Tori’s July Mini Reviews
Burning Submission by J. Richards
Erotic Romance Suspense
RATING: DNF
This erotic romance starts off interesting enough when a young woman defends herself against an unwanted admirer while working out and catches the eye of the sexy gym owner. A suspenseful subplot develops, adding to the intrigue but then the story goes downhill when hero refers to the heroine’s vagina as “snatch.” Add in a scene where heroine goes down on hero while he’s sleeping and I was done. It wouldn’t have bothered me as much if they were in an established sexual relationship and the hero hadn’t told her no to sex just a few hours earlier.
Mayhem by Angela Addams
Paranormal Romance
RATING: DNF
Insta lust, mating bonds, a multitude of plot devices to force the relationship, and sex scenes that only shows foreplay and not the actual act just didn’t do it for me. Maybe if I had read the first 4 in the series I would have had a better feel for these characters but as it was, I found them poorly developed and possessing of every cliché prone to pnr. The main conflict was interesting up to a point but the heroine’s Mary Sue attitude became increasingly annoying.
Make Me by Tessa Bailey (Early arc review)
Contemporary Romance
RATING: B
The third and last installment of Bailey’s Broke and Beautiful series brings us a few classic tropes such as the dreaded friend zone with a healthy dose of class barriers, deceptive first impressions, and an alpha with overly protective issues. As with the first two books in the series, this one follows the same prescribed checklist-boy and girl meet, boy has issues, girl has issues, boy and girl come together for a night and issues explode between them. An engaging blend of laughter, angst, sexual tension, and addicting banter gives us a sugary sweet friends to lovers story with hints of D/s between a rough tattooed construction worker with a marshmallow center and an upper class woman whose innocent passive exterior hides an intelligent and spirited woman who’s ready to take a chance on love.
The Undying Crown by Clay & Susan Griffith
Urban Fantasy
RATING: C+
The second installment of the Crown and Key victoria steampunk trilogy addresses subplots left open in book one while expanding the world and the characterization of a secondary character. Action, suspense, and intrigue continues to engage though the storyline seems to more introverted this go around, not allowing the reader to fully integrate themselves. Some areas dragged while others flew by requiring you to re read to fully understand what happened. An astounding amount of internal action is present, giving the book a jumbled feeling at times. A small cliffhanger hooks you up, requiring you to read book three.
This is Mandi inserting a quick mini-review into Tori’s post. This book did not work for me. Mateo has PTSD from his time served in Afghanistan. It’s never fully addressed or explored in this book and by the end, I still felt as if he was an unhealthy person. This makes me feel like the HEA would not be sustained. While there is hot sex, courtship is missing. Romance is missing. Again, this makes the HEA weak in my opinion. I was also not a fan of the town antics towards the heroine. Just didn’t work for me.
RATING: D
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