Tag Archives: romance

Book Review of Laid Bare, by Lauren Dane

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Laid BareI picked up a used hardback copy of Laid Bare, by Lauren Dane.

Description from Goodreads:
Unexpected Desire…

It’s been ten years since clean-cut, sexy-as-hell police officer Todd Keenan had a white-hot fling with Erin Brown, the provocative, wild rocker chick next door. Their power exchange in the bedroom got under his skin. But love wasn’t in the cards just yet…

Now, life has thrown the pair back together. But picking up where they left off is tough, in light of a painful event from Erin’s past. As Todd struggles to earn her trust, their relationship takes an unexpected and exciting turn when Todd’s best friend, Ben, ends up in their bed–and all three are quite satisfied in this relationship without a name. As the passion they share transforms Erin, will it be enough to help her face the evil she thought she had left behind?

Review:
If I was going to title this review, I would call it Bondage & Ménage for Beginners. That’s what this book is. It is nice in that it allows the reader to indulge in a little BDSM without the humiliation that so often accompanies it. This is great for people like me who enjoy the occasional foray into the bondage scene, but hate the abusive humiliation that so often goes with it. Though this comes across as really light stuff (there is only a little bondage and domination play, but a big deal is made of it), it was nice to see one theme without it’s darker, more disturbing shadow.

Much more time is dedicated to the ménage à trois, but it’s still pretty lightweight stuff. Don’t get me wrong, the sex is smokin’ but it does tend to repeat itself in an attempt to not portray anything too extreme. Excuse me for my opinion, but if you’re brave enough to write a committed ménage relationship, you need to be brave enough to include all the ways a m/f/m grouping can engage in coitus (or at least more than just the safe for polite conversation ones). Otherwise, exclusions stand out as glaring omissions.

This would be a great introduction to kinky erotica. Not only because it only dips its toe in the kink factor (while pretending it’s going all hog wild, allowing readers to do the same) but also because there is a whole marshmallow soft underside to it. It’s incredibly safe.

It includes and endless supply of conversations like this, “Good. I feel that too. I want you to know I respect what you and Todd have. I’d never do anything to harm that. I care about you both.” It’s just so painfully earnest and therefore unrealistic, but it provides a gentle cossetting for any nervous reader. Personally, this kind of thing drives me up the wall. I don’t want to be cossetted, so all I get out of it is the irritation left behind by the internal, “yeah right, like he would really say that.” But some readers need and like it. 

This whole artificial safety net is further enhanced by the strictly proper use of D/s in the MCs’ conversations. It often made me feel like I was actually reading some sort of how-to manual. It’s not that it was wrong, just too exact for believable dialogue, especially since the characters are new to the D/s scene. It’s like listening to someone talk about sex, but always saying penis and vagina. It’s perfectly correct grammatically, but who really talks that way?

This left some of the sexual dialogue feeling stiff. It was in general anyway, but this enhanced it. Things like Todd showing up after 10 years and 10 minutes into their first conversation saying, “I want to dominate you.” No nervous, getting to know you again conversation for him. No feeling her out to see if she’s still into that sort of thing. No dancing around the subject or using pretty euphemisms, even though he’s never actually spoken this way to anyone before. It’s unrealistic and often highlighted ‘oh yeah, this is fictitious’ for me. It is, of course. But that doesn’t mean I want to be dramatically reminded of it.

If I’m honest, every-time the characters progressed form one stage of their relationship to the next it was blunt and sudden like this, no finesse. People don’t just leap out of their social mores so easily, but that’s a whole different issue.

These are all only small annoyances really. My only REAL complaint is that the broken, victimised, scarred, scared woman who finds a strong man to put her back together and protect her has been done and done and done and DONE. It’s beyond cliché. Now, throwing Ben into the mix was at least an unusual twist on the well-rehearsed plot, but it was halfway through the book and felt very tacked on to me. However, I will grant that seeing the two men 100% dedicated to the protection and pleasure of a single woman was a heady experience. And Todd and Erin’s history gave a believable reason for him to be so overly enamoured with her.

All in all, I enjoyed it. But I spent a lot of time groaning at the exaggerated feel good factor. I highly recommend it for any reader who wants to have their first literary BDSM or ménage experiance, but aren’t sure if they’ll like the genre or not. Anyone with any significant experience with the subject matter will probably share some of my eye rolling moments.

Betrayed By Desire

Book Review of Betrayed By Desire (Kyron’s Worlde: Foretold #1), by E.S. Tilton

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Betrayed by Desire: ForetoldI grabbed Betrayed By Desire, by E.S. Tilton from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Llayentia’s outcast psychics foresee destruction at the finish of nearly all time streams. Grim with determination, The Seven plot to protect their world…at all cost.

Kyra Atar is one irresistible assassin. And she knows it. Wielding freni-kyn illusions, she slips into the persona of anyone she wants…with one exception…herself.

Recruited into a life he despises, illegal half-breed Tahrek Mitan shifts from assignment to assignment without hope of relief. His newest job is simple. Betray and execute a fellow assassin…Kyra.

While struggling for survival the two must defeat the deadliest stalker of all: forbidden desire.

Review:
This was an entertaining enough read. It has an interesting world, interesting species, and an interesting plot. After a disjointed and confusing start, I spent the first half of the book really enjoying myself. However, around the 65% mark the book started to drift and I started to lose interest.

The issue is that, while the book started out with assassins doing cool assassin things, it then hit a strange domestic plateau in which very little relevant to the preceding story happened—reconnecting with friends, learning about herbs, setting up trading routes, etc. Not only did this take up a lot of time in an already gangly and too long story, I was left thinking, ‘What happened to the book I was reading? This doesn’t seem to be the same one.’ And it never got back to the first one. The book has a very abrupt ending, leaving all the threads open (that’s right, nothing concludes) and the story at the end feels very different from the one that began.

You see, this book takes the long view of history, which seems to give it permission to diverge from its primary plot-line regularly. I wish it hadn’t, but that’s just me. To elaborate, the book has five prologues. (Don’t ask me why, I don’t know either, but I’d have been lost if I hadn’t read them.) Between prologues four and five, 253 years passed. Then, between the end of prologue 5 and beginning of chapter one, 2,658 years passed!

Considering the length of time covered in the first 10% of the book, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that the remaining story couldn’t be contained within one volume. However, it seemed to me that it could have been condensed a bit. Long, LONG passages were dedicated to comparatively unimportant things, bonding ceremony preparations or dreams, for example, and most of these were contained within the not primary plot portions of the book.

My point is that in a story that already covered thousands of years and looks to take many more years to conclude, such forays into detailed mundanity need to either be curtailed or readers need to understand in advance that this is going to be a very long series, with each book containing only a fragment of the larger story but a lot of detail on the rest of the characters’ lives. Expect no closure here.

As an example, the seven children being bred in prologue one never appear anywhere in the book, or at least nowhere that the reader knows that they are one of the seven. This whole prologue seems to be a set up for something that will happen in some future book. There were a number of small things like this. The bit about a man killing women who remind him of Kyra, is another example. He was never mentioned after his brief 3-4 page blip into existence. (Though reading the blurb of book two, I bet he shows up there.) But scattered through the book were random, anchorless reveals that serve no apparent purpose.
Now, I must admit that I loved Tahrek. He’s broken, but extremely loyal and caring, not to mention badass. I melted a bit every-time he spoke. I liked Kyra, but I didn’t love her. She seemed inconsistent to me. One minute throwing herself at Tahrek sexually, the next accusing him of taking advantage of her. For half the book, she was a standoffish sort, the last half a giggling, hugging sort.

I think something else that contributed to the different feel of the first and second half of the book was that toward the end, once the Kyra and Tahrek were comfortable with one another, they started using names a lot. This often breaks the flow of dialogue and feels unnatural. I didn’t notice this pesky problem in the beginning, but I found myself gritting my teeth with it at the end.

With the exception of the too frequent names, I thought most of the actual writing was perfectly passable. The POVs jumped around a lot, but it wasn’t too disruptive. There were some random mysterious messages in a rough-paper-like graphic that felt really gimmicky and out of place. Plus, whomever the communications are between is never directly addressed, leaving the reader to wonder what they’re all about. (One more reveal for some future book maybe.)

So, in the end, I imagine this will be a really interesting SERIES, but as an individual book, I was disappointed. There is just so much set up for a really long and detailed story that I feel like someone handed me the first 300 pages of a 4,000 page epic. But if you’re willing to dedicate yourself to a lengthy series of reads, this one might be worth picking up.

Book Review of Phoebe and Seithe (Neuripra, #1), by Poppet

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Phoebe & Seithe

I grabbed Phoebe & Seithe from the Amazon  free list. It’s by someone named Poppet. I tell ya, that’s gonna wreak havoc on my last-name, first-name alphabetised list of reviews. I’m just sayin’.

Description from Goodreads:
Phoebe has the worst taste in men and after storming out on Brian she goes from the hearth into the pyre. Seithe has an immediate hold on her from the moment they touch. He’s more dangerous than Russian roulette and yet he makes her feel alive, exhilarated, safe. Infected by his intoxication she is obsessed with the man who changes more often than a chameleon at a disco. 

Seithe is more than a man, he’s a supernatural, one who puts Phoebe into immortal danger. Now she’s hunted, betrayed, and deliberately misled. 

This is a scorching journey to reawaken your senses. Phoebe’s light can only be found in the darkness of Seithe’s home, in his bedroom, in his arms.

Review: **spoiler Warning**
I’m torn on how to rate this one. At some points, I really liked this book. This is important to note, because I’m about to list a series of complaints that will make me sound like I didn’t. But they were the potholes in an otherwise smooth experience. While generally enjoying the book, I had some really frustrating moments reading it.

The first came about because of the unique writing style. It uses a lot of short, clipped sentences, often consisting of a single, descriptive word. “Angry.” “Hot” “Scared” “C-c-c-cold” This is definitely used stylistically, as opposed to a lack of writing skill and it does fit the tone the book wishes to create, especially since Phoebe spends so much of it angry, but it also doesn’t allow for a lot of description. I happen to like those details and I missed them.

The unexpected writing carried into the romantic scenes too. There is a lot of foreplay in this book. A full 39% of the book progresses in various forms of sexual teasing (really, there’s little else) before there is a sex scene and it’s the most obfuscated sex scene I’ve ever encountered. Not un-erotic, but not clear on what’s happening either. Really, they all kind of felt that way. They were sexy, but more because of Poppet’s descriptions of emotions than actual actions. I feel like I should call this erotica, but on reflection the sex isn’t graphic at all. It just feels that way. Odd, I know.

Also odd is the fact that Phoebe accepted all the strange paranormal things she encountered 100% without question. She noticed them, rationalised some of it away and simply ignored the rest. There wasn’t any sense that she thought it strange that peoples’ eyes and hair changed colors “every 32 seconds” or that Seithe could blind her at will or transport them about. None! How realistic is that? For me this was a strong weakness in the plot and it REALLY needed to be addressed.

This lack of believability was exacerbated by Phoebe’s amazing ability to trust. The fact that the whole thing has a satisfactory ending doesn’t really negate the fact that Phoebe was almost too stupid to live for returning to Seithe again and again. Really, all logic suggests that she should have been running like hell in the opposite direction. He kept insisting she trust him and then doing things that PROVED she shouldn’t (BIG deal type things, you know, like try and kill her), then insisting she trust him again. And you know what, like a mindless idiot she did. This was amazing to me.

I also couldn’t always follow her leaps of logic about why Seithe was doing the things he did. Sometimes it felt like magic that Phoebe understood. For example, at one point he was feeding her and she suddenly understood that he was trying to teach her about instincts. I get the linguistic gymnastics going on here, he was putting food IN her mouth, therefore it could lead to INstincts. But somehow seeing those words on paper and connecting random actions to a meaningful but vague theme aren’t quite the same thing. How did Phoebe get there? There were a lot of these sorts of miraculous “ah-ha” moments. In fact, the happy ending comes about because of one.

Lastly, to have the whole thing boil down to some form of brotherly one-upmanship, that instantly dissolved with no lingering ill-feelings a) stole a little of the books gravitas and b) was damned unbelievable. I mean, come one, Phoebe had made her choice abundantly clear, so why did the trial have to happen? And if the two were so hostile toward one another how did they make peace so quickly? Not to mention the fact that they pretty much hijacked phoebe’s life, manipulated, terrified and forced her to question her own worth. How come she wasn’t pissed off? Felt like a very convenient HEA to me.

Again, there were a number of aspects of this books that made me go “grrr,’ but for the most part I enjoyed the experience of reading the book. I’d be more than up for reading another of Poppets works.

On a side note: I THNK that this is a repackaging of the Pravus series (or more exactly, a combination of the Pavus and Neuri series), making this a retitle of Seithe: Pravus. This is an issue for me, because I happen to have a copy of Zauran (Pravus, #3) that I picked up on the free list last year. I think it’s probably repackaged as Zaria and Zauran, which is listed as book 2 of the Neuripra series. I’d read it now if I was certain it was the same storyline. I really hate uncertainty in these matters though.