Tag Archives: PNR

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Book Review: Fierce Cowboy Wolf, by Kait Ballenger

I won a copy of Kait Ballenger‘s Fierce Cowboy Wolf.

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She’s all he wanted, but was unable to claim…until now.

Sierra Cavanaugh has worked her whole life to become the first female elite warrior in Grey Wolf history. With her nomination finally put forward, all she needs is the pack council’s approval. But those stuffy old wolves refuse to elect her unless she finds herself a mate.

Packmaster Maverick Grey was reconciled to spending the rest of his life alone. Now, upon entering into treaty renegotiations with the other Seven Range clans, he needs the elite warrior vacancy filled—and fast. If Sierra needs a mate, this is his chance to claim her. But Sierra has an agenda of her own for their union, and they’ll need to work together against the assassin intent on barring the deal. For these two rivals, the only thing more dangerous than fighting the enemy at their backs is battling the war of seduction building between them…

my review

*Mild spoiler warning*

I’m very middle of the road on how I feel about this book. There were some things I liked a lot, some things I didn’t like at all, some things I thought I’d hate that turned out to be appreciable instead, and some things I thought I’d love but Ballenger managed to sully. That’s a mixed bag of feelings not easy to get on paper.

I guess the best I can do is take them one at a time, even if some of them overlap. I liked Sierra a lot. I liked that she was independent, forward thinking, and willing to pursue her own desires. I like watching strong men realize a woman is their emotional salvation, as Maverick eventually did. It’s one of those ‘Yes, it’s problematic but it ticks my sexy buttons’ sort of things. I liked that the sex didn’t get all dominant and submissive, undermining Sierra’s right to her strength, as was really popular in romance for a while.

I disliked that, even if Ballenger was willing to set aside many of the icky tropes so common in romance, she wasn’t willing to set aside the expectation of virginity one. She did try to give reasons Sierra was still a virgin well past the age one would expect it. But it still felt like a ‘qualifier of female purity’ line that she wasn’t willing to cross.

And as this plot point played out, it came to a scene where Sierra embarrassingly admitted her virginity to Maverick and asked him to teach her to pleasure a man. And I wanted to DNF the book right there. I thought, “Shit, she’s going to play the ingénue (which doesn’t fit her character at all) and I’m going to have to sit through all the trainee sex while Maverick goes all alpha dominant in the bedroom and teaches her about her own body.” I hate that. But Ballenger surprised me. She didn’t take the well worn and predictable path. Instead, Maverick refused and Sierra stepped up and negotiated for her desires. She knew her body, knew what she wanted, and refused to be denied her just rewards. I liked this.

I liked that throughout the book Sierra championed for women’s rights and Maverick was in support of them. I disliked that when he finally managed to push through all the equal rights changes the pack needed to bring them into the modern age, it was described through Sierra’s thoughts as:

Sierra cradled the pile of papers in her hands, staring down at them in awe before she glanced back up at him, tears pouring down her face. He’d done it. He’d placed her wants, her needs, and desires before all other duty and kept his promise.

I mean, woo-hoo for social equality. But I’d have appreciated if he’d passed all the reforms because he thought it was best for the pack or believed in them himself. Instead, he just gave his wife what she wanted in order to get her to forgive him for a past transgression. It seriously undermined the validity of the changes, or at least his deserved virtue for making them.

I liked that Sierra stood up for the idea of women being more than breeders and put her career first. But I disliked that Ballenger then ended the book with her pregnant, which back-pedaled the idea entirely. Sierra can claim she and women are good for more than popping out babies, but apparently the reader can’t be trusted to recognize a happy ending if it doesn’t involve said babies.

I liked the easily readable writing. But I grew to hate the “cowboy” and “warrior” titles. It felt really REALLY forced, frequently dropped in whenever Ballenger wanted to evoke the ascetic of a cowboy but too often not actually relevant to the scene. Here’s an example:

Her own eyes flashed to her wolf as she bared her teeth and let out a snarl of her own. She wasn’t intimidated by him in the least. “This is my fight. Not yours. Cowboy or not, you’re not leaving me standing here in you dust as you ride off into the fucking sunset. We do this together or don’t do this at all.”

The problem is that this was a scene where they’d just discovered who the villain was and he’d instructed another wolf to protect her while he went to kill the bad guy. What does that have to do with cowboy? “Pack-leader or not” would have fit the context, “Alpha wolf or not” would have made sense, even “Husband or not” would have matched the scene. But cowboy didn’t. I can’t even make the reference to riding into the sunset bring it into relevance.

And this happened over and over again, “cowboy” being dropped in to remind the reader that Maverick is apparently a cowboy (as if the constant readjusting of Stetsons or mention of cowboy boots or ranch-work wasn’t enough). And maybe it wasn’t, since what Maverick was was a werewolf pack-leader who owned a ranch. Giving him the cowboy title too and trying to make it dominant felt like Ballenger was sticking a name-tag to his chest and kept instructing the reader to look at it instead of the actual character development. What it felt like was that Ballenger had a note to remind herself to drop the word in every 25 pages or so to make the title of the book relevant. Similarly, Maverick’s random use of “warrior” to address Sierra lost meaning after a while.

All in all, the mixed feelings on this book drops it right in the middle of liked and disliked for me. This was the first Ballenger book I’ve read (which means I’ve not read the rest of this series, despite this being a 4th book). I think I’ll give her another change, gather a little more data before I decide how I feel about her books in general.

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Other Reviews:

Fierce Cowboy Wolf (Seven Range Shifters)by Kait Ballenger-review

Review: Fierce Cowboy Wolf by Kait Ballenger

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Book Review: Love Bites, by Cynthia St. Aubin

I picked up a copy of Cynthia St. Aubin‘s Love Bites when it was an Amazon freebie recently.

love bites cynthia st. aubin

A girl’s gotta eat—and so do her three cats. Recently divorced art history grad student Hanna Harvey has just fibbed her way into a job as the assistant to dangerously drool-worthy art gallery owner Mark Abernathy. For Hanna, working in the field she desperately loves provides the perfect opportunity to begin putting her life back together. Soon her cheese budget is in the black and her feline life partners are no longer eyeing her like a six-foot can of Fancy Feast.

But when her boss’s lady friends start turning up dead, Hanna finds herself in the cross hairs of a murder investigation. Even worse, hunky homicide detective James Morrison fears hers might be the next body he discovers.

With the “help” of the gallery’s quirky cast of resident artists, Hanna will have to hunt down the truth about Abernathy’s dark secret—before it hunts her.

my review

I’m going to start with a complaint. The title has no relevance to the story. Sure, it’s pithy and sharp, but there is no love or romance in the book. The main character hooks up with one guy and there’s a another that she’d like to, but there is no romance or even thoughts of love. Nor is there anyone who is love-averse such that the term Love Bites might be inferred to be in the pejorative. I understand the author has a naming convention going on with the series (Love BLANKs), but a title of Love Bites has no relevance to the story in this actual book.

Ok, moving past my admittedly pedantic complaint…I enjoyed this. I thought it was a lot of fun. I appreciated Hanna’s sense of humor and the banter between her and most everyone. Sure, there was a lot of “no one would actually say that in that situation,” but I’m not reading an urban fantasy book for the realism of it. Hanna and crew made me smile.

And while I might comment that there’s no love in the story yet, I did very much liked that Hanna was allowed to have a hook up (even sans love interest), enjoy it, and I didn’t have to sit through any passages of shame (be it from her or anyone else). She was just allowed to be a sexual adult and I appreciated the simplicity of it.

The book does end just about the time the plot looks like it might be moving past set-up. But I’d be happy to leap into the next book.

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Other Reviews:

https://storytellersbymarlou.wordpress.com/2020/11/03/love-bites-by-cynthia-st-aubin-book-review/

https://www.dreamcomereview.com/arc-review-once-upon-a-werewolf-by-cynthia-st-aubin/

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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.

Defiled - Ebook Cover - Final (2)

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 review

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.

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Other Reviews:

Books a Plenty Book Reviews

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