Category: Contemporary

Review: The Queen

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tl;dr: a totally satisfying conclusion but i selfishly want more

The Story:

The final full-length novel in the Original Sinners series is just as haunting as all the ones that precede it. After engaging in an public display of affection, Nora wants to confess to Søren about two times that she nearly came back to him during the time they were separated, since she has realized from his behavior as of late that he is likely not going to be a priest much longer.

The Queen takes us through her training by Kingsley to be the city’s most notorious Dominatrix, and navigating her joy at freedom and her pain at being without Søren, whom she still loves deeply. Eleanor is reborn as Nora, and has to prove herself when their entire kink community knows her as being the submissive of the priest. There’s even a villain, another dominatrix that uses her knowledge of the kink community as a weapon, trying to keep everyone afraid of her.

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Review: Forever Mine

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tl;dr: bland romance about superhero-loving butt-kicking girl and doctor with a secret

The Story:

Sometimes you read books that are just…fine. There’s nothing particularly amazing about them, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why you aren’t fangirling over them because there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. It just…is. And that was this book.

I wanted to love it, I really did. Former cop Maya Goodwin runs a superhero fitness class that incorporates some weapons and martial arts to increase kids’ self-esteem. She loves comic books and superheroes and has a giant poster of Captain America in her bedroom.

Alex Nolan, pediatrician and hemophiliac, sees her mall demonstration and wants to incorporate some of her class stuff with his daughter, Charli, who he didn’t know existed until recently. She also has symptoms of hemophilia, and he needs to make adjustments for her. They have lust at first sight and start to fall for each other. Maya is messy and pushy and Alex is more reserved.

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Review: Sweet Surrender

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tl;dr: romance lessons bring two people together in a lovely (and dirty) explosion

The Story:

Tyler Stone is the youngest of the Stone brothers, and apparently has always been the ‘screw up’. He dropped out of college, tinkers with cars on the weekends, and spends his time partying, playing video games, and boozing, all the while taking up with a variety of beautiful women who use him for his trust fund. By the time our story starts, approximately 6 months after Sweet Escape ended, Tyler’s ways have caught up to him and he’s in danger of having charges pressed against him for taking a girlfriend’s boat on a joyride and crashing it. His father has banished him to the corporate library at Sugar Rush, which turns out to be in chaos. He’s hating life when Kate Darling literally falls into his arms, startled by his voice when she’s on a ladder reaching for a book.

If you’ve read the previous two books, you know Kate already. She’s young, but she has a severe business-like manner. She’s extremely efficient and good at her job. She gets a bit of a backstory here, but it’s almost wholly unnecessary. Raised by a single dad, who is now remarried to a woman Kate seems to like just fine; but feeling like a third wheel, she decided to move clear across the country for the executive assistant job at Sugar Rush.

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Review: The Virgin

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tl;dr: from Eleanor to Nora, a young woman finds her own power

The Story:

Readers know from the very first book in this series that Nora Sutherlin, then Eleanor Schreiber, left the man that owned her body and soul because of something. We get bits and pieces of it throughout the other books, but in The Virgin, we get the full picture. Of course, Reisz makes us wait until the very end to see how he ends up losing control, and the fragments of bone in the locker she leaves for Kingsley to find spur Søren’s other love to leave, too.

Eleanor, referred to as Elle for most of the book, escapes to her mother’s convent in upper New York state, since no men, not even priests, are allowed entry. It’s a safe haven where she is able to get herself back together from the crushing blow she was dealt that caused her to leave. The reunion between mother and daughter was so poignant and beautiful, that I full on sobbed.

Her mother cupped her face and looked her in the eyes. “Every morning for the past three years I’ve woken up and prayed the same prayer. Do you want to know what that prayer is?”

“What?” Elle asked, even though she was certain she didn’t want to know.

“Dear God, please don’t let today be the day he finally kills her.”

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Review: So Wicked

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tl;dr: it was confusing in some ways and still confusing in many more ways

The story:

So Wicked is the third in a series of so-called Bad Behavior novels, although I think “nonsensical behavior” may have been more apt. Marshall and Alexis run into each other at the bar that Marshall is opening, with the financial backing of her ex-husband that she abandoned, along with her infant daughter, 6 years before. Marshall has a visceral reaction to seeing her again, and lets loose in a string of profanities that could turn a gal’s hair white. But sparks fly between them, and leads to something more. So far, interesting premise, right?

Spoilers follow, because I don’t think I can fully explain the bizarre trajectory of this novel otherwise.

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Review: Sweet Escape

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tl;dr: ANOTHER SUGARY SNACK FROM NINA LANE

The Story:

Sweet Escape begins nearly immediately after Sweet Dreams. With Polly off to Paris for her pastry-making class, sister Hannah is left behind to manage the bakery, and to hopefully continue to keep Wild Child on the upswing since the donut/eclairs hybrid that Polly invented boosted them into some minor fame. With CEO Luke Stone off in Paris with his fiancée, Evan Stone is left to manage that family business, but the next youngest Stone brother is keeping a secret: the fact that he will need to have surgery on his heart, getting a replacement valve, within the next 4-5 months. He doesn’t want anyone to know because he’s worried that Luke will come home and displace him yet again.

Of course, what else are two family-business stand-ins to do but fall for each other? Neither of them want anything serious, but of course their hearts betray them. Hannah bids on Evan at a bachelor auction that she’s catering, and suddenly they have 3 dates to go on, and all of that quality time together leads them to some canoodling in the Napa Valley.

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Review: Burn

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tl;dr: weak heroine but great whodunit

The Story:

Someone is setting fire to an array of buildings set along the Riverfront district in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and it’s a veritable who’s-who of whodunits. That’s where the story begins, between a quivering real estate developer with a past and a handsome firefighter with a hero complex.

Chloe is trying to forge ahead with her career as a real estate wunderkind, flipping old abandoned warehouses into useable spaces with businesses on the ground floor below modern condominiums, revitalizing old with new. (An apt metaphor for her life.) Unfortunately, the building that is her current project goes up in flames, and she is considered a person of interest as all the evidence points to arson. Ryan was on the scene for the fire, and he’s training to be a fire inspector or something, so he is abreast of all the evidence that paints Chloe in a not so great light. Also, when he meets her, despite their immediate attraction, she’s pretty skittish and his spidey sense is alerted that she needs saving.

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Review: Sweet Dreams

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tl;dr: sexy candy-maker and struggling baker have sweet, sexy times

The Story:

Polly Lockhart is at a turning point in her career. Luke Stone is an overprotective workaholic. Sound familiar? If you have read Nina Lane’s other series, Spiral of Bliss, these archetypes do seem to be nearly carbon copies of Dean and Liv. There are major differences, but overall, Liv and Polly are practically twins separated at birth, and Dean and Luke don’t fall too far from the same tree.

But let’s return to that later.

Polly is floundering both personally and professionally, dating a loser who cares more about video games than her and struggling to keep her late mother’s bakery solvent. In the months since her mother passed from cancer, Polly has been going through the motions. At the insistence of her friend, she goes out to have fun at a dive bar, and ends up making out (and puking on) a very sexy man. She thinks she’ll never see him again, but fate is never that kind in a romance novel!

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Review: The King

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tl;dr: Kingsley’s journey from PTSD to BDSM is sexy, funny, and wonderful

The Story:

Anytime that I think I can’t be more in love with the characters in Tiffany Reisz’s world of Original Sinners, I’m proven wrong. The King covers nearly the same time period as The Saint, except from the vantage of Kingsley Edge. The story begins with Kingsley feeling depressed and useless, retired from his service in the French Foreign Legion, healing from a nearly fatal bullet wound to the chest, and having more money than he knows what to do with. He misses Søren, and can’t understand why they are still separated.

When they finally meet again, Kingsley is shocked to find the man he is in love with is now a Catholic priest. It feels rather like a betrayal, in a way, now that there’s a huge barrier in between them. As they rekindle their friendship, they begin something new, and Søren enlists his help in order to prevent a young Eleanor from going to jail. Kingsley is still despondent until Søren nearly pleads with him to start over, to stop drinking himself to death. And so Kingsley finds a purpose: he starts the underground club that ends up to be the 8th Circle.

It’s a bit of twisty journey to get there, including a few subplots involving a Christian fundamentalist group, some gay reorientation camps, a Russian dominatrix and a beautiful blond boy named Justin, and it all ends up moments where we left off in the previous book, with Kingsley confronting Nora at a vineyard in France in the present day.

Technical Elements:

I’m not sure if all four of the novels in the White Years half of this series use a framing device, but this one did as well. Unlike The Saint, this book doesn’t pause for interruptions back to the present, leaving the entire story of Kingsley from wounded veteran to billionaire club owner intact. Kingsley visits with Grace in order to give her something, and share about Søren’s life, and what to do if the son, Fionn, turns out to be like his biological father, the sadist. Kingsley doesn’t want Grace and Zach to fear that possibility, instead, he gives them some resources and back story, including an interesting prophecy that both Søren and Kingsley received from a domme in Italy.

Either way, I didn’t totally understand the reason that Kingsley was telling the entire story to Grace, including all the minor bits, but it is very interesting story and I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Final Thoughts:

There are two more books in the series, and I’m both thick with equal parts anticipation and dread. I wish there were infinite stories in this universe, because I am going to be sad to leave them.

Find a copy at your local library!

Tiffany Reisz has ruined me for other books, so you can start with The Siren if you haven’t already done so.

Review: Love on Tap

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tl;dr: okay novel that’ll leave you more thirsty for beer than romance

The Story:

You know that feeling you get when you see characters in a TV show eating something, and suddenly you are craving it like nobody’s business? This happened to me with this book. I’m dying for some beer. I’ll probably be running out to the store later, but first, I’ll tell you about this book.

Love on Tap brings two characters together from opposite sides of the supply chain. Wyatt Montgomery needs a spectacular beer to reinvigorate his struggling gastropub in Denver, and Bec Dempsey needs some capital to fuel her craft brewery after her ex took off with the funds and her heart. After Wyatt hears some whispering about a so-called legendary brew called Zoria, he packs up and heads to the town of Antero to find it.

Once he meets up with Bec, she sends him on this bizarre quest that has him tracking down the items needed to create a new barrel of beer, and all of the suppliers in turn send him on other errands. It begins to feel a bit like a video game racked with side quests. There’s even an evil villain by the name of Threadgood, who has slicked-back greasy hair and acts like a mafia don, who also wants to lay his hands on this legendary brew.

During the events of the quest, Bec and Wyatt begin to spend a lot of time together, and one thing leads to another… Of course, since Bec feels like mixing business and pleasure is a recipe for disaster, she keeps her emotional distance. Or does she?

Technical Elements:

The plot was fine, if mediocre. I didn’t expect the direct sabotage to the Zoria from Threadgood, and honestly, it didn’t make much sense. His character was too mustache-twirly to be believable; he wasn’t a well-rounded character at all. But neither were Bec and Wyatt, for that matter. They were cardboard cut-outs, and there was a lot of “telling” rather than showing. This book uses a lot of italic asides, in order to have some sort of weird back and forth in the minds of the characters, as if they were arguing with themselves. (“Did he really think that? No, he didn’t.”)

One thing that puzzled me a little was Colin. He’s the financial backer that took off. I fully expected him to return, maybe full of regrets, throwing a wrench between the couple before they could arrive at their HEA. But no, he’s mentioned, but never appears. It felt a bit like Chekhov’s ex-lover, he was given a lot of weight in the beginning of the story, but it never pays off in a real way.

Final Thoughts:

The most vibrant thing about the book was the craft brewing aspect, which was just enough detail to get a sense of it without being overwhelming. The romance wasn’t entirely convincing, and I had a hard time buying into it. I felt like Wyatt came on really strong, almost pushing Bec into a relationship she clearly didn’t want. But if you’re in the mood to read about falling in love over beer making, then this is probably a good bet, as long as you don’t think too much about it.

Not sure if this book is available at libraries, but you can see where it is available from here.

I can’t think of any other books that involve craft beer (a niche!) but for other pushy heroes, try Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Nobody’s Baby But Mine.

*** EBOOK FROM NETGALLEY.COM IN EXCHANGE FOR HONEST REVIEW ***