Then, when I finished it, the only thing in my head was “Who knew porn stars could be so romantic?” and, “They were right, it really was a unique read”. Continue reading “P*rn Star: The BIG Edition – Laurelin Paige and Sierra Simone”
This is the final story in Kristen Ashley’s Unfinished Hero series. Nick Sebring is Knight’s (Unfinished Hero #1, Knight and Anya) brother. An absolute ahole – so absolute in his a-holeness, I was a little skeptical when reading the synopsis. I know throughout the series, he made some cameos that gave the readers clues that he was redeeming himself, but I just wasn’t over his behavior in UH#1.
In Creed (#2), he showed up at the end, close to getting his brains splattered. In Raid (#3), he made another cameo to send a message unnecessarily warning his brother about danger (yes, Knight’s aware. I’m guessing this was just a way for him to check into the series to say “I’m here! See, I now care about my brother! And, although I’m doing it in a way to piss off this main character and make him more protective of the heroine than ever — I have a mission!). Deacon (#4) mentioned Nick was a “wildcard” that had not been resolved. So, yes, Nick’s been floating around in the series.
The synopsis killed me a little. KA writes these synopses that kills my desire to read her books. But I read her books anyway because she never disappoints. The synopsis made me think that Nick was still the ultimate douche who would use this woman for his own gains and not realize his mistake until the very end. Instead, he sees his mistake at the very beginning, tries his best to right his wrongs without her knowing it, and then she pulls him right back in. In the end, our hero is stuck trying to figure out how to keep her safe while falling deeper in love and waiting for the stiletto to drop on her and pierce her brain/heart/whatever.
The hero, Olivia (aka Livvie), reminds me a little of Sadie Townsend (Rock Chick Regret)– they both had fathers in illegal businesses, both adopted a “persona” to deal with life (Sadie – “Ice Princes”, Livvie “Princess/Stone Cold B*tch”. However, where Sadie was almost sheltered (Daddy was the criminal, but still loved his daughter in his own way), Livvie didn’t have that option – her option was to go into business and keep doing it while scheming on how to get out.
The Unfinished Hero series is supposed to be a more erotic series (basically Knight, Unfinished Hero #1, was similar to a Kristen Ashley’s version of 50 Shades of Gray). With that in mind, the first meeting of these two is in a sex club. Even though there are erotic elements, the sex between the two is actually on the vanilla side compared to the other erotic stories out there. There’s just lots of it and it’s more descriptive than KA’s other books.
Overall, I loved the heroine. Basically, I don’t know how she didn’t turn out like her sister in that environment. Nature? Because it definitely wasn’t nurture. That was a question I grappled with while reading. How did she not turn out like her sister?
I loved the hero too, though I can’t equate Knight’s brother “Nick” with this Sebring. I get he went through the journey – there’s some flashbacks and some explanation. At the same time, I’m glad KA didn’t give us the whole long story of Nick’s redemption (I’m guessing it was a LONG one) and instead we just get to bask in his end character, which is what we want to see anyway. I’m just worried about when I re-read Knight’s story, which I will at one point or another, that when Nick comes into the picture, I’ll just think “This isn’t you!! What are you doing?!?!? WHYYYYY???!!!”
The ending was perfect. Funny, there wasn’t much of the talking or apologizing in the HEA — Trust me, I wait for those groveling moments. Yet, Nick played it absolutely perfectly and in one fell swoop, he showed that he loved and cared for her. There wasn’t a whole “WHY?” scene, instead it was an acceptance of their future. Livvie was badass/smart enough and had enough awareness to know that an explanation or apology was ultimately not needed for this scenario. I read the scene multiple times after finishing the book. First it was because I thought “something is missing…” because I’m just so used to it at the end of romance novels, then realizing that it really wasn’t needed and if it was there, it would have been out of place.
OH, KA, you did it again. And now we have to wait until April for the next one.
Buy it on Amazon here: Sebring (The Unfinished Heroes Series Book 5)
The synopsis for this book intrigued me. It made me think of it as “Penelope” (the movie with Christina Ricci, highly recommend), although I thought Penelope was cute rather than fugly. Or even Beauty and the Beast, with both hero and heroine being Beauty AND Beast in their own ways.
The cover of this book, even the synopsis, makes you think it will be a light read. But the story stayed with me throughout the day and I couldn’t put my finger on why.
I read a review that simplified the book to “how others see you versus how you see yourself”. But it seemed much more complex than that. The heroine seems to have a high self-esteem with the mantra of: I love myself, I am awesome with a kick ass personality DESPITE how I look.
It made me think of the Onion communication theory – peeling back the layers of an onion. The heroine had so many layers, layers she doesn’t realize. Then I thought about Johari’s window – how she sees herself (awesome!), with a high awareness of how others see her (revolting looking, but approachable, non-competitive with women, likeable, etc), however, so much of her seems to be hidden even from herself. Which is where the hero comes in.
He’s a totally flawed human being on the inside with perfection on the out. He hires her due to the fact that he has a phobia toward imperfection — with her imperfect face, he sees her as his antidote to his phobia.
The main characters are supposed to juxtapose one another. One has the imperfect outside, with the seemingly perfect inside. While the other has the perfect outside, but seemingly hideous inside. However, the author wrote them as two human beings, exploring their own flaws through the help of one another. To me, I see it as she, unknowingly living with what her flaw is (it’s not her looks, she’s totally real about that. It’s that belief in the word “DESPITE”). He knows his flaws and is trying to “fix” himself, but he also helps her to realize that the flaw she has isn’t just surface.
I have to admit, I almost skipped 1/8th way in, it seemed to drag at first. Such a long interaction with her roommate, brother and meddling mother – so much backstory that I expected for the someone to play a bigger role. Is one going to tell-all, mess things up, WHAT WAS THEIR ROLE?!?! I expected someone to do something crazy but with good intentions. But alas, the story was crazy enough and the support characters were really just support characters that acted as a comedy relief. It also helped to cement how the heroine was so awesome. With parents “who lived” to be needed and a smart ass brother in a wheelchair, who was capable of doing anything he wanted to. It shows that she grew up with unconditional love and a role model who lived life with his own “despite”.
I’m guessing her brother is going to get his own book, because he should. There’s a story there of why he moved back with his smothering overprotective meddling parents and stayed there even when he had a serious girlfriend, who eventually couldn’t take it anymore.
The gem here is the author’s note, as it ties the book together: “…It’s insane, but despite my beautiful children, loving husband, triumphs and degrees, I realized that there is something broken in the way I think. And I’m not alone…This book was never about a young woman looking for acceptance, but about derailing that inner voice determined to sabotage our best intentions and potential…”
Funny how this book (to me) was presented as a light hearted read, but had a deeper message of self-love and acceptance. Looks can be deceiving, eh?
fugly
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®ion=US&placement=1584793023&asins=1584793023&linkId=WUFLA2GGF4KHZKWY&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true
This book was definitely not what I was expecting. The synopsis describes a story following Cleo, who is “beautiful, rich, intelligent, and strong…with a sailor’s vocabulary, a fine set of lock picks, and a few million in the bank, Cleo always gets what she wants”. TBH, I think I read this book because it was recommended. If it was just based on the synopsis, I probably would have passed. However, this book is much more interesting and has more depth than what could have imagined.
Cleo grew up with neglectful parents, simply because they are in their own intellectual world and forget that they have a child. Instead of protecting her by picking her up when she falls, they try protect her by teaching her observational methods so that she’ll observe something before she has a chance to trip over it. In a way, while they neglect her, they teach her to neglect the world around her by being focused on observing rather than participating — everything becomes a social experiment. Her childhood leads up to her being too intelligent, without any social/interpersonal awareness, making her “weird”.
The weirdness is not only her – A lot of this book is weird (get it? right?)- she finds herself in nonsensical situations and reacts to it in pretty strange ways but I think that’s what makes it fun. Yet, her reactions are exactly what you expect from her. Put a curious, too-intelligent girl in strange situations and see her come out on top.
You also see this deep seated need to connect to someone. Where her parents had each other, Cleo had no one. So it’s no surprise when she makes connections with totally inappropriate people, and also hunts down a person from her past who she does have a connection to.
Half of the book takes place while Cleo is still in high school. However, although it’s set in a high school and she’s young, the character is so mature and the situations she faces are a little older so you’re not reading “OMG! He’s soooo cute!! 😛 ;)”.
I thought it would be creepy when the reader is introduced to Jackson, while he’s a grown adult and she’s 10, and you realize, oh dear, they’re going to get together. Even more irksome is that he knows how intelligent she is and uses her as a pawn in his game – he grows fond of her (not in a creepy way) but almost a “I feel bad I’m using you so I’ll be nice and friendly so I don’t feel as bad” while you ultimately wonder if he views her as just a tool for his ultimate goal. This sort of attitude toward her made me feel a lot less creepy about the situation. So he disappears when he finally achieves his goal (thanks to her) and doesn’t reappear until she’s an adult and it’s because she’s looking for him. The romance doesn’t factor in until much much later in the story (because, um, age) and even then, when it starts creeping in and things begin changing – I still felt like he was hesitating and thought “Oh boy, just give in”.
I really enjoyed this story and highly recommend it. Not much romance until really the last 10% of the story – but I loved this heroine and her quirks. I kept thinking, this author must have a degree in psychology. Then her next book is about a psychologist.
On a side note: What got me chuckling was that Mae McCall (author) introduced a high school nemesis named Mae. Wonder what was going through the author’s mind there.
Right now it’s free for Amazon Unlimited or buy it here: Weird Girl
Opened Wattpad and under featured books was “In The Clear” by Tamara Morgan. It’s a short, quick 12 chapter story. It’s written so cleverly, so vividly, that I can’t get over that it was only 12 chapters and a 1-2 hour read.
By my last post, you know that I have pretty low expectations of Wattpad stories. However, I need to apologize because “In the Clear” is definitely a story that should be published. Just the opening sentence sucks you in, “For a full twenty seconds, Lexie thought the vibrator in her purse had somehow managed to turn itself on. Again.”
It’s not full on erotica as the first sentence suggests, but that love scene, definite hot.
It follows Lexie, is the personable, funny, all out there, fundraiser for children’s charity, quirky heroine. However, her self-esteem seems to have taken a beat down from her twin’s not-so-subtle condescending comments — which she manages to hide with her bubbly personality. Being the ever-positive person that she is, she’s constantly wanting to hang out with him and his best friend (whereas, I would’ve said F*!@ him and move on). His best friend, Fletcher, has been in love with Lexie since forever. Fletcher is the quiet, seemingly boring car salesman who has a secret superhero side that doesn’t want anyone to know about (he goes on search and rescue missions to save missing/endangered people). He likes predictability and patterns…wakes up the same time, has the exact same routine every day, unless he gets a call for a search and rescue mission.
Then Bam! things happen that moves them closer together, she realizes that she doesn’t know him as well, he’s forced to fess up, etc. It’s a short story, so quick, but yet, it’s not insta-love. After all, they’ve known each other forever. So it’s a cute coming together story – like the ending of a romance book — you know, the best part where they’re finally getting their acts together and all you do is *sigh* and feel good.
Access it on Wattpad here:
<a href=”https://www.wattpad.com/story/21031952-in-the-clear” target=”_blank”>In the Clear on Wattpad</a>
If it’s no longer being offered on Wattpad for free, I’ve done some internet stalking for you and found the exact story being sold on Amazon:
In the Clear (Winter Rescue Book 1)
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