Note from Anne – this is the first romance novel I owned, the one that started me on my love affair with romance. It hasn’t stood the test of time, though. Back in the day, I reread this countless times. I set romance aside for a few years and when I got back into it, I didn’t care for this one any more. I actually ended up giving it away, because it made me feel yucky. Kudos to Kate for taking on the challenge of reading My First Romance Novel.
Grade – C-
Hotness Level – Blaze
Kink Level – None
Genre-Historical
Series – Bride Series #1
Reviewed by Kate
Douglas, Earl of Northcliffe, needs a bride and an heir to get his family off his back. Due to a scheduling conflict, he sends his cousin, Tony, to wed the beautiful Melissande by proxy. Unfortunately for Douglas, Tony and Melissande fall madly in love and elope. Not wanting to return to Douglas empty handed, Tony makes the choice to proxy-marry Melissande’s younger sister, Alexandra, to Douglas instead — without informing him.
Douglas spends most of the book telling Alexandra he wishes she were her sister. Alexandra, who has secretly loved Douglas for the last 3 years, spends the book alternating between planning ways to make Douglas love her and trying to run away.
While Douglas The Ass and Wishy-Washy Alexandra are the main characters, Tony and Melissande’s relationship is also a focal point — a disturbing focal point. Melissande, being beautiful, is very self-centered. Tony, being her husband, must train her to be a better person. This takes the form of “I’m your husband, you must do as say,” but left me feeling almost dirty. It came off as belittling, embarrassing, and degrading.
The repeated references to Alexandra’s spine being strapped to a broom handle and Douglas’s continued use of “tell me you understand” got tedious. A sub-plot involving a kidnapped mistress leading to Alexandra being kidnapped herself added another layer of weirdness to the story.
All in all, I’m glad I didn’t waste money on this one.
Author: Dirty Girl Anne
When You Don’t Get What You’re Expecting
So, I just finished all 38 pages of Cara McKenna’s Brazen.
There. Enjoy that cover goodness! For about 37 pages I was in love with this short story. It’s different. It’s really hot. Caroline and Sean are awesome together. And Caroline put together an honest to goodness harem of young men who are on a schedule to come and hang out with her each evening. (Or should I say hang out and come with her???) But on that last page… it’s not a happy ending. They each go their own way. I just didn’t see it coming and it really caught me off guard! (Note to self: check tags on goodreads reviews to look for HEA before reading.) I think I still would have read it if I’d known it was just about a short affair. I think I would have liked it better for knowing what I was getting into, actually. Which brings me to my point…
I hate it when I don’t get what I’m expecting! I read to escape my real life. I expect a HEA, and I appreciate some hot sex along the way. But I’m picky about that, too. I like to know what kind of heat level to expect before I read. I’m generally ok if a book is hotter than I expected, but if I’m expecting explicit love scenes and I don’t get them, it leaves me disappointed.
Most of the time, reading for escape, I’m reading for an HEA. The new 50 Shades trend of trilogies where you only get the HEA after all three books? Drives me CRAZY. I don’t want to wait that long! But it makes me horribly mad to read and find a cliffhanger ending when I’m not expecting it! That’s rare now, as I’m reading more reviews and on the lookout for such manipulations! I’d rather think of the trilogy as one big book, and I don’t want to read them unless I can read them all.
There are excpetions, of course, because I totally love Dallas and Roarke (J.D. Robb) and I think I’ll read anything in the Kate Daniels world (though I’m a book behind!) and these are both series that stay with the same couple all the way through. Oh, and the Adrian English series by Josh Lanyon goes on that same couple series list. In each of these cases, the book itself comes to a pretty satisfactory ending, it just leaves you wanting more – not teetering at the edge of a cliffhanger.
So I know what I want. And I’ll read reviews and snoop around to make sure I’m getting what I want. And if I’m goign to step out of my usual, I like to know it going in. (Ummm, yeah, people have mentioned that i might have some control issues. It’s ok, I’ve got it under control.) How about you? Do you enjoy a surprise? Are you ok with a cliffhanger? What do you think? ~Anne
Raw Heat by Charlotte Stein
Grade – B+
Hotness Level – Inferno
Kink Level – None
Genre-paranormal, novella
Reviewed by Anne
I have been on a break from reading. I didn’t mean to, it just happened! I started sewing and crocheting and I had so many ideas I wanted to get to and… I just wasn’t picking up my reader! Then when I did pick up my reader I was in the middle of a sweet Christmas romance and, as much as I wanted it to work for me, it just wasn’t working! So, I set aside the Christmas sweets (thank you for that advice, Kate) and picked up something much darker – Raw Heat.
I’m a Charlotte Stein fan. I haven’t read everything she’s written, but I’m working my way through her back list and I really enjoy her voice. I had Raw Heat on my reader, bought at a 50% off sale at All Romance eBooks, I suspect, and I decided to try it. It’s a novella and it’s a pretty short one, but there’s a lot of story packed into the pages. Serena is a nurse, well, almost a nurse at an underground facility that experiments on werewolves. See, werewolves have taken over the world to the point that just pockets of humans exist, hiding away in above ground fortresses or in literally underground cities. But werewolves regularly attack and the humans are losing.
Serena’s patient is Connor. She cleans him up after the “doctors” have experimented on him. Tortured him. He is a werewolf, which means he quickly heals any damage they’ve done to him. But healing doesn’t remove blood, so Serena comes in each day to clean him up. And they have started talking to each other. And Serena is falling for him.
The story is told entirely from Serena’s point of view, but it’s done in such a way that you clearly know Connor has feelings for her as well. This is an erotic short, so it starts when Serena and Connor are finally taking the step to make their relationship physical.
I really enjoyed the story. It was a good hot read while being dark and complex. All that in a short story. From the beginning I was a bit creeped out wondering if Serena was part of an experiment she wasn’t aware of with Connor. That bothered me, but added an edge to the story. I think that added a bit too much suspense for my personal taste, but overall the story worked for me.
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