no kink

One Sexy Ride by Vivian Arend

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
20983760
Grade: C+
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary
Series: Thompson & Sons #2
Published: 6/19/14
Reviewed by Anne
156 pages
 
Len is the quiet brother in his family.  He’s never had a serious relationship and doesn’t want one.
 
Janey is an outcast in her  family.  Instead of going away to college after high school, she’s learned her trade and is becoming well known in her home town for her remodeling and fix-it all skills.  She’s always had a crush on Len, her best friend’s quiet older brother.  She’s flirted with him for years.  She’s a little confused when he finally decides he’s ready to date her, but she’ll go for it!
 
I have such conflicted feelings about this story. I loved the characters and liked the story, but lots of details bothered me.  On the good side, Len may not talk a lot, but when he does, it’s good – Len is a dirty talker!  Janey is confident in herself, and I enjoy reading characters like her.  Even though she was forging a path different than the rest of her family and what they wanted her to do, she knew she was good at what she was doing and she was enjoying it.  She always had a thing for Len, but it wasn’t embarrassing for either of them.  Just feelings he never returned. They were friends and neither felt bitter about that.
 
I had two big problems with the story.  The first was that I was confused on a few different plot points.  For example, early in the story, Len decides he’s ready to date  Janey, but he never really says why.  Later he mentions (not to Janey) that  he heard she’s going to be moving out of town, so he’s planning a short term relationship with her.  When I read that, I wondered if she really was planning on leaving town.  I think it mentioned it in the book blurb, but I tend not to trust them.  Janey herself didn’t mention those plans, and Len never discussed it with Janey, so I wondered if it was gossip or an assumption he’d made.  It wasn’t until quite late in the book that the subject was cleared up, and it was unsettling to be left hanging like that.
 
Another example of this confusion is that Len makes a major revelation about himself to Janey, and it caught me so off guard that I initially wondered if he was kidding.  When it turned out to be true later in the story I was almost surprised.  Probably either of these situations alone wouldn’t have bothered me, but to have this confusion as a reader more than once makes me think it wasn’t just me.
 
Unfortunately, I also had a very big problem with what was at the heart of Len’s issues.  I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say I don’t think his big traumatic thing would have happened like it did.  When I read it, it just pulled me out of the story, and made me think “This author has never been in this situation.”  Either that or her experiences were light years away from anything I’ve seen.
 
So, I had some issues with the story, and despite great sex scenes and characters, it was just ok for me.  I’ll read more by Vivian Arend, though.  I’m curious to hear if anyone else has read this book if they had the same experience, or if it was just me!

Spirit Bound by Christine Feehan

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

8736477

Grade: F
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Magic, audiobook
Series: Sisters of the Heart #2
Published: 12/27/14
Reviewed by Anne
404 pages

So, I have to tell you, I really grew to hate this book.  In fact, I stopped listening to it when I was on section 18 of 21, because it was just making me too angry.  I didn’t set out to hate it!  I was really looking forward to it – Christine Feehan was my gateway author into vampire romance with her Dark series.  I loved her Drake Sisters series even more.  Spirit Bound is even set in the same town and world as the Drake Sisters series.  I went into this book expecting it to be pretty good, but things went downhill pretty fast.

First, let me give you the set up.  Judith is one of 6 magical sisters.  They aren’t biologically related to each other, but formed a family in their adulthood after surviving traumas in their pasts.  They live together on a farm in California.

Stefan is an secret agent for Russia.  He had a horribly traumatic childhood and has spent his entire life doing undercover work in one situation or another.  Stefan is assigned to insinuate himself into Judith’s life so that he’ll be there if she’s pursued by a master criminal who is known to be obsessed with her.  Oh, and Stefan has magical powers, too.

OK, pretty decent set up.  It gets complicated pretty quickly, but Feehan handles that well and it’s easy to understand.  The audiobook narrator was decent and I have not audiobook related complaints.  I enjoyed the magic in the story and I loved the sisterhood!  What I didn’t enjoy was the hours and hours I felt like I spent in Stefan’s head thinking about how he’d never allowed himself to love anyone, but now he was falling for Judith (before he even met her) and how he had decided that he was never going to love anyone, but his heart was opening to her without him even asking.  And his childhood was awful and he learned early never to trust anyone, but already he’s trusting her.  And he was never going to love anyone, but he’s falling in love with Judith.  Oh, and did I mention that Stefan was never going to allow himself to have loving feelings for anyone, but Judith has already taken over his heart?  Because Feehan mentions it a lot.  A. Lot.

We get some of the same head time from Judith, but it’s not quite as bad as Stefan’s inner monologue.  There are a couple bad guys in the story, but the one in town directly pursuing them (Ivanov, I think) is a sadistic, cruelty loving, bad guy who is into sadism and likes to hurt animals and people just for the joy of it, because he’s a sadistic bastard.  Yes.  He’s a very, very bad guy and the story is filled with Stefan remembering horrific anecdotes from his childhood (he grew up with Ivanov) so we can be impressed with how awfully sadistic he is.  Sheesh, that got old.

But, through all that inner monologue and driving home of points with lots of repetition, I was still really wanting to know how things would work out for Judith and Stefan.  I was curious and even rooting for them.  But the thing is, the more I got to know Stefan, the more I disliked him.  He’s a controlling asshole with no relationship skills.  He wants to know more about Judith, so he breaks into her home and looks around.  He stalks her, but we’re supposed to be ok with it because he has feelings for her?   He treasures Judith like she’s a thing to be owned.  He withholds information from her even when it seems like he should be coming clean.

And then, as if he weren’t being a big enough asshole, he starts drugging her to get her to sleep through the night so he can go out bad guy hunting without having to explain himself.  He says he does it to keep her safe while he’s gone. What????  Because leaving a strong, independent, and powerful woman totally incapacitated and protected only by a security system that he himself routinely breaks through is a good decision?  And he does it repeatedly.  Repeatedly!  And when another character calls him out on it, Stefan thinks he’s justified because he’s doing it all to keep her safe.

When Judith miraculously is roused from her drugged state and saves his life and then realizes what he’s done and is very angry with him  – only then does he start to reconsider his decision to drug her.  He admits to her that he “probably shouldn’t have done that.”  Oh. Really?  Thankfully, Judith is very angry with him.  Unfortunately, he continues to boss her around, which is how he ‘takes care of her’ and even more unfortunately, she lets him!  And when she’s still kind of upset he decides he needs to have sex with her.  He needs it.  And they start kissing passionately and he realizes he doesn’t know if she’s resisting or capitulating – and he doesn’t care!  He needs this closeness with her.

That was it for me.  I was driving while I listened and I just reached over and shut off the player.  I couldn’t listen to another word.  All I really wanted was for Judith to dump him and find someone better.

I know some of Feehan’s other books have old school “heroes” like this, and I’ve enjoyed them in the past.  I don’t know if I’m growing up and feeling more strongly about consent?  Or maybe that kind of behavior is somehow more acceptable to me when it comes from a vampire with super-human needs?  I don’t know, but this book left me steaming mad and very disappointed, I love Judith and her sisters and their farm and their powers, but I can’t listen to another word..  Please, someone, recommend a sisterhood series that will cleanse my palate of this mess!

Then Came You by Jill Shalvis

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Grade: A
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary
Series: Animal Magnetism #5
Published: 7/1/14
Reviewed by Anne
186 pages

I’ll be honest, the past couple Shalvis books I’ve read just haven’t worked for me. They were ok, but not wonderful. Well, this one, Then Came You, was WONDERFUL! This is my favorite Shalvis book ever!

Emily has a PLAN for her life. Having a plan has helped her survive some really tough years. Now she’s finished veterinary school and is on to the one year internship that came with her scholarship. Unfortunately, it’s not in L.A. like she planned. Nope. She’s in Sunshine, Idaho. So she’s altered her plan and is counting down the 365 days before she can get back on track.

Wyatt is one more thing she didn’t plan on. He was a one night stand at a convention a few months ago, and now… he’s her supervisor. This probably shouldn’t be a problem. They’re both professionals, after all. But he’s really cute, and he wears funny tshirts, and she thinks he’s hot looking no matter what he’s wearing. And then there’s the blisteringly hot chemistry that keeps popping up and they just can’t deny. They both know the score, though. Wyatt’s looking for roots and permanency. Emily is doing her time and moving on. They just need to remember not to fall for each other.

If you’ve read a few of my reviews, you know that I like low conflict contemporary romance. Lauren Dane’s Brown Siblings series is one of my favorites. This book is a lighter, funnier version of that kind of romance, and I loved it! Emily and Wyatt actually talk to each other (most of the time.) They have messed up lives and siblings and friends. And as always in a Jill Shalvis book, the humor and the dialog shine!
“You do realize that I totally blame you,” she said, breaking the silence.
“For?”
“Sitting there wearing a goofy-ass tie, driving like you do everything else, which is so stupid sexy I can’t think.”
He swiveled his amused gaze her way. “Anything else?”
She blew out a breath. “Fine. Mock me. Just…keep your hands to yourself.”
He lifted them in a surrender.
“And your mouth.”
Said mouth quirked, and he mimed zipping it closed.
God, she was out. Of. Control. She covered her face with her hands and took a deep breath. “I’m going in now.”
She didn’t go in.
“This is so ridiculous,” she finally whispered.
She felt his fingers grip hers. He lowered her hands from her face. “It’s fine,” he said. “You don’t want anything to happen, nothing’s going to happen.”
She stared at him. “It’s not.”
“Well, not unless you want it to, and then instigate things in a big way.”
…
That was when she lost her tenuous hold on her sanity, reaching for him at the same time he tugged. She landed in his lap, straddling him. “Hi,” she said against his lips. “I’m instigating.”

This story was hot, sweet, and funny! I highly recommend it and it’s going on my best of the year list! I’ll add that I read the first two books in this series a couple of years ago and then just lost track of it for a while. So I basically read this story as a stand alone, and it does just fine. If it’s the first one in this series you’ll have no trouble jumping in.

So how about you? What’s your favorite Jill Shalvis book? Or if you haven’t read any Shalvis stories, who is your favorite contemporary romance author?