Kate

Married To The Trillionaires by Ella Mansfield

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
Married to the Trillionaires (Menage for Mankind, #1)
        
Grade-D-
Hotness Level-Inferno
Kink Level-Mild Kink
Series-Menage For Mankind #1
Genre-Futuristic Menage
Reviewed by Kate
95 pages
*Warning: the following review contains spoilers*
In the future…April has been raised in a “religious” community, where things have continued much as they are today. Namely, women are giving birth to babies. Outside of these isolated religious communites, women are done with the pain of child birth. Eggs are painlessly harvested and fertilized. Unfortunately, no one realized that more boys would be born than girls and that the girls would be born frail and weak and worst of all-*gasp*-sterile. So it turns out that the girls from the religious communities are in high demand. And that their parents are greedy enough to auction the girls off to the highest bidders (yes, that’s right, bidders-plural). After all, who else is going to repopulate the earth?
April’s father is looking to get remarried and has decided that the best way to get the money he needs for his new life is to auction April off. Although he is kind enough to set some restrictions. She can only be sold to a group of four or less men (bless his heart, five men just might have been too overwhelming for the little virgin) and that she must actually be married to one of them.
Bill, John, David, and Steve decide to pool their money together so they can purchase April. Then they set up a very formal business arrangement, contract and all. April will live with Bill (since he is putting in more money to start with-at least I’m pretty sure that’s why) and he will provide for her. Each of the other 3 men will get one hour with April every night. That’s right, every night. Any daughters that are born will be sold at auction with the proceeds divided between the men.
They buy April and proceed to pass her around that first night. Bill is nice enough to hire a masseuse for April the next morning, because he wants her to be ready for the night. They send her from one room to the other, night after night. And April is completely okay with it. Mainly because Bill has a hired chef who serves her shrimp and lobster and other dishes that she’s never had before.
They’re all starting to fall for each other and everything goes well. The men decide to update their contract to say that they will not auction off their daughters and will let them choose who they wish to marry. But before the new contract is even signed, April hears that’s it’s not uncommon for the daughters of their kind of arrangement to be auctioned off and she discovers the original contract that the men had signed. So she runs away (what else is a heroine who, up to this point, has been spineless supposed to do?). Of course, she ends up pregnant and, of course, the men find her shortly before she delivers. And everybody is happy once again.
I really was looking forward to reading this one. I love futuristic menages. But this one went wrong for me right off the bat. April is so meek. She never complains when her dad tells her he’s auctioning her off. And once the men buy her, there’s not ever a period of time when she is upset about it. Then you have the men. I just couldn’t get past the fact that they were so business about it. They started off as asses and never really changed throughout the story.
The sex scenes were plentiful. After all, the poor girl had 4 men to please each night. And I suppose they could be considered hot, although for me the formulaic approach that April had to take (first Bill, then John, then David, then Steve, and finally back to Bill) made everything feel so cold. Nothing was ever spontaneous.
The only positive I can give this one is that it is short. But if I were you, I wouldn’t waste my time.

Throwback Thursday-Behind Closed Doors by Shannon McKenna

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Behind Closed Doors (McClouds & Friends #1)
Grade-B
Hotness Level-Inferno
Kink Level-No Kink
Series- McCloud and Friends #1
Genre-Romantic Suspense
Reviewed by Kate
430 pages

Haunted by dreams most of her life, Raine is on a mission to bring the man who killed her father to justice.  Even if that man is her own uncle Victor.  Seth is on a mission to hunt down his brother’s murderer.   And you guessed it, his brother’s murderer is Victor.  Seth has all of Victor’s properties under surveilance and has been watching the new hottie that moved into Victor’s former mistress’s house.  Raine got a job a her uncle’s company, and is staying in housing provided by the company (you guessed it
again, the former mistress’s old house).  So Seth has been watching Raine.  All right, I think we’re on the same page now.  Raine and Seth both want Victor dead. But can romance blossom at the same time?

I’m not a suspense reader, at all. But I decided that I needed to branch out, so as part of my yearly goals I decided to read one suspense book each month (fyi-I’m one month behind already).

I took Kay’s recommendation and tried this one. It was hot and steamy and full of tension and suspense. Everything that I imagine a good suspense is made of. I felt the first part of the story dragged a bit. Raine thinks she’s pulling off this huge con and her uncle doesn’t know who she is. Seth is still just watching Raine from a distance. But once the story picked up the pace, it just wouldn’t let me go. I simply had to keep turning pages to see how everything ended up.

If you’re a romantic suspense fan already, this one sure fits the bill. If you’re looking to give the genre a try, like I was, make sure you have enough time set aside because once you start, you won’t be able to put this one down.

Jenny:Virtuous No More-The Novel by Nora Blackstock

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
Jenny: Virtuous No More, The Novel (Complete Set, 1-5)
Grade-D+
Hotness Level-Inferno
Kink Level-Moderate Kink
Genre-Contemporary
Reviewed by Kate
I feel that in order for you to understand my feelings on this book, you need to see what initially attracted me to this book. Here it is…
Originally released in five parts, this is the complete edition of theJenny: Virtuous No More series.
Jenny was a good, devoted wife. When her marriage to husband Mark grew distant, she took matters into her own hands to find out if he still loved her. He did, but his confession, and the things he wanted her to do, were shocking. To save her marriage, Jenny embarked on a sexual journey from which there was no turning back. She would no longer be the “good girl” that everyone knew and loved. (From goodreads)
Sounds good, right? I know both Anne and I enjoy the husband/wife trope, and I was hoping for some BDSM thrown in too. I quickly realized that the description was deceiving. It was flagged as being Erotic and Romance on Net Galley. And it was definitely erotic. But I don’t think the romance went past the first dozen pages or so.
From the blurb, we know that Mark has some kink. Turns out he fantasizes about watching Jenny flirt and maybe be fondled by other men. But, what bothered me was that Mark would leave Jenny alone in the bar while she was flirting with others. I wanted him to be a part of it, even from a distance. Get past it, I told myself and kept reading. Well, it kept getting a little worse, and a little worse. But I kept reading because I kept hoping that it would turn into the romance I was hoping for. But it never did.
Turns out Jenny becomes instantly attracted to Nathaniel, a man who approaches her on their first visit to the bar. She becomes infatuated with him and is soon sleeping with him. What starts out with Mark’s approval, even though he’s not in the room, quickly turns into Jenny keeping secrets from Mark. But then, wait for it…it turns out that Nathaniel is part of a 3 man con team. They go around the world seducing women and then blackmailing their husbands. But the FBI is onto them. So by the end, the bad guys are caught and Mark and Jenny’s relationship is left up in the air.
And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the sluttier Jenny became, the worse the editing got. There were so many spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. For example at one point, the word “angle” appears while I think the author meant “ankle.” The errors really pulled me out of the story. Although I’m not really sure why I’m complaining about that, since it wasn’t that great of a story for me anyway.
So yes, the sex was hot (we’re talking m/f and m/f/m/m). But the rest of the story was nothing close to what I would call a romance.