Heat Level – Blaze

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.

Things Good Girls Don’t Do by Codi Gary

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Things Good Girls Don't Do

Grade: C
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary
Published: 8/27/13
Reviewed by Anne
194 pages

Katie Conners has always been a good girl, following the prim and proper nice girl rules her mother taught her.  She’s itching to make some changes though, and finds herself scrawling a list of bad girl things she wants to do on a bar napkin one night.  That napkin gets picked up by the new guy in town, Chase Tresspaso.  He’s a tattoo artist who rides a motorcycle, so just having his interest makes her feel like a bad girl.  When Chase offers to help her out with her list…  will she dare?  Thankfully, she does!  And this book is the story of what happens when the town good girl starts to go a little wild and stop letting everyone else take advantage of her.

There were parts of this story that were pretty funny, cute, and sweet, but I kept getting pulled out by little things that bothered me.  One of the things that bothered me had to do with my expectations.  The cover, with no clothes visible, says “erotic romance” to me, but this wasn’t a sex driven story.  I was also surprised that Katie gave up on a career because she was uncomfortable being around swearing.  I get that some people don’t like swearing, but Katie started college wanting to be a police officer.  When her mentor during a semester long internship told her she’d need to be able to read aloud a witness statement that included swear words, she couldn’t do it.  Eventually she decided to change her career goals from police officer to hair stylist.  (No, really!)  That seemed like a really drastic change of plans that she based on her desire not to be around curse words.  

There were two small parts of the story that actually upset me.  The first is a cat thing.  Maybe it’s really normal for cat owners?  I don’t know, as I don’t own a cat.  Katie’s cat pees on the clothing of people the cat doesn’t like.  And the cat only likes Katie.  Katie seems to think this is pretty cute or funny.  I thought it was really, really gross.  And then there was the off hand mention of suicidal aspirations used to convey how exasperated Katie was.  On page 12 she suggests she might drown herself in her bathtub because she’s had a rough day. On page 39 she’s embarrassed that Chase had pizza delivered to her house, because everyone will know he’s there, and she thinks about filling the sink and drowning herself in it.  I’m know I’m very sensitive to suicidal talk because of my family history, but it bothered me very much in this story.

There were some really good things about this book.  The one that kept me hanging on was Katie’s transformation from good girl to bad girl.  It was actually more a transformation from doormat to assertive.  There was even a discussion about the difference between these two states of being (though not using the words doormat or assertive.)  Even better, thorough out the story, Chase encourages her transformation, not for his own purposes, but for herself.  That was pretty awesome.

The list idea was cute and well done in this story.  I also enjoyed the friendships among the younger generation of women.  The conflict between Chase and Katie was really well done and realistic.  It was understandable that Chase did what he did, but Katie also deserved a big grovel to make up for his actions.  (She got it!)

So, all in all this one was just ok with me.  So now tell me – am I way off to let the peeing cat bother me?



When Strangers Marry by Lisa Kleypas

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

When Strangers Marry (Vallerands, #1)
Grade-C
Hotness Level-Blaze
Kink Level-No Kink
Genre-Historical
Reviewed by Kay
390 pages

Lysette needs to break a betrothal to a horrible man and escape her even worse step-father. After a severe beating from her step-father she runs away into Bayou country. She is found trying to steal a small boat and is brought back to the house of Max Vallerand. She is almost transfixed by him but thinks he would never find a red haired, freckle faced girl of eighteen attractive.
Max is blown away by the flame haired beauty his sons have accused of steal. After he finds out who she is betrothed to, he plans to ruin her where she’ll have to marry him instead. Then he would get his revenge against the man he believes seduced and murdered his former wife.
I really enjoyed this book in the beginning but it started to lag in the middle. It did pick up in the end, so it’s probably a three and half star book for me. I am a big Lisa Kleypas fan but I wanted more from this book than I got. I’m in a historical funk and not at all happy about it. I did find out that this book was originally another book and Kleypas rewrote it. What I mean is that it was her book but she rewrote the story because the first book didn’t do well. I don’t know if I’d recommend this book but I’m not sorry that I read it either.