118. She’s said to be short at one point and then tall for a woman at another, etc.

I also found it repetitive, in terms of using the same phrases again and again (I thought I might gag if I read “the look” one more time), using the same word more than once is a short amount of time (often in the same sentence) and telling the reader the same information numerous times.

Lastly, and I’m not sure how to make this make any more sense here than it did in the book, I had a lot of trouble with the use of the word ‘were’ as an abbreviation for werewolf. The problem was that when stranded in a sentence it was read as were (like were you there). Which means I often read it as the past subjunctive of the word be, then finished the sentence only to then have to go back and read it again once I realised it was supposed to be werewolf. Even after that I was stricken to hear it pronounced in my head as were instead of where, as if said by some strongly accented person. IMO, it would have worked better if the author had used the full term, werewolf, or if an abbreviation was necessary, wolf, thereby avoiding the confusion of terms.

I know people like this book. I’ve seen all the good reviews. I’ll even admit that the world it presented was an interesting one and I did appreciate that the author broke away from the norm by letting her hero fail on occasion  Unfortunately, I found myself procrastinating about picking up my kindle, while normally I’m picking up my kindle to procrastinate about other things. Almost nothing about the story or the characters made me happy. It’s mostly all personal preferences, but I’m happy to be finished with it.

The Shifter’s Conspiracy

Book Review The Shifter’s Conspiracy, by Cassie Laurent

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The Shifter's ConspiracyI grabbed Cassie Laurent‘s The Shifter’s Conspiracy from the Amazon KDP list.

Description from Goodreads:
Tess is a curvy, young detective that just can’t seem to catch a break. When the Commissioner of the police department brings in the FBI after a series of unsolved kidnappings, she meets Elias, a handsome, successful FBI agent who’s an expert in these types of crimes.

Elias has a wild conspiracy theory: he thinks shifters are behind the recent wave of kidnappings–they’re taking women as their mates in a scheme that reaches all the way into the upper echelons of New York City’s infamous Mafia. Elias knows this… because he’s a shifter, too. His attraction to Tess is undeniable, but he’s afraid she’ll reject him if she finds out who he really is. Will he be able to solve the case without driving away the woman he’s convinced is his true mate?

Review:
Um…No. Just no. I had to force myself to finish this one. It had stilted dialogue that used names too often to be natural, only passable editing, no character development, and a very simplistic story that was told in an abrupt manner. If it was erotica I might let it off the hook, but it’s not. It’s a very mild paranormal romance.

Seriously, Tess is supposed to have impressed the FBI agents by thinking to check the victims’ social media sites, as if they wouldn’t do that anyway, as if they probably don’t have some honker computer program to do it automatically. This is all after the fact that the FBI was called in for an abduction case involving 28 women, but the police didn’t seem to have done anything beforehand. Nothing. Tess and Elias solved it in a day! You have got to be kidding me. She walked into a bar and before she could even finish one drink, she was approached and kidnapped by the criminal. That’s seriously all it’s supposed to have taken.

Additionally, Tess is just an exceptionally weak heroine. Despite being a New York detective, not even a uniformed officer but a detective (which implies time on the force), she cried because someone called her “chubs.” Oh, poor baby. This, by the way, is the only aspect of the whole book that makes it BBW, as it is titled on Amazon. Her body is never even described to the reader. She also didn’t seem to know anything about investigating. Elias might as well of just taken the secretary out with him. I realise she’s supposed to have been a rookie detective, but did she not have any training? Did she never work with a detective during her time in uniform? She was like a child enamoured with the hero.

The inclusion of the paranormal was similarly obtuse. There was no reference to anything preternatural until 42%, and then shifters were SUDDENLY thrown into the mix. I knew they would show up at some point because of title (The Shifter’s Conspiracy (Paranormal BBW Werewolf Romance Novella)), but there was no build up or hints or anything else. To say it lacked any sort of subtly would be an understatement.

This was actually true for the book as a whole. There was a lot of being told how strong or strange feelings were, but no showing of it and no time to do so (since the whole thing occurs in about 36 hours). The reader is very bluntly told everything they are supposed to feel, but aren’t led to a single thought.

The whole thing is exacerbated by the fact that the book is just over 100 pages, but a full 25% of that is wasted in the beginning by showing Tess essentially doing menial tasks and getting ready for an interview. It’s meaningless to the rest of the story. That only leaves 75-80 pages in which to introduce characters, build a romance, solve an FBI level mystery, reveal werewolves, mate and conclude. Do you think you could manage it? I doubt I could and I’m certain Laurent didn’t.

This book has an interesting premise, but its execution is lacking. I wish Laurent all the best, but I won’t be continuing the series.

A Wicked Hunger

Book Review of Kiersten Fay’s A Wicked Hunger (Creatures of Darkness, #1)

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A Wicked Hunger

Author, Kiersten Fay sent me an ecopy of her PNR novel A Wicked Hunger.

Description from Goodreads:
A hundred years after vampires revealed themselves to the masses, the world is still recovering from the hysteria and war that devastated much of the Earth. And though peace has been brokered between the human and vampire nations, it is tumultuous at best.

Orphaned at the age of ten, Coraline Conwell has struggled to survive a turbulent existence growing up alone on the harsh streets. Until a wealthy man provides an escape from her vagrant life by offering his hand in marriage. Out of place in the upper-crust world, Cora has done her best to adapt to her new role as wife, but when her husband is brutally murdered, she is ripped from her secure life at the hands of the Vampire Enforcement Agency.

Now her survival teeters on the whim of a brutally handsome vampire named Mason as she is hunted by those who would see her dead. She must keep unwanted desires for the sexy vampire from leading her down a dangerous path while she discovers there is more to this world, and herself, than she could have ever imagined.

Review:
I generally really enjoyed this book and I’ll get to the reasons why in a moment. But before I do, I have to rant a moment and say I was leaning toward giving this book four stars right up until I reached the end and it didn’t end. Seriously! WTF? I understand that as part of a series some threads have to be left open in order to link the books together, but nothing concluded in this book. NOTHING. In fact, a brand new character was introduced on essentially the last page. THE LAST PAGE! You just can’t do that and expect readers not to get irate. You just can’t. **Deep breath**

What I did like was the writing. It’s smooth and easy to read. I noticed one or two misused words and/or typos, but very few. I also thought that Mason was to die for. I adore seeing a tough guy go all weak at the knees over a female. Cora was an interesting mix of frightened and strong willed. I liked her well enough. I even found Knox to be a curious character and he appealed to me. However, unless he ties in and becomes integral to the plot in later books, the drama around him read very much like a pointless distraction that diluted the storyline. The time would have been far better spent staying on track with the original plot-line (which was essentially dropped, BTW) and actually wrapping something up, IMO.

So my final word on the matter is that A Wicked Hunger was an interesting read that left me incredibly unsatisfied at the end. It’s well written with some engaging characters, but I just really need a conclusion of some sort if I’m going to walk away happy.