Month: January 2013

Star Crossed by Kele Moon

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Star Crossed (Battered Hearts, #2)

Grade – A
Hotness Level – Inferno
Kink Level – None
Genre – Contemporary
Series – Battered Hearts #2
Reviewed by Anne
 


 
After reading Defying the Odds I went pretty much straight to Star Crossed.  I was a bit nervous.  I really liked the first story, so I wondered if the second would live up to it.  Well, no worries there – Star Crossed was awesome!  I liked it even better than Defying the Odds, and that’s saying a lot.
 
OK, character roll call.  We’ve got Jules (aka Juliet) who is a smart and confident small town lawyer in her 30s.  She’s very close to her twin brother, the Sherriff, Wyatt.  Jules also works part time at the dispatch center.  Together with their best friend and UFC Heavyweight champion, Clay, they own a large gym and training center in town. 
 
Clay just defended his title by defeating Romeo Wellings.  (Yes, Romeo and Juliet!)  Clay has come to like Romeo after the events that happened at the end of Defying the Odds.  However, Wyatt still sees Romeo as the enemy. (See!  Romeo and Juliet!)  Romeo is New York City slick, rumored to have mob connections, and no one that Wyatt wants around his sister.  He’s every bit as confident as Jules, to the point of being cocky.
 
Unbeknownst to everyone in Jules’ circle of friends, Jules and Romeo had a one night stand after the UFC fight.  That leads to a string of increasingly hot phone calls, text messages, and video chats between the two of them.  When Clay retires and offers to train Romeo, he accepts, knowing Clay will be a good trainer, he’ll be getting some space from his mob connections, and – most of all – he’ll be close to Jules.
 
Star Crossed picks up in time right where Defying the Odds left off.  An extremely hot phone sex call between Romeo and Jules makes their attraction very clear.  A lengthy flashback to their Vegas hookup fills in some blanks and we final jump to present day.  This is one extremely hot and dirty book. 
There are so many things I liked about it, it’s hard to pick one to start with.  I like to mark notes while I read on my ereader.  At the end of this reading I had 30 notes, and 25 of them are pretty much just me remarking how hot a scene is, how funny a comment was, or how much I love these characters.

Jules and Romeo work so well together.  Jules is so comfortable in her own skin and sexuality.  This is a trait that’s put other men off, but Romeo loves it.  Their chemistry is off the charts, even when they aren’t in the same room. 

Jules and Romeo are both very close to their brothers.  I thought those relationships were really realistic, and these characters were fun to hang out with.  The book is full of moments like this one:

“I’m sexy and I know it.”

Romeo looked to Tino, who was currently enjoying the benefits of satellite radio, and arched an eyebrow at his youngest brother.  “You’re officially banned from energy drinks and convenience-store doughnuts.”

Tino bounced his head, giving Romeo a wide smile, showing off even white teeth as he sang off-key.  “I work out.”

These funny moments come between the hot and dirty and raw ones.  Here are a few lines from one of Jules’ and Romeo’s over the phone meetings:

“Don’t encourage me…’cause it feels really good when it happens like this.  I like it.”

 “Yeah?”

 Jules panted. “Um, yeah, I do it like this when I got extra time and the house to myself…like tonight.”

“I’m gonna come,” Romeo admitted with a pained groan.  “I’m so fucking turned on I’m going blind from it.”

“Oh, do it.” Jules couldn’t keep the whimper of longing out of her voice.  “I wanna hear it.  Lemme hear you come thinking about me and listening to me finger fuck myself.”

“Shit!” Romeo shouted.  His breathing was harsh, making it obvious he’d given in and come.  “Fuck, Juliet!”

There were a few things I didn’t like in the book.  Wyatt was portrayed as this very responsible and mature man, but he made some really, really foolish choices that had big repercussions for Jules and Romeo.  It wasn’t totally out of character, though.  I’m not a huge fan of secret relationships, so Jules and Romeo’s down low status went on a bit too long for me.  I really don’t know much about the mafia, so I can’t speak to how realistic that part was.    

Overall, though, these were just small blips on an otherwise incredibly good book.  This one is certainly going on my best reads of the year list, and I’ll be looking at Kele Moon’s other books, too!

Covert Seduction by Callie Croix

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Covert Seduction
Grade-C
Hotness Level-Inferno
Kink Level-None
Genre-Romantic Suspense
Reviewed by Kay

Reid Galvin is a Navy SEAL on leave after a horrible mission and all he wants is to see Becca Anderson. They had a situation before he was deployed and it carried on through his deployment. He has decided how he feels about her and wants to set matters right.

Becca Anderson is an employee at an investment firm who decrypted a file for a co-worker recently that was quite a shock. She loves Reid but has a hard time with his job and where their relationship stands. Reid calls her to set up a time for them to talk things out and interrupts her on a date that really isn’t one.

David told Becca that on the file she decrypted that some one embezzled money from the firm. Big money, like two billion dollars big. He gives her a copy of the information on a zip drive. She’s very scared about all this as she should be but agrees to wait until David has found out everything and everyone involved before they go to the authorities.

On the way home from the fundraiser they are ran off the road by another car and into a deep canal. They are trapped upside down inside the car with water seeping in from a crack in the back windshield. Meanwhile, Reid decides to wait for Becca at her house to come home after her date and happens upon the accident scene. He jumps in to rescue whoever is trapped, having no idea it’s Becca.

He rescues them both and then takes Becca back to her apartment to take care of her. The next day, she gets a phone message from David saying someone has broken in and ransacked his home. She then hears someone attack David and the line goes dead. She at that point tells Reid. At the same time downstairs, a man breaks into her house. Reid chases down the man and holds him until the police come.

Reid takes Becca to his friend’s beach house where they stay until the police wrap everything up, which they do quite quickly. They both admit they love each other and are willing to work on their relationship. In the epilogue, they are happily married.

This was just an okay read for me. It was plenty hot enough and that was done well. There was a couple of things that didn’t ring true for me, such as, Reid and Becca having sex in front of a picture window where the neighbors could and did see her. Also, Becca made a comment about tying him up at her mercy. The book describes how dominant he is and how he’s held back in their encounters in the past, so I don’t see him allowing himself to be tied up. Nor do I by into an alpha male allowing anyone to see the woman they want to marry, naked. Those for whatever reason were an issue for me. The rescue scene with the car trapped in the canal was pretty good but again, just an okay read for me.

Out of This World by Jill Shalvis

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Out Of This World
Grade – C+
Hotness Level – Blaze
Kink Level – None
Genre – Contemporary/Paranormal
Reviewed by Kate
One of the things I love about my library is it’s romance section. Four shoulder-height racks that rotate. The part I like best is that they are only loosely alphabetized. Meaning all the “M”s are together, but not necessarily in order. It might seem like a strange thing to appreciate, but I love stumbling across a favorite author’s book I haven’t heard of before. That’s how I found this quirky Shalvis read.

Rachel inherits a Bed & Breakfast in Alaska from her aunt. She takes her good friend Kellan with her to explore the B&B. There she meets Marilee, the cook who can’t cook, and Axel, the guide who always gets lost.

Rachel and Kel get struck by lightning and wake up with x-ray vision (for Rachel) and super-human strength (for Kel). And that’s just the beginning of the strangeness. A secret pair of guests, the aunt’s fully stocked gun cabinet, and dimension jumping pirates round out the plot.

This is definitely a departure from the Lucky Harbor Shalvis I am used to. Written in first person from both Rachel and Kel’s point-of-view, Shalvis has created a separate world that you are only given the smallest glimpse of, enough to leave me with tons of unanswered questions.