contemporary

Cosmo Red-Hot Reads Week: Everything You Need to Know by HelenKay Dimon

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

This is day 4, the final day of our Cosmo Red-Hot Reads Week.  (Note: we here at Dirty Girls’ Good Books generally make an effort to only review books that you can buy RIGHT NOW.  We’re making an exception this week, putting up some early reviews of Red-Hot Reads.)
Everything You Need to Know
Grade: A
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary, novella
Published: 10/15/13

Reviewed by Kate
105 pages


Jordan owns a website that shares the nitty-gritty about all the bachelors and playboys of our nation’s capital with all the single women looking for love. Forest is the owner of a large company, and more importantly, a mystery. Nobody knows anything about him or his love life (past or present). So for Jordan, it started out with a good healthy dose of attraction with the excuse of getting the down low for her website. For Forest, it started out as a challenge and quickly became something a lot more. But while Forest is beginning to think things might be getting serious, Jordan’s running in the opposite direction. She’s terrified that her instant attraction and need for Forest means she’s turning into her man-eater mother.

Flirty, sexy fun from beginning to end.  The perfect balance between all things good in romance.  Strong, determined alpha. Independent, intelligent woman.  Their budding relationship was sweet and tender.  Their chemistry was hot, hot, hot!  A must-read for fans of HelenKay Dimon or anyone who hasn’t tried her yet!

Cosmo Red-Hot Reads Week: Naked Sushi by Jina Bacarr

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

This is day 3 of our Cosmo Red-Hot Reads Week.  (Note: we here at Dirty Girls’ Good Books generally make an effort to only review books that you can buy RIGHT NOW.  We’re making an exception this week, putting up some early reviews of Red-Hot Reads.)
Naked Sushi
Grade: D-
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: Mild Kink
Genre: Contemporary, novella

Published: 10/15/13
Reviewed by Kate
 
Pepper gets caught after a little copy room nookie and is fired.  The stranger in the copy room manages to get away.  Turns out Steve, the stranger and nookie partner extraordinaire, is an FBI agent trying to dig up info on Pepper’s ex-boss.  Pepper’s always wanted to be a spy, so she decides to help Steve out.
 
This book boggled me on so many levels.  Pepper walks in and catches Steve trying to make copies of some of her boss’s documents and he decides the only way to avoid having his cover blown is copy machine sex?  I can think of a few other options myself, but I guess since he had a bad case of the I’ve gotta have her nows I’ll give him a little leeway.  I can forgive his little bit of unprofessionalism.  But it just keeps happening throughout the book.  They just can’t keep their hands off each other, no matter what’s going on at the time.  Temporarily stuck in a storage room while you wait for the bad guys to leave?  Cue the tacky porn music…
 
Pepper is supposedly this nerdy girl who wears glasses and flannel shirts all the time and knows nothing about sexuality but one look at Steve and she’s suddenly this smoking hot siren.  She was ditzy, flaky, and quickly became annoying.  And let’s not forget that Pepper’s always wanted to be a spy, so she becomes Steve’s little shadow.  But honestly she’s following him around more for his magic fingers than his spy know-how.
 
This story’s one saving grace was that it was short.

Cosmo Red-Hot Reads Week: Fearless by Tawny Weber

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

This is the second in our week of reviews of Cosmo Red-Hot Reads.
Fearless

 
Grade: D
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary, novella
Series: not part of a series, but it is one of Harlequin’s new line: “Cosmo Red Hot Read”
Published: 9/15/13
Reviewed by Anne
119 pages
 
Gia has a huge crush on Luke.  The only problem?  Well, there’s two problems.  First, they work together and their company has a no dating between employees policy. Second, Luke doesn’t seem to know she exists.  He’s pretty wild, and she’s pretty boring.  But Gia’s friends have a solution.  See, Gia and her friends (or should I call them “friendz”) have created “the Girlz Guide to a Rockin’ Life” and when one of them has a problem… it’s “gettin’ it” time!  No, really, brainstorm solutions to the problem, and they call that “gettin’ it”.  So, yeah, they drink some drinks and brainstorm and decide that Gia could follow Luke to a work convention he’s going to.  She could go undercover and seduce him.  Enjoy a hot weekend of sex, and then go back to being just Gia at work.  They’ve heard he has a job offer from another company, so they’re sure he’ll be moving on, never knowing that one of his co-workers was his weekend fling.  Really, what could go wrong?
 
This story was really hit and miss for me. The “Girlz” club and the fact that when they help each other out they call making a plan “gettin’ it”… It just made me feel old. (And I’m not that old.  I’m not!) I think it just seemed a little ridiculous, and that pulled me out of the story.

I did enjoy the parts where Gia/Vanna and Luke got together in Vegas. I just wanted to see more of them. We were *told* they talked a lot about personal stuff, but it was all off page. The sex was hot, but transitions (not the sexual kind) from scene to scene were awkward. I would have to reread to understand… Ok, there was just one scene on page, and now we’ve skipped to the afterglow of time #4 of having sex.

And it’s kind of a spoiler, but I’ll just throw it out there ’cause I saw it coming from that initial gettin’ it session… after the weekend is over, *gasp* Luke does NOT take the new job offer, and now Gia has to work with him.  Will he recognize her?  What if he does?  What if he doesn’t?

I was disappointed by Gia’s behavior back at work. I know the no fraternization policy was presented as the reason they couldn’t get together, but it didn’t seem to stop anyone else. Her behavior just didn’t make much sense.

So, I guess it was more miss than hit.

Finally, this was my first Cosmo Red Hot Read and I had high expectations of it. I enjoy novellas and I enjoy hotter more explicit reads, so this seemed like a good match. I want to mention that while this one didn’t work for me, I adored Cake by Lauren Dane (we posted the review yesterday). So I will not be judging all Cosmo Red Hot Reads by this one.