contemporary

Seeing Red by Jill Shalvis

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Seeing Red
Grade: B
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary
Series: Firefighter #3

Reviewed by Kate
352 pages


Summer rushes back to her hometown when she hears her mother’s warehouse has burned down. She left town after a similar fire and has never looked back. What she finds when she arrives in town is her old best friend Joe. While Joe, a fire marshal, is investigating the fire, the last thing Summer expects is to feel flames for Joe.

If there is one thing Shalvis excels at, it’s the characters she creates. In Summer and Joe, she has managed to create two characters who are able to find each other without giving up who they are. The relationship with Summer and her family was realistic and moving. Joe’s friend Kenny provides comic relief better than a Disney villain’s sidekick.

When I find an author I enjoy, I – like any good reader – try to go back and read the author’s back list. More often than not, I discover that the author has grown into their writing, and their back list is sadly lacking compared to their newer releases. Happily, that was not the case with Seeing Red. Shalvis continues to keep me coming back for more.

How about you?  Do you enjoy catching up on an author’s back list?  Which authors’ backlists have lived up to your expectations?

Love at High Tide by Christi Barth

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Love at High Tide

 
Grade: B-
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary
Reviewed by Anne
142 pages 
 
Darcy is spending a week at the beach with her BFF, Trina.  Darcy’s got a big decision to make now that she’s finished her PhD.  Should she take the prestigious job offer from Africa, where she was miserable doing her dissertation?  Or should she…  what?  She has no other offers on the horizon. Some days of sun and relaxing sound like a great way to spend a few days before she has to make her decision.  If only Trina were content to just lay on the beach… But no, Trina drags her from one thing to another, starting with an embarrassing trip into the ocean where Darcy freaks out and is saved (in waist deep water) by the very handsome Cooper.  
 
Cooper just happens to be on vacation.  He’s taken some time off from the police force and is also trying to decide what to do going forward.  A little romance with Darcy for the few days she has left at the beach sounds really good.  Unfortunately, Trina has decided to start training herself for a career as a private detective.  Now that she’s finished researching the position, she decides to stalk, er, I mean watch a suspicious looking guy she sees on the beach.  There’s safety in numbers, so she drags Darcy along with her.  In between outings with Trina, Darcy finds time to go out with Cooper and their attraction is instant and off the charts.

So this book had some ups and downs for me. Darcy and Coop, I liked a lot. Darcy’s best friend, Trina, who has a lot of page time, kept moving back and forth from “She’s hilarious!” to “What a bitch!” She was very funny, but she kept pulling Darcy into these dangerous situations that I thought just made them both look dumb. That was really frustrating.

Aside from the stupid amateur sleuth stuff, and a couple way unnecessary comments about Darcy’s weight, Trina and Darcy had great banter and felt like real friends. They even make a Xena reference!

Darcy and Coop are both at a point of personal crisis. Those felt very real to me. And even though the story took place over only a few days, their connection and their decisions about the future were believable to me. They actually communicated with each other and talked things through!

So, while it had it’s annoying points, it was overall a good book for me. 

Menage Monday – Together in Cyn by Jennifer Kacey

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Together in Cyn

Grade: B-
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: High Kink
Genre: Contemporary, BDSM, ménage (with some f/f)
Series: Members Only #1
Reviewed by Kate
157 pages


Cyn has been best friends with twins Chris and Jared for 12 years now, and for 12 years now she’s also lusted after the pair. Unable to choose between her best friends, she keeps her feelings to herself and shares her wicked fantasies with her diary. Come on, you see where this is going, right?

Jared and Chris have owned a fetish club (that Cyn does not know about) for a while now and have always dreamed of bringing Cyn there as their submissive. They assume that she won’t be accepting of the BDSM lifestyle, so they never approach her. And then… Jared stumbles across her diary one day.

I really liked the premise of this book. Friends become lovers…with some whips and chains thrown in for fun. I jumped at the chance to read this one. I have three main gripes about this book though.

1. There is next to no conversation between Jared, Chris, and Cyn about what she’s willing to try in this new-to-her world of BDSM. The boys have read her diary and have taken that as her permission to have all those things done to her. I would have liked to see a little conversation before Jared and Chris added other club members into the mix.

2. Safeword. Let’s say it together now. Safeword. Jared and Chris are owners of a highly exclusive, members only fetish club. They are hyper aware of the security and safety of their members. Yet it is not until 91% into the book that they ever talk about a safeword with Cyn (and a lot has happened to Cyn by that point). Maybe this ties a bit to my first point, but I really wanted there to be a conversation between the three of them about a safeword before anything went down.

3. There’s a villain in this book (it’s not actually the villain I have a problem with, more the presentation). We know that Cyn has something hiding in her past. There have been multiple hints dropped throughout the book although we have no clue as to what this secret is. And then all of sudden-BAM! There’s a villain. And not just a villain, but a villain that has managed to corner Cyn. It just seemed so sudden and out of place.

The really strange part is that even with these 3 issues, I actually liked the book quite a bit.  It’s the friends becoming lovers hook that I enjoyed the most.  Plus, when you add in the BDSM aspect, I’m a goner.  There were plenty of secondary characters for the author to continue the series with and I hope she does.  I think we’ll see great things from Jennifer Kacey in the future.