Pre-Order Sebring! – Kristen Ashley

Kristen Ashley had announced the release of her new “Unfinished Heroes” novel – Sebring!  So excited and I haven’t read the synopsis or the first glance release.  The only problem I have is with the release date — AGAIN! Monday.  Which means book hangover.  Which means no sleep.  Unless, I can put away the urge to read just the first page.  Because the first page leads to the first chapter, which leads to half the book, which leaves me looking at the time, realizing it’s 3am and convincing myself that “I’m almost done…just another chapter…” and then it’s 5am and I have to wake up in a couple of hours.

I do have to admit one thing. I can’t remember all of KA’s side characters so every time she writes a new book, I have to revisit the entire series to figure out why she deemed this character as needing their own story. Partly, it’s due to her writing numerous series at once, the other (IMHO) is that she gets me so hooked into the main characters that I really don’t care too much if side characters get their own stories.

One of these days, I’ll map out her characters and where they appear. She has them overlapping in other series as well – i.e. some Mystery Man shows up in Chaos and Rock Chicks. Lee shows up EVERYWHERE.

 Read more about it here: Sebring (The Unfinished Hero Series Book 5)

Divine – Aven Jayce

I stumbled on this book when looking for late night erotica – couldn’t sleep, you know?  A dark series of books was just released, Jameson Hotel by Aven Jayce.  There was a book set with 6 parts — 6 books!?!?  I didn’t have time to commit to a 6 book series by an author I have no experience with.  So then I did some stalking and found that they were a spin-off from the NOVA Trilogy, which seemed so dark, I couldn’t bring myself to download that one either although a part of me was intrigued with the author.  I finally found Aven Jayce’s Divine…One book to introduce me to her writing.  I can handle that.

Funny how I thought it would be crazy erotica – Divine, the heroine, is a professor who writes erotica and watches tons of porn.  She markets her books on a Facebook group called “Dirty Sluts” . You would think that with all the porn and erotica going on, there would be tons of sex – sex sex sex between the two characters.  Then, when it didn’t really happen (I don’t count that sex scene through a door) I didn’t really care all that much because the story was great without it.  In fact, the actual sex scenes didn’t do anything for me, so I was pretty happy that there wasn’t much sex.  The sex that they did have, I fast forwarded through it.

As much as I was looking for erotica, the gem is really Divine.  She’s just awesome.  If Divine was Aven, I would stalk Aven and beg her to be my friend.  Then just sit in her library of pop-up erotic novels, saying nothing and reading…because that’s what I envision she’s like in real life.

For someone who moved to become a professor in a small college town, she’s pretty eccentric – and she meets another seemingly guy next door “Dan” who is just as quirky as she is.  They’re both people who play up their mainstream outward appearances, while looking for someone who can handle their inner eccentricities.  There’s a constant testing of one another, almost as if they’re pretending to slowly play their secrets to one another out, while really keeping main cards close.

The way they meet, the first 5 minutes of their date, their big secrets…it just shows how perfect they are for one another.  I totally love how he starts off the date.  If I was on the dating scene, I would want some guy to steal that as the ice breaker.

This book is supposed to be lighter than her series books and you can tell.  Although there is a sense of “mystery” with the secrets they had, it’s isn’t much of a shocker.  It’s really the working through it when each secret it revealed.

So much of this book made me wonder if it paralleled Aven’s real life.  I read somewhere that the Dirty Sluts Facebook Group is an actual group. Then I googled erotica pop-ups – didn’t realize there was a thing!  Made me chuckle.  It also seems like Divine was written after the Nova Trilogy was released.   Divine (the character) also wrote a dark trilogy…Divine markets herself on Facebook while not having a huge following on her personal page (while IRL, I read on GoodReads that Aven Jayce doesn’t do social media, har har).  She also describes romance/erotica book marketing techniques makes you wonder about all these reviews on Amazon.  Just FYI – I didn’t get paid or a free copy for this review.  🙂

This book is available for purchase on Kindle and currently being offered free on Kindle Unlimited.  Don’t have Kindle Unlimited?  Grab a free 30-day trial: Join Amazon Kindle Unlimited 30-Day Free Trial and then check out my tagged Kindle Unlimited reads.

I haven’t bought this or read this myself, but if you live on your own without little kids in the house, please complete the fantasy of Divine’s basement and line a bookshelf with a pop-up erotic novel — or at least pretend to so I can think of it as being in the real world and not just the fantasy one :): //ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=ss_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=hest02-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=1584793023&asins=1584793023&linkId=WUFLA2GGF4KHZKWY&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true

Blind Attraction – AC Warneke

Ever read a story that was cute but so cliche that you kind of went with it because you knew the end would be gratifying — hero makes some type of life change on his perspective thanks to the female.  The type of story in which the average, everyday female “opens the eyes” (ha!) of male character from gorgeous tall model-esque women to the woman next door?  In a way this isn’t it, yet it could have been…

This story is about Mr. Man (James Templeton, yes, douche name but I’ll forgive the author for that) who saw a beautiful woman in  storefront window and falls in love.  He gets into car crash, loses his sight, and then “wanders” into the store to introduce himself.  However, he introduces himself to the wrong woman — the everyday girl next door and owner of the store.  Without his sight, he asks her out and they spend time together.  It’s an insta-love.  Then suddenly he can see and he realizes that she’s not the woman he pictured in his mind.

Think the movie Shallow Hal, but with a car accident causing temporary blindness rather than hypnosis.

I read this book so long ago that I can’t remember the beginning and middle part.  I had to re-read it to review it, but still don’t find anything really interesting as compared to the ending.

The end though.  Argh!  The end!  When his eyes are suddenly opened.  How he freaks out.  How he handles himself.  It had all the makings of great grovel scenes.  I expected it.  A part of me demanded it.  Yet, I didn’t get it.

However, the dimension of his screw up while he was coming to terms with some of his clearing perspectives (get it? literally and figuratively), was so to the point that she should have got shot of him – after all, it was really only a handful of dates and a one-night stand.  If she dusted the cobwebs from her mind, when he came to his senses, she should have made him grovel on his knees.  He should have begged to be with her. Instead, she sets up a strange double date with the woman he thought she was and herself (what?!?!).  That still does not make any sense to me and I’ve read that scene a dozen times.  Maybe I’m blinded by the sheer audacity of this man to do a disappearing act and then to drunk dial her thinking she’d forgive him.   This more so coupled with his ego into thinking that she isn’t good enough for him because she’s not beautiful and gorgeous in the classical way he’s used to.

Really, the gem of this story, is his semi-freak out, his disappearing act, and then his disastrous drunken phone call.  You really don’t need the beginning or middle — just from that phone call, I put down the Kindle and imagine how the ending should proceed.  Which is what I have done, thousands of times.

I would revamp and re-edit this book.  The interesting part of this story is really when he gained his sight, freaked out, and then made mistake after mistake (first kissing the mistaken identity, second ego, third drunken phone call).  From there, how he regains his footing, realizes that SHE’s the most beautiful thing that ever happens to him, and then rights his wrongs slowly by rebuilding her back up from what he made her question about herself.  I get the feeling that she was living life just fine – she accepted the fact that she had gorgeous (but shallow) friends and people around her – and accepted herself for who she is.  Until he shows up and says pretty horrible stuff in his terrible way of trying to explain and verbalize what he’s feeling.  Argh!

I would read this book just for the potential of what it could have been.

Truthfully, when I downloaded it, it was being offered free on Amazon. You can buy it here: http://amzn.to/21rfCw2