mild kink

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.

Turn and Burn by Lorelei James

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Turn and Burn (Blacktop Cowboys, #5)
Grade: D+
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: Mild Kink
Genre: Contemporary

Series: Blacktop Cowboys #5
Published: 8/6/13
Reviewed by Kate
368 pages 


Tanna was hurt in a barrel racing accident and hasn’t been able to get on a horse again. Unfortunately, that kind of leaves her floundering as barrel racing was her life. She agrees to help some friends out with their resort over the summer. Fletch is an overworked veterinarian. But when he hooks up with Tanna, who he calls ‘Sugar Twang’ (she shall forever be ‘Sugar Twang’ in my head), he feels the longing for something more. But he’s definitely tied to the area while Sugar Twang is only there temporarily. How can the two of them possibly work?

Okay, that’s all that general stuff you can get by reading the book description (well, except for the Sugar Twang bit, I threw that in for a bonus). Now, onto what you really want to know.

I think that we all know that Lorelei James succeeds at writing series that keep us coming back for more and more and more. Turn and Burn is filled with all the things that should keep you coming back for more. It is a solid entry into the series, but it didn’t blow my socks off. There was nothing extremely memorable about either Fletch or Sugar Twang. And unfortunately, a day later, I’m already forgetting them a bit. Fans of Lorelei James, and especially her Blacktop Cowboys series, will enjoy this one, but I don’t think this is the best example of her writing.

The other thing I think I need to address in this one is Fletch’s nickname for Tanna. Sugar Twang. Now I’m generally fine with nicknames. But for some reason this one grated wrong. And it was on every page. I didn’t enjoy the book as much because every time I read it, it pulled me out of the story a bit. Sugar Twang? *shuddering*

So, obviously Sugar Twang is not my favorite nickname.  How about you?  Are you pro-nickname or anti-nickname?  What are the ones you’ve loved or hated?

Run to You by Charlotte Stein

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Run To You
Grade: B
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: Mild Kink
Genre: Contemporary
Published: 7/25/13
Reviewed by Anne
186 pages
 
Alissa is has a lot of self esteem issues. A lot. And she leads a pretty boring life, just plodding along. So she surprises herself even when she finds out about an appointment for an “Assignation” that her roommate is out of town for, and she decides to go check it out herself. It turns out to be a club of sorts that meets at a hotel where the rich and lusty hook up with each other. Alissa is WAY out of her league.

Janos is a god. Rich and good looking, Alissa knows he’d never give her a second glance, even though just one look and the sound of his voice has her lusting for him. Except he does give her a second glance. In fact, he seeks her out. Now what?

Oh, my, this was a good and steamy read. Good, because you can depend on Charlotte Stein’s writing to grab you, and it does in this story. Told in first person from Alissa’s POV, I just didn’t want to put it down. She can’t even believe Janos is interested, and because I’m in her POV, I couldn’t either.

But when Janos turns out to have his own flaws? That’s when this story really shines. When Alissa grabs her own power and believes in herself, the story is a delight!

However, I wasn’t totally satisfied with the ending. I just wasn’t convinced that the same issues wouldn’t continue to crop up over and over and over. That takes some of the glow off of this story for me. Still, overall it was a good read.