I’m moving house on Saturday and am busily packing while still trying to do some work. Oh the joys of being a freelance content writer and working from home. Posts may be few and far between until Monday when I’m able to get settled and working again.
Wish me luck! And happy reading!
Stormy Night Publications publishes a lot of the authors that I enjoy reading. To celebrate their 5th anniversary, they are offering a lot of great books for free on Instafreebie. They are available until 9/12. Instafreebie is super easy to use. They send the file straight to your email. If you have a Kindle, you can just email the file to your Kindle so you can start reading immediately. That’s how I do it. I’m not sure how it works with a Nook, but there are instructions on the emails.
Anyhow, go check out all these great free books. There are several I already own, and several of my favorite authors have books on there, like Amelia Smarts, Alta Hensley, Natasha Knight, Sara Fields, and Loki Renard.
Be aware that these books are all romances, all sex heavy, and all pretty kinky.
If you’ve read my blog at any point, you’ve probably seen that I like to read dark books. There are several authors who I know will write great dark romances. Marissa Honeycutt is one of them. She wrote The Life of Anna, which currently holds #1 on my Top Ten darkest most fucked up things I’ve read. And if it gets replaced, it will probably be with the Finding Sabrina books.
Marissa writes her books as serializations, and the first Finding Sabrina book just came out, Master of My Body. She will probably release it all into a boxset at the end, since that’s what she did with LoA. As a sidenote, LoA is extremely popular in the dark romance readership community. Most of the people I’m either friends with or in groups with have read it, and we, in general, tend to use LoA as a measuring stick for how dark something in particular, as we tend to rate it the darkest thing we’ve read. I could’ve waited for the boxset of Sabrina to come out, but there was just no way.
Sabrina takes place in the same world as LoA, but there hasn’t really been any cross-over, as of yet. Marissa did say that we “heard” someone from LoA in Master, but I didn’t find them. Darn, maybe I’ll have to reread it. It’s a difficult job, but I’ll force myself to do it.
Master is a little bit of back story and intro to the main characters we’re going to see in the rest of the series. We have Vamar Thilduri, who is going to be our main bad guy. He has been trapped in the Dark Place for 2000 years. He has it out for the Immortals. He has taken over the body of a young man named Damian.
Then, we have Chase Ralston, who is a West Point graduate and soldier. He is the heir of Richard, who I’m going to assume is an Elder, although it’s not quite stated outright. He is 21 when we first see him.
And finally, we have Sabrina Mansfield. She’s 16 when we first meet her, as a young ballet student who has come to a summer program in Boston. She catches Chase’s eye, and they connect. He asks her to wait for him since he’s off to training. She says that she will. Then she goes home, and seemingly falls off the face of the earth.
Ok, you know what time it is. I love this book. I can tell that I’m going to like the series. Marissa creates great worlds, and you just get sucked right into them. It’s going to be dark, my personal guess is that it will be darker than LoA. If dark bothers you, then avoid this one altogether.
I thought that I hated Devin and Jack from LoA, and I do, I really do, but man, I despise Vamar with the passion of 1000 white-hot suns. That may actually be putting it mildly. He’s already worse than Devin was. Good sign that this is going to be dark.
Poor Sabrina. She had to spend 5 years with him, so we’re definitely going to see some trauma in her from that. I can’t wait to see what comes next. I really hope she and Chase can reconnect and get rid of Vamar altogether, but I’m expecting for her to have to go through all kinds of horrible things before that happens.
I read LoA straight through, well except for right in the middle when I needed a break and went to read Jennifer Bene’s Security Binds Her. It can be hard to read straight through like that, because it starts dark, gets darker, hits darkest, and then gets even darker than that. I’m going to like reading Sabrina a book at a time, but I can guarantee that I will read everything all at once when it comes out.
If dark, thrilling, suspenseful romance and stories strike your fancy, check out Marissa Honeycutt and Finding Sabrina. Happy reading!
Today’s post is all about B. B. Blaque’s newest book, Beautiful Evil: Twisted. The Beautiful Evil series is about Jordan Bishop, which starts in The Monster and ends in The Master. Some of the books are told in an episodic style, from his POV, and are being told as stories to Kash and Colt. They are bikers and show up in her Beautiful Insanity series, about their MC. Bishop teaches them how to be Doms. SNAFU is told from SNAFU’s POV and The Master is happening as we see it. Then we have Twisted. Twisted features Bishop and Kash.
Warning: This story is at times brutal, always dark, and filled with non-con and violence. I may end up talking about some, even before the spoilers, so if that isn’t your cup of tea, stop reading now. You’ve been warned.
And now, it’s time for this week’s what’s on my Kindle. Some are on my TBR, some I’ve already read. There are also a couple of ARCs which aren’t on the pix.
Too bad I won’t be able to spend a lot of time reading this week. I’ve got to move this week, and I still have to finish packing. Oh well, such is life, and if I want to live in my new house, I need to put on my bitch boots, grab the whip, and boss the fam around so that we can get everything ready.
As always, if you want to stalk me, you know where to go. If you want to talk to me, hit comment or visit the contact page. I love to talk to people and I love to get new suggestions on books to read if you have any suggestions. Meanwhile, happy reading!
Calamity–
noun, plural calamities.
1.a great misfortune or disaster, as a flood or serious injury.
2.grievous affliction; adversity; misery: the calamity of war.
Danielle Lori is a brand new-to-me author. She found my blog and asked if I wanted to read her book, A Girl Named Calamity. Well, as we all know, I really enjoy reading and will read just about everything. If I could manage to take a book into the shower with me, I would read there too. So, the obvious answer was yes. And so I read it, and now I’m going to share my review and my thoughts with you.
Calamity lives with her grandmother in Alger, a village in the country of Alyria. Alyria has magic, and that magic used to be available to everyone, but a few bad people ruined it for everyone. Because of that, the magic has been sealed so that it is one with the land. The only people who can get to that magic now are the people who have some native talent for it. Calamity’s grandmother has some magic and is the healer for her area. She also has some feelings or intuitions, she says that Alyria talks to her.
Calamity is in her 20s, and has no magic. Or at least that’s what she’s thought her entire life. She has a pair of silver cuffs that she always has to wear. She’s worn them her entire life and her grandmother has told her to never take them off. Calamity feels like they are chaining her to something, chaining her to life in Alger, a small life.
One day, her grandmother comes home with a horse, which is completely unnecessary, but she insists that they need the horse. Calamity finally just says whatever, and lets it go. That night, her mother shows up. Calamity wakes up with her mother prying one of the cuffs off her arm. Calamity yells, her grandmother wakes up, and yells at Cal’s mother. Her grandmother raised her, her mother had never really had anything to do with her, and didn’t even know her name. Cal’s grandmother tells her mother, when asked, that she was named Calamity because that was what the mother said she wanted. The mother says, oh, hey, that was a joke. Whatever it was, that’s what she was named. Which is only somewhat beside the point. At this point, Calamity’s grandmother tells her that she needs to leave. The fact that one of her cuffs was off means that “they” could find her and that they would be on their way. Her grandmother packs everything up and puts her on the horse, and tells her where to go.
While Calamity is getting ready, her grandmother also tells her that she is destined to be the person who can open the seal and let the magic back out into Alyria, so she has to go. She needs to go to a nearby town, through the Red Forest, get an escort, and then go to Undelay City. The Red Forest is pretty damn blood-chilling, mostly because it is covered in blood. It rains blood. You touch the trees and your hand gets bloody. You get the idea.
When Calamity gets to Cameron City, she finds an inn and is given a direction in which to search for an escort. She’s trying to be inconspicous and dress like a man, but everyone in the tavern she goes to knows that she isn’t. But, at that tavern is where she finds Weston. Weston is an assisian. She asks him to be her escort but he turns her down. When she gets ready to go back in the morning, Weston shows up and tells her that he’ll take her.
OK, here is where we’re going to leave for spoilers. But, before that, I want to mention a few things. While I have marked this as a romance, it only sort of is. There’s a start of a romance, but Weston does everything he can to discourage Calamity from having any kind of romantic feelings about him. He’s more than just a little bit of a dick sometimes. Calamity doesn’t want to like him, but there is part of her that does.
The world building is good, and Danielle is very descriptive about her world. It has some interesting things that I wouldn’t have necessarily have considered before. There are times when I personally thought it was a smidge slow, but in general it was pretty good and well-paced. I liked the book well enough that the second one is high on TBR, especially since it ended up on a cliffhanger. There is violence, there is language, and there is some sexual activity, but in general, that part of it is pretty tame.
OK, I’m just going to jump right in with this theory, because I’ve been bursting with it the since the second I came up with it. I think that Calamity is the seal. She’s been fought over, at one point, a mage takes her away and tries to use her. Weston says that she has to stay a virigin to do what needs to be done. No one knows where the seal is, and the the mage seemed surprised that Calamity didn’t know. I just think that she is it.
Part of the prophecy surrounding her is that she is born of a prostitute and a king, which I’m pretty sure that Weston knows, since he keeps calling her princess. He seems to know a lot more about her than she does. There’s also the fact that the mysterious being in the forest bit her and then all of a sudden became very, very subservient and apologetic to Calamity, so her father is obviously someone very important.
If you ask me, it’s obvious that Weston does care for her and wants her, because he’s promised to kill any man who touches her, and once the two of them bond, he tells her that she will be a virgin for life, since she can’t be far away from him and he won’t let anyone touch her. I can’t wait to read the next one so that I can find out.
My TBR just keeps getting higher and higher and higher. LOL. Not that I’m complaining. I’m only complaining because I have to move in 9 days, which means my reading and blogging time will be cut down next week.
Anyway, that’s my review on this book. Danielle Lori kindly provided me with an ARC of this book so that I can review it. I was really excited about that because she was the first author that I didn’t know at all who submitted a book to me to review and blog about. So, cheers to Danielle! Everyone show her some love.
As always, if you have something you want me to review, hit me up on my contact page. If you have any questions, comments, complaints, suggestions, recommendations, whatever, leave a comment or visit my contact page. If you are dying to know where to stalk me, all my links are on my about page. Happy reading!
I’ve talked about Royally Mine off and on for the past few weeks. It’s an awesome anthology by 22 great authors. How can I know this for sure? Well, for one thing, I’ve read ARCs from several of the authors. I haven’t read the entire book as of yet, since my TBR is currently stacked up sky high, but I can tell you about the ones that I’ve gotten to read. There are a whole bunch of stories in the book that I’m really looking forward to, including ones by Annabel Joseph, Jenika Snow, and Sue Lyndon. Without any further ado, let’s get to the reviews for the ones I’ve read.
Decadence by Jennifer Bene
Normally, my girl Jennifer writes some dark shit. I love her dark stuff. The darker the better. I’ve reviewed her Thalia series here, which starts out pretty dark. Decadence is not dark. It is, however, one of the most joyously filthy things I’ve read in a while.
What do two sex addicts say to each other? My current answer is “Thank you, come again.” Finn and Aubrey are those sex addicts. The story starts out with Aubrey talking to her therapist and Finn being forced to go to a therapist. However, he sees Aubrey and ditches his therapist to follow her to a bar, where they have a close encounter of the 69th kind in the bathroom. Neither one of them knows the other is a sex addict, which leads to some great banter between the two of them.
These two characters are totally fun. Finn swears that Aubrey is perfect just the way that she is, and sets out to show her that she is. The bacchanal scene? Yeah. It’s hot. Like, Death Valley hot.
This story is great, and the happily-ever-after is fantastic. It works well for Finn and Aubrey, even if it’s not a typical HEA. I liked it. I really enjoyed this story, can you tell?
Consumed by Addison Cain
Now Addison, she writes dark too. And this one is dark. She takes us back to an Omegaverse. This is NOT the Omegaverse from Alpha’s Claim, but a brand new world. It still follows the same rules though.
Morgaine is an Omega who has no clue who or what she is. All she knows is that when the Alphas come to her village, she gets sick and she hides. That works well until one day when it doesn’t and the Alphas take her away. She still has no clue what an Omega really is, and the Alphas who originally take her do nothing to help her, they just traumatize her. They keep telling her how they love and protect Omegas, but if you ask me, there is no love and protection there, just cruelty. Simin comes to her rescue. He’s a former enemy of her people, and he looks like a barbarian. But, he saves her.
Yeah, I know Simin isn’t Conan, but you get the whole idea.
I had never read any Omegaverse stories before I read Addison’s stories for the first time. I really enjoy the dynamic. Addison left this one on a bit of a cliffhanger (I think she’s a closet sadist), but the story is to be continued. She’ll be picking it up and publishing the rest of the story. I can’t wait.
Royalty, American Style by Livia Grant
Livia has an interesting take on royalty. Instead of going with some blue blood, she goes with baseball royalty. Colton King (I see what you did there) is at the top of his game when it comes go baseball. He’s also a bad, bad boy. He’s a lover, and he loves a whole lot of women. Unfortunately for him, he got conned into doing a Bachelor style reality show. He’s going to be in a house with 6 beautiful women who are all competing to be his special someone. Enter Harper Gardener, unemployed chef-extraordinaire, who got the temporary job of cooking for the show.
With just one taste of Harper’s cooking and one glimpse of her, Colton is attracted to her. Harper, on the other hand, is just out of a bad relationship and her life plan doesn’t include falling in love with Colton King. When that’s what happens, everything turns upside down.
I loved this story. Colton really goes out of his way to do everything he can to protect Harper. It’s really sweet. Their HEA is well deserved.
Bad Boys and Bourbon by Alta Hensley
When they were children, Cheri and Roman were promised to each other. They were each other’s first loves, first kiss, and first time. Then Cheri, the daughter of a count and countess, decided that she couldn’t handle all the circus that royal life would entail, so she left Roman, a prince and ran away. Years later, she gets dragged to Monaco where she is presented to Roman so that they can get married.
When they get back together, sparks fly and the action turns very, very steamy. Alta writes steamy really well, and this story is definitely that.
This is the start of a new series by Alta. The new books are all going to be themed around alcohol. The bad boys are also going to be part of an exclusive club called Spiked Roses. As this series is an Alta Hensley series, expect to see spanking and sex. And some more spanking. And some more sex.
Mafia Princess by Natasha Knight
Gregorio Santa Maria is the head of his Family, along with his brother. When the Antonino Family call him up because Allegra has run away from Florida, he has to go find her. He doesn’t want to do babysitting duty, but since the Families are associated, then he has to do it. So he and Enzo, one of his men, go and find Allegra at a bar.
When he takes her to his house, she does everything she can to escape. Allegra makes it very clear that she doesn’t want to go back to her half-brother. He’s not a very nice guy, and their father is in a coma, so her half-brother is the one in charge. Of course, since this story is included in a romance anthology, you can guess what happens, they get their HEA.
One of the things I really enjoyed about this particular story is that it is entirely written from Gregorio’s point of view. That’s not something you normally find in a romance story. You may get a dual point of view that goes back and forth between the Hero and Heroine, or one entirely from her POV, but very, very rarely one that is solely from his point of view. It was a nice twist to the traditional romance story, so great job Natasha!
Her Royal Master by Renee Rose
Renee Rose writes great spanking stories that just happen to have a great love story that goes with them. Or may those are great love stories that have great spanking stories that go with them. Whichever way you choose to look at it, Her Royal Master fits right into her wheelhouse.
Chelsea is a journalist who happens to be rooming with an Italian model. On the day of the model’s big job, she gets sick and talks Chelsea into going to the job for her. The job? To be a sub on Prince Kaspar’s yacht for a few days. Now, Chelsea doesn’t know that until she gets there, and then it’s too late to do anything about it. When one of the prince’s friends does something that freaks her out, Darius, Kaspar’s black sheep cousin comes to her rescue and saves her from the wanna-be Doms.
After spending a hot weekend together, Chelsea runs off the yacht, and straight to Los Angeles, and promptly becomes miserable.
I really enjoy reading Renee’s books. She twists sweet and spice together really well and brings it all home really well. She also creates wonderful worlds and I can easily see them. If you read The Russian in Heroes Undercover, then you may recognize the DJ from this story.
Royally Fucked by Lee Savino
With a title like this, you pretty much know what you are going to get, from the get go. Lots of fucking and lots of royalty. Theo, the son of a Greek hotelier and a disinherited Swedish princess, is the epitome of bad boy. He has had several sex tapes show up and the public is familiar with the dimensions of his cock, thanks to interviews with former sex partners. He’s also got the reputation of a sex god. His grandmother, the Queen of Sweden, has all of a sudden decided that she wants to meet him for the first time ever, and the board of his father’s hotel business wants to vote him off the board. In walks Vesper.
Vesper is a fixer. If you have a PR problem, you call Vesper. She can make it go away and rehabilitate your image. When she starts her job, she lays out a long-term plan, only to find out that she has one week to update Theo’s image and make him look good.
Of course, when you put a sex god in a room with an attractive woman and it’s a Lee Savino story, sparks are going to fly, and you are going to get lots of sex and an HEA. Of course, it’s never that easy, is it?
This was a nice story. One reason that I liked it was because Vesper was a strong woman who took no shit from anyone. She managed to stand up to Theo, even when he tried really hard to fire her, and to get him to consider doing what she told him. But, she didn’t run him over and roll him down either. That’s a very fine line to walk, but Lee made it work well. By the way, when you try to review something named Royally Fucked on Amazon, you have to write it as Royally F***ed, or you don’t get your review approved.
Well, that’s what I’ve got. I received ARCs of all these stories, and you have now received my honest reviews, you lucky people.
Coming up this week, the spoiler post for Kate Daniels 1-3, a review of a new-to-me author, and a review of B. B. Blaque’s Beautiful Insanity: Twisted, and let me tell you what, it lives up to its name. Stay tuned, and happy reading!
Powerful kings. Dirty-talking princes. Insatiable dukes. They’re ready to rule your heart.
Royally Mine is a sexy collection of bad boy romances featuring HOT royal heroes, brought to you by twenty-two New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling authors. This deliciously naughty bundle of ALL-NEW standalone novellas stars panty-scorching kings, princes, and dukes who are used to being in command. Charge up your e-reader, clear your schedule, and put on your best tiara, because these royal bad boys are ready to conquer your heart while making you blush oh so hard.
Featured authors: Susan Stoker, Annabel Joseph, Katy Regnery, Nikki Sloane, Renee Rose, Molly O’Keefe, Alta Hensley, Nora Flite, Natasha Knight, Sue Lyndon, Jenika Snow, Maggie Ryan, Celeste Jones, Lee Savino, Livia Grant, Alexis Alvarez, Rayanna James, Ava Sinclair, Addison Cain, Jennifer Bene, Becca Jameson, Mikey Lee
Publisher’s Note: The stories included in this smoking hot box set are MF and MFM pairings. Some contain kink. All will leave you breathlessly panting for more.
22 Royal BAD BOYS are only 99c!
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My next-to-last post was all about the world of Kate Daniels and such. Today we’re actually going to get into the books. I’ve read the first three, but this review may or may not talk about all three. From now on, the reviews will just be about one book at a time. I just got ahead in my reading. So, without further ado, let’s start reviewing!
Magic Bites is the first book in the series. In it, we are introduced to Kate, a merc. She’s sitting in her house in Savannah, GA, drinking when a vampire shows up to ask if she’s talked to her guardian lately. Ghastek was the one who was navigating the vampire. He and Kate are going to have an interesting relationship over the series, so remember his name.
She rushes to Atlanta to find that Greg Feldman, the man who was her guardian after her father died, has been gruesomely murdered. He was the resident Knight-Diviner for the local chapter of The Order of the Knights of Merciful Aid. The Order is kind of like modern day Templars, only slightly less merciful. They will provide mercy, but sometimes that mercy is provided at the edge of a sword. The Order was founded right after the tech fell and the shift started. It is very regimented. Greg did get Kate into the Order’s Academy, and she tested out at electrum level, which is the highest you can go, and there have only ever been like 8. However, she walked out and became a merc, which drove a wedge in between her and Greg. There will be more about the Order in reviews to come. Anyway, she goes to the head of the local chapter of the Order to get help and ends up with permission to work with them to find Greg’s killer.
On the way to the solution, she goes to the morgue and meets Crest. She goes to Unicorn Lane and meets Curran, greeting him by saying “Here, kitty, kitty.” She goes to the Keep and meets Derek Gaunt, faithful, teenage, werewolf sidekick. And she goes to the Casino and has to talk to Nataraja. More to come in the spoiler section.
In Magic Burns, a seven-year flare is coming. A flare is several days when the magic is extremely high. It’s a high peak of magic that plateaus during that time. Saiman, Kate’s magical expert, metamorph, and deviant extraordinaire, calls it the time of the gods. And he’s not wrong. During the flare, shifters have a hard time controlling themselves, Navigators have a harder time controlling their vampires, and magic users and magical people, like Kate, get a huge power boost.
This book starts out with Kate doing a merc job partnering Jim, a were-jaguar and the chief of security for the Pack. They are trying to track down a madman with a salamander. A salamander is a magical creature that starts fire. Just as Jim and Kate catch their firebug, he gets shot with a mysterious black arrow. Then Jim gets paged by someone in the Pack and has to leave. Remember, with the Pack, it’s us against them, and for Jim, he will drop everything when the Pack calls. He’s the Alpha cat and the security chief, so he’s super-duper responsible.
Later, Derek comes to ask Kate for help because someone has stolen maps from the Pack. Their maps are uber-accurate, and highly sought after. This person poofed in, grabbed the maps, and poofed out. While she was trying to figure out how to help with the maps, she runs across a street shaman named Red who had helped her a little bit in the last book, and his girlfriend, Julie. Julie’s mom is missing and Red tells Kate to take care of her. More in the spoiler section.
Magic Strikes starts out a few months after the flare. Kate is headed home from her job at the Order. She runs across Jim and some other shifters picking up a dead body. She offers them help, Jim turns her down. When she gets home, she gets a call from Saiman, telling her to come pick up something of hers. It turns out it’s Derek, who has snuck into his apartment to steal some tickets to the Midnight Games. The Games are an underground fighting tournament. In it, teams go into the Pit and fight each other. Derek has been working undercover in the Games and has found a young woman he’s trying to help, Livvie. That’s why he wants the tickets. Saiman extorts Kate into going to the Games with him, and Derek asks her to give Livvie a note from him. While this sounds like a minor little thing, it turns out to be pretty important.
So, we’ll leave it here until the spoiler section, which, as this is getting long, is going to actually show up tomorrow, I think. I don’t like to read long blog posts, so I don’t want to write them for people.
There is romance in the series, but there isn’t really any in the first books. Kate and Curran get a little kissy face going on, but nothing else really. It’s not until the fourth book that their romance really gets going. In these books they are still dancing around each other and kind of confrontational. Really, I think foreplay for them involves arguing and physically fighting with each other, in a sparring way, not in a bad way.
It’s a good series, well-written and enjoyable. The way the books work, they build on each other. Each book adds more to the characters and to the world, so there is always something new to find out. I really love that.
So, here is where this quick overview of books 1-3 ends, and we get ready for tomorrow’s post, which is going to be spoiler-iffic. And I’m going to leave you with this beautiful picture of a Barbary lion, just because.
Tomorrow, a boxset full of 22 awesome authors comes out. Royally Mine is packed full of dukes, princes, kings, and Alphas who are all bad boys. Today is the last day that you can get it for pre-order at $0.99. After tomorrow, the price is going to jump.
I’ve had the privilege of reading several ARCs, and the ones I’ve read are completely awesome! Here is my Goodreads review of it.
There is lots of hot sex, lots of bad boys, lots of kink, and a whole bunch of happily-ever-afters. Check it out, get your copy.
In Between the Pages 