Anne

Along Came Trouble by Ruthie Knox

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Along Came Trouble (Camelot #2)
Grade: A
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary
Series: Camelot #2
Reviewed by Anne

This book made me smile and put Ruthie Knox on my short list.  I’d rank her up there with Jill Shalvis, Victoria Dahl, and Sarah Mayberry.  A sweet and hot romance with some humor thrown in.  I really want to go buy her first two books that I missed.

Ellen is a hard working, divorced single mom of a 2 year old son.  She’s also the sister of a very famous singer, Jamie.  Jamie unintentionally turned Ellen’s life upside down when he started dating her next door neighbor, Carly.  Even after Jamie and Carly broke up and Jamie left town, the press remains very interested in Carly.  When the paparazzi continues to be aggressive, Jamie hires a security team to take care of Carly and Ellen.  Caleb is head of the security team and very thankful for the job.  He doesn’t expect that neither woman will want his protection.  And he doesn’t expect to be so attracted to Ellen.

I thought this book would be about a forbidden attraction between Ellen and Caleb.  Thankfully, it’s not.  Pretty early in the book Caleb decides it’s ok if he has a thing with Ellen.  Also pretty early in the book he decides he doesn’t just want sex, he wants more.  So they negotiate.  They negotiate about what security provisions Ellen is willing to make, and they negotiate about what kind of relationship Ellen is willing to have.  I really enjoyed their negotiations.  I really enjoyed almost everything about this book!

Ellen and Caleb both are intelligent and not afraid to apologize when they realize they’re in the wrong.  And there are times when they are in the wrong.  They aren’t perfect, and that was nice to read.  Ellen especially has a lot to overcome as she comes back to life after divorcing her emotionally abusive husband.  She struggles to not depend on a man and stand on her own.  I really appreciated her journey and felt for her.

Rock star brother Jamie and neighbor Carly have a great story.  I think if their back story had been filled out they could have carried a book on their own.  It certainly added a lighter side to the book when things got heavy between Ellen and Caleb.  Carly’s grandma was a hoot, too, but I think I’ve read too many books in a row that had an outspoken elderly woman character.  They start to all blend together.

My only complaints about the book have to do with Ellen’s son, Henry.  I thought his Yoda-style speech pattern was annoying, and his confusion of pronouns felt unrealistic to me.  I could be wrong, though, I’m not a speech expert.  I did LOVE that he called Caleb “Cabe”.  Very sweet. 

Overall, my small complaints were handily outbalanced by all of the things I loved in this book.  I highly recommend it and can’t wait to read more by Ruthie Knox!

Take It Off! by Taylor Cole and Justin Whitfield

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Take It Off! (The Naked Truth About Male Strippers)

Grade: C-
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Non-Fiction
Reviewed by Anne
 
I saw this book and was interested in reading it.  It’s a behind the scenes tell all by two former strippers and current romance novel cover models, and who doesn’t want to know more about male strippers.  (Well, I don’t anymore.)  I really don’t know how to review it.  It is what it proclaims to be, but I think I was much more offended by it than I’d imagined.  Well, really, I didn’t imagine I’d be offended.  I guess I didn’t give it enough thought.  
 
See, I figured there would be stories of sex, and of mishaps, and of risque and funny things that happened to strippers.  And there were.  But I was caught off guard by how much manipulation went on and by what they do to get more tips.  See, the secret to getting tips is having regulars who come to see you and tip you when you’re dancing.  (I’m so naive!  I had no idea there were regulars at strip clubs!)  And if you are nice to them and pretend to like them, and even build up a little sexual tension… well, then they’ll keep coming back and they’ll keep tipping you.  It’s best not to have sex with the regulars, since they’re your source of money.  If they really push for more, you can let them take you out to lunch and try to make them your “friend.”  In that case, they are more likely to keep coming to see you, and keep tipping you.
 
After reading this book I feel like I know lots of tips and tricks of how a stripper picks up a woman for the night.  And if you ever want a quickie with a stripper, here’s what you do:  Look really hot.  Or at least hotter than the other women at the show that night. 
The writing in the book was just ok.  There were a couple times where what they were saying was just unclear to me.  I don’t know if it was a typo or what.  I also felt like it got increasingly less edited as I moved toward the end of the book.  In the beginning the chapters flowed a bit while covering the material.  By the end it was a just lists of different kinds of information and hook ups.

Going in, I thought I’d come away respecting the hard work that strippers do.  After reading the book I’m having a hard time not being disgusted by men in general.  So what grade to give?  It does give the information it promises.  The writing is ok.  I just didn’t enjoy it.  The book came in at 78 pages on my ereader, and I was really glad it wasn’t any longer.  So, I’m going with a C-.

The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

The Iron Duke (Iron Seas, #1)
Grade – A
Hotness Level – Blaze
Kink Level – no kink
Genre – Steampunk
Series: Iron Seas #1
Reviewed by Anne


I’ll preface this review by saying this book is an all time favorite of mine. I recently re-read it and I liked it even more, so there might be a bit of fangirl gushing going on today.
 

The Iron Seas series by Meljean Brook is steampunk. It’s an alternate history where some things are the same, but others went along a different path. So in The Iron Duke, we have a historical England that has recently escaped enslavement by The Horde. The Horde controlled the people by infecting their blood with “bugs”.  They also used technology to change the people in ways to match their slave occupation.  So a miner might have a pick axe for an arm and so on.  

The Horde looks different than your average English person. (I picutre the Horde as Asian.) The Horde was driven out of England due to actions by Rhys Traehearn, aka the Iron Duke. He’s a national hero. On the other hand, Mina, who is the product of her loving English mother and a member of the Horde who raped her, is pretty much despised on sight by everyone due to her Horde looks. Despite that, she’s an inspector with the police force, and the book starts when she’s called to investigate a death on Traehearn’s property.

Traehearn nearly immediately thinks Mina is someone he would like to have. Mina also feels an attraction to Traehearn, but for reasons of her own would never act on this attraction.  Traehearn is determined and the investigation keeps them together.  Unfortunately and fortunately, the investigation quickly deepens and gets more complicated.  This leads to lots of adventure and more time for them to spend together.

There is so much good about this book. Even the things that bothered me initially turned out to be so well handled, that in the end I didn’t have a complaint.  One example is Thraehearn’s alpha-ness.  When he first meets Mina he is enthralled by her.  She is interesting.  He wants to have her.  He gives no thought to her feelings.  He’s quite confident that she will be amenable to anything he wants.  Her resistance just makes her more attractive to him.  He’s rich enough that he can pull strings to get whatever he wants, and he doesn’t hesitate to force Mina into a situation where she has to go along with him.  He’s really an arrogant ass.  So the author has a big job in turning him into a sympathetic character.  But she does it and she does it well.  Amazingly, at the end of the book, Traehearn is every bit as much of a take charge alpha man as he was at the beginning.  He has a greater understanding and love for Mina, though, and that comes through loud and clear.  He’s not afraid to make sacrifices to ensure her happiness, even if he’s awfully alpha about how he does it.
 
Another thing I really appreciated was that Meljean Brook builds an interesting world, and she does it without boring info dumps.  The book has great secondary characters, too.  It’s got ships on the sea and air ships that float under huge balloons!  It’s got zombies and mechanical flesh.  It’s got the best of sci fi/fantasy and romance together.  I highly recommend this entire series!
 
One final note.  There is a prequel to this story.  It’s a short story called Here There Be Monsters.  (It’s in the anthology Burning Up.)  It’s one of my all time favorite short stories and is only loosely related to the Iron Duke.  However, reading it first probably did help me understand the world building.