The Bartered Virgin by Chevon Gael -- Review (**18+over material)

 

The Bartered Virgin

by Chevon Gael

Publication Date: 12/15/2010

Rating: 3 / 5 Stars

Thank you Netgalley and Carina Press for the eARC.

Synopsis (courtesy of Goodreads):

Sold to the highest-ranked aristocrat!

That's what Winnifred Percy, New York City heiress, considered her engagement to Sir David Knightsbridge, Earl of Wolshingham. It's 1902 and she wants to be a modern woman, free to travel the world. To do that she needs to show the Earl she is a completely unsuitable bride.
Smoking and cursing doesn't have much effect on David so Winn reads him a very naughty French book. That leads to unexpectedly passionate kisses, and David's declaration that he wants to marry her. Drat! Even when she takes him to Coney Island to mingle with ordinary people and eat exotic hot dogs he's intrigued...and intriguing.
When desire leads them into scandal, Winn realizes she's ruined his hopes for restoring his family's honor. Can she let him go to find a more suitable bride?

Review:

I initially was drawn to the book by the synopsis - I thought the main character, Winn, was going to be witty to the extreme, to try to get out of this arranged marriage. As luck would have it, David actually found her tactics and antics unveiling her to be that much more desirable. And then throughout this period, Winn becomes drawn to him, even as she is still attempting to resist and forgo this arranged marriage.


I found Winn's character to be not all that enticing - I never really clicked with her character and many a times she behaved so ignorantly, it was rather bothersome. Also, I never really found David to be the prince charming she thinks she is coming to see in him - crass language and his interactions/ commands of Winn (though he does become less of a jerk to her by the end). 


All in all, this novella was a quick read, not accurate in its historical time-frame, and kind of lagged a bit in "romance" though it definitely is an erotica/18-and-over book -- so it didn't disappoint in that aspect or scenes.

Demon's Fall by Karalynn Lee -- Review (**18+over material)

 

Demon's Fall

by Karalynn Lee

Publication Date: 10/25/10

Rating: 3 / 5 Stars

Thank you Netgalley & Carina Press for the electronic ARC.

Synopsis (courtesy of Goodreads):

 

When Kenan, an incubus, finds a caged angel for sale in the Hellsgate marketplace, he sees her as a challenge. Certain that his skills in seduction will work as well on a heavenly creature as they do on mortal women, he buys Jahel, intent on having her soul as a novelty in his collection.

Knowing he must gain Jahel's trust if she is to come to his bed willingly, Kenan treats her more as his guest than as his slave. When she reveals what brought her to the mouth of Hell in the first place-retrieving the soul of a young girl she was guarding-he even offers to help her complete her mission.

Though he has promised Jahel freedom, Kenan soon realizes she has captured his heart instead. And as their passion for one another grows, they find themselves caught in a struggle between Heaven and Hell, one that will lead them to the very edge of the apocalypse...

  

Review:

Demon’s Fall is a sweet, almost novella-length paranormal erotica story where Kenan, an incubus, purchases a captured angel, Jahel, with the intent to collect her soul through his incubus powers – sex of course. Kenan collects souls, which once extracted from a person/being, become token coins. With the purchase of Jahel, he sees her angel soul as the ultimate soul that would be in his collection. These initial plans, however, do not go as planned as he becomes more and more enamored with Jahel’s physique, and also after he decides to be honest and truly trying to gain Jahel’s trust by offering to help Jahel with her mission which brought her to Hellsgate in the first place.

I found the angel-demon relationship and dynamic to be an interesting storyline – and I especially was fond of the originality of the setting and some parts of the mythology / Biblical references. The author provided very well written descriptions of the places and different characters and beings encountered in the story. The story’s time period is a bit unclear, but from Kenan’s mentions of his previous conquers and souls collected, it sounds like it could be anywhere from (what I think) the Middle Ages up to early/mid 1700’s. Though when this story takes place does not really have much, if any, significance to the story.

I really did enjoy reading this story. Though I thought it was going to have more elements of erotica in it, the scenes and elements that are found in the story are well written and fun and exhilarating to read. Though this book is put under the “erotica” genre, it pretty much only went as far as soft-core erotica, so for those that are looking for steamy sex scenes between angels and demons in every other page, this would not be a story for you. I’m a sucker for the forbidden love element, so the story delivered with Kenan and Jahel falling for each other. The ending was especially adorable, and a happy ending is always a plus.

 

A Wicked Wolf by Brenda Williamson (18+over material)

A Wicked Wolf

by Brenda Williamson

Publication date: 11/13/10

Rating: 2 / 5 Stars

Thank you Netgalley and Red Sage Publishing for the ARC!

Synopsis (courtesy of Goodreads):

Real Estate agent Randi Brown works the rich crowd, selling high-priced homes. With her parents dead it’s up to her to financially support two teenage siblings and she wants to spread her wings by negotiating a billion dollar land deal. Only the landowner, a business mogul no one has seen in years isn’t interested in selling his mountain to a development corporation, and Randi sets out to change his mind any way possible, even if that means sleeping with the reclusive billionaire.

After two years, since his wife’s brutal murder, Nicholas "Nick" Wolfe prefers to mourn her than get involved in business. So he lives cut off from society on Wolfe Mountain. Through his attorney, he’s offered billions, but no one knows to what extent the value of the land is more than the inhabitants—the Lycans, human wolf-like animal shifters.

When Randi shows up on the mountain one rainy night, Nick tires to fight the desires of the wolf in him to take a mate. Unfortunately, nature has made it impossible to resist the animalistic urges strengthened by the influence of a full moon and the power of lust in this woman’s eyes. Can love know no bounds?

Randi has no idea of where this torrid affair can lead until she learns the gruesome details of a woman’s murder by a creature not quite human. Then she becomes the next target and she discovers how falling in love can lead to a fatal attack from a Lycan.

Review:

While I've read my fair share of paranormal romance books (and by that, I mean a lot of them), I found this one to be soo cliche and quite frankly, weird.  The sad thing is that I can totally see this being a script for a really bad, beastiality porno -- that kind of shallowness and using the characters really just as props for sex, with no character development. 

I did not like the main female character Randi. She was too "God I need sex, and when I need it, I am so going to get some." Seriously - does she have to be THAT horny and thinking of sex all the time -- I mean it automatically made me disconnect with the character because that is not how normal women think (majority anyway). And I did not like the constant subject of Randi ovulating, or as Nick was referring to it "a bitch in heat," and the constant urge he has to have sex with her just because of that, and oh, now that he's mated with her in almost every position and such, she is now his property as in she is his mate for life.

I thought that the sex scenes were really hot, if you didn't take into account that Nick is half-beast while taking her. It did justice to the erotica genre with its involvement of bdsm and bondage -- but definitely did NOT do it justice with the involvement of beastiality and Nick's constant referring of Randi as his dead wife. Those elements were just plain creepy. There is a similar sex scene with such beastiality in one of Laurell Hamilton's Anita Blake books, but it was much more suave and not as weird/creepy as the scenes in this book were.

Lover Eternal (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #2) by J.R.Ward

Lover Eternal (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #2)

by J.R.Ward

With the story of Wrath and Beth wrapped up, the second book in J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series focuses on Rhage, aka “Hollywood” nickname by his brothers. Rhage, who has been cursed by the Sacred Virgin for his anger and inappropriate behavior with the curse of turning into an uncontrollable dragon monster when threatened, wounded, or not getting enough sexual release or fighting, inadvertently stumbles across a woman named Mary. Mary is a cancer survivor who has developed a relationship with a caller at her job at the suicide hotline, a person that doesn’t talk to her, but only wishes to communicate/hear from her. This mysterious caller, Mary discovers is a young man named John Matthew, who cannot talk but is knowledgeable of sign-language. He has been following her and claims to be protecting her as she goes about her day and job as a suicide crisis hotline receptionist. Through her neighbor, a drop-dead gorgeous woman named Bella who lives next door from Mary’s barn house, Mary discovers that John is very special – noted by his hand-carved bracelet that turns out to be in a very rare language, and the bracelet has an intriguing word on it. Bella calls the Black Dagger Brotherhood to come see John, and Bella, John and Mary were asked to come to the Brotherhood manor. By chance and accident, Mary runs into Rhage in the manor – and Rhage instantly becomes infatuated with her. Mary, however, is not wooed at all by his smooth moves and breath-taking looks. With his growing interest and devotion to Mary, Rhage must also deal with his curse, which seems to be also reacting to Mary’s presence and growing interest in Rhage.

           

I think that this second book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series was overall a success, in that it was entertaining, suspenseful and has a nice lead into the next book in the series. I would have liked some of the conflicts that appeared throughout the book to have been addressed more thoroughly instead of just glossed over. I really enjoyed reading about how Rhage actually has to use his smarts and be romantic in order to win Mary over. And of course, the sex scenes were as fantastic as the first book’s scenes.

Rating: 4/5 Stars