I’m over at Dear Author with a review of Fall by Karina Bliss. Unusual heroine, beta hero and a wonderful sense of place.
Tag: contemporary (Page 68 of 122)
I’m over at AudioGals with a review of Bad Judgment by Meghan March, narrated by Andi Arndt & Sebastian York. Interesting developments toward the end of the story surprised me. Big secret isn’t my favourite trope but I liked the direction this one ended up taking… right up until the end when it went a bit WTF.
Why I read it: This was a 99c special I picked up recently. The blurb intrigued and as some of my friends had read and liked it, I bought it.
What it’s about: (from Goodreads) You know me.
Come on, you know you do.
Maybe you pretend you don’t. Maybe you clear your browser history religiously. Maybe you pretend to be aghast whenever someone even mentions the word porn in your presence.
But the truth is that you do know me.
Everybody knows Logan O’Toole, world famous porn star.
Except then Devi Dare pops into my world, and pretty soon I’m doing things that aren’t like me―like texting her with flirty banter and creating an entire web porn series just so I can get to star in her bed. Again. And again.
With Devi, my entire universe shifts, and the more time I spend with her, the more I realize that Logan O’Toole isn’t the guy I thought he was.
So maybe I’m not the guy you thought I was either.
What worked for me (and what didn’t): While I don’t generally like “cheating” in my romance, I don’t consider an open relationship where every party involved knows the score to be cheating. So I didn’t necessarily require Logan and Devi to give up doing porn with other co-stars in order to feel satisfied about the HEA. I was, however, very curious as to how the authors would pull it off (heh) and whether I’d be convinced by it. I can assure readers that there is a HEA here and it is indeed very satisfying. It is a little unconventional perhaps (and here, I actually mean unconventional in the not-code for non-HEA sense) but it is nowhere near as unconventional as I was expecting in the circumstances. They are porn stars after all and given all the places this story could have gone, in the end, it was still a boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy loses girl, HEA – just with some erotic packaging.
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I’m over at Dear Author with a review of Dirty Like Me by Jaine Diamond. I took a risk on a blurb I liked and it paid off. I really enjoyed this one.
I’m over at AudioGals with a review of A Change of Heart by Sonali Dev, narrated by Soneela Nankani. I appear to be an outlier because this one mostly didn’t work for me. Also, ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS.
Why I read it: Lots of my friends enjoyed this one so I bought it.
What it’s about: (from Goodreads) “Trust me, I’ve wanted to punch you in the face a time or five.”
When the man you worshipped as a kid becomes your coach, it’s supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. Keywords: supposed to.
It didn’t take a week for 27-year-old Sal Casillas to wonder what she’d seen in the international soccer icon – why she’d ever had his posters on her wall or ever envisioned marrying him and having super-playing soccer babies.
Sal had long ago gotten over the worst non-break-up in the history of imaginary relationships with a man who hadn’t known she’d existed. So she isn’t prepared for this version of Reiner Kulti who shows up to her team’s season: a quiet, reclusive shadow of the explosive, passionate man he’d once been.
What worked for me (and what didn’t): Kulti is a slow burn, enemies to friends (well, at least one enemy anyway), then friends to lovers story and it is fabulous. Sal Casillas is a professional soccer player. She’s a woman so of course, she doesn’t get paid as much money as her male counterparts and her team doesn’t draw huge crowds but she’s as talented and skilled and dedicated to her sport as any man. Sal has a job doing gardening and landscaping work as well as playing soccer.
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