*Strip: A Bargain with the Boss Romance by Elisabeth Caldwell

October 26, 2022 By Leave a Comment


*Strip: A Bargain with the Boss Romance by Elisabeth Caldwell
Spice Up the Night Book 1
Publisher: City Owl Press
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Larkspur

Sage Cashman’s sister suffers from a terrible illness and Sage will do anything to help her, including dancing at a gentleman’s club to support the two of them. Every night, she puts on a show for the customers, and the naughtier and more flirtatious she acts, the better her tips. Sage is just going through the motions until she gets closer to the dark, silent Adonis who lurks in the shadows during her performances. When Ryker Madsen is in her orbit, she doesn’t have to pretend she’s a woman easily seduced.

Ryker Madsen turns out to be more than Sage’s boss—he’s the owner of the club. He’s also involved with the company producing the experimental drug that might be her sister’s only hope. Ryker is as arrogant as he is rich, and it’s no secret that he wants Sage and is determined to have her. He’s intrigued when Sage proposes a deal: companionship for connections. Preferring uncommitted and unemotional relationships, Ryker sees Sage’s proposal as the perfect way to get her out of his system. What Ryker doesn’t know is that Sage, jaded from a string of betrayals, has many secrets. Including her identity.

The hotter their relationship gets, the closer the truth comes to the surface. When the skeletons in Sage’s family’s closet start tumbling out, they threaten both her plan to save her sister and her future with Ryker.

This passionate, emotional story about Ryker and Sage had me hooked from the first page. The plot is riveting, and the characters are engaging and easy to relate to.

I found it easy to like Sage and I admired her courage and determination. She is willing to do anything to help her sister and that is how she ends up working in the strip club that Ryker owns. Sage is playing a game pretending to be a seductress when she is really innocent.

What I liked the most about this story was the strong connection and sizzling chemistry between Sage and Ryker. Ryker is a successful businessman and is completely taken with Sage from the moment he meets her. He is a self-made man who is ruthless and honorable, with a soft spot in his heart for Sage.

I loved reading Ryker and Sage’s story and thought they were perfect for each other.

They are two good people afraid to open up their hearts. They find it difficult to trust, but they are loyal to those they care about. I enjoyed this intense story; it held me spellbound from start to finish.

Filed Under: Reviews, Romance Tagged With: , , , ,

Curse of the Amber by Kathryn Troy

June 11, 2019 By Leave a Comment


Curse of the Amber by Kathryn Troy
Publisher: City Owl Press
Genre: Contemporary, Historical, Paranormal, Suspense/Mystery
Length: Full Length (275 pages)
Heat Level: Sensual
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Orchid

A curse, a resurrection, and a centuries old witch hell bent on revenge.
Quintus is a dutiful son and soldier, sent to Britannia to improve his marriage prospects and ensure the Druids never rise again. Roman soldiers destroyed the last Druid stronghold in a battle of blood and fire. So, he never expects to be sacrificed to their sacred bog, trapped forever by the gods below.

Two thousand years later, Asenath Hayes discovers the most well-preserved body in history. And the last thing she needs is for him to wake up.
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As the young archaeologist delves into Druidic rituals to grasp why Quintus was offered to a Welsh bog and then resurrected, she is forced to complete her research with the “missing” body, dodge her ex-lover and mentor with his own agenda, and keep her gorgeous new houseguest under wraps.

But, smitten with her as he seems, Quintus says he wants to go home.

Asenath is drawn to Quintus by the secrets they share, even if it scares her. As Asenath is pulled deeper into the mysteries of the bog, she must risk everything to keep him from hell’s cold grasp as she uncovers forbidden rites, awakened deities, and an attraction that transcends the ages.

Azi is about to get her post doctorate in archaeology but this is difficult due to Alex, her ex-lover and supervisor who prefers to let others do the work while he takes the credit. An amazing find at a Welsh druid site gives Azi the boost she needs but when she returns to America with the peat embalmed body things begin to go excessively wrong. The body in the peat comes to life when Azi is alone with it and this begins an amazing romance story combined with treachery, history and magic.

The love story of Azi and Quintus is always shadowed by the fact he is from the Roman era of Britain while she is from the present. Will he return? Should she allow her love for him to grow stronger? Put this against the backdrop of the house full of Egyptology that her parents left her and the fun flatmates she has had for years, and the story comes alive.

I enjoyed the story and all its twists and turns but for some reason it didn’t hold me in suspense. I’m used to being gripped by books like this, not wanting to put them down. It didn’t happen this time and I still don’t know why. I enjoyed it, the story was well told and the characters strong and engaging.

Curse of the Amber was a good book and the title encompasses the main theme of the book. I did enjoy reading it and found myself wondering how the story would end. I have to admit (without giving any spoilers) that I was satisfied by the final pages. Enjoyable reading.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews, Romance Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Blackbird Summer by EM Shotwell

August 24, 2016 By Leave a Comment

SUMMER
Blackbird Summer by EM Shotwell
Publisher: City Owl Press
Genre: Contemporary, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Full Length (343 pgs)
Heat Level: Sensual
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Daisy

When people fear the unknown, being Gifted is a curse.

In the cornerstone of the rural south, Brooklyn, Mississippi, no one dares make eye contact with the strange Caibre family. Until the rewards are worth the cost. The townsfolk come, cash in hand, always at night, to pay for services only a Gifted can provide.

No matter the Gifts prevalent in her family, at twenty-one, Tallulah is expected to follow the path laid out for her: marriage, babies, and helping her mama teach the family home school program. She’s resigned to live the quiet life and stay out of trouble…until she meets Logan.
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An outsider and all around rebel, Logan doesn’t care about her family’s reputation. Yet after a tragic loss wreaks havoc on the crumbling relationship between the Caibres and the townsfolk, Tallulah must decide if love and freedom are worth risking everything.

New Adult and Young Adult genres mix in this late coming of age story. The protagonist, Tallulah, has a path laid out for her by her magical family, living in semi-secrecy in the rural south, but she, and the non-magical community, are set to buck the trend. This storyline would be typical for a young coming of age story, apart from the fact Tallulah is much older than most looking to fight against their family values and find love where she wants it.

Her romantic interest is likeable, attractive and not the obvious choice for the area she lives in. Being new to dating and in her early twenties, their relationship is unusual for this age group. She’s new to everything, curious and excited to get to know him better. Their kisses and care for each other felt genuine. However, the insistence on cutting away from the sex scenes often left me wondering if a sex scene took place, or not. It was a little too ambiguous in some scenes. Were they making out, interrupted by the next plot point before they could get any further in love making, or did they go the whole way? I still have little clue.

The main plot takes a group of these young magical people, including the protagonist, and pits their wits against a local danger, a person who has been attacking their magical community and inciting hatred in the non-magical nearby town. Their fight back is believable for a group of young adults, but I found myself asking questions: ‘why do they not talk to their parents’ and ‘what are the parents doing about all this?’ Very often it seemed the parents were happy to provoke the nearby town and ignore the issue of who was the perpetrator, upping the stakes and tension level without much logical reasoning. I felt to be more realistic, the parents needed to show a more active fight back, logically looking into who could have caused the attacks against them as well as hitting out at anyone that doesn’t like their community. In many places, it felt like the older generation were more than happy to accept their fate, or incite it.

That said, the mystery of the attacker was fairly well-kept. I guessed who they were about half way through the story and was proved correct, which is better than some murder mysteries. I felt a few more red herrings could have been used to truly disguise the attacker, but it wasn’t badly done, and I was gripped by the storyline until the very end, staying up late to finish the book.

I enjoyed the creative magical community which was created out in the sticks, and the new approach to magical ‘gifts’, with some I’d not heard of before. This rural community was well-built and had a real charm to it. I also found the climatic final scene within this community to be satisfying and enjoyable. There was more worry and pain than joy, but it was a realistic ending to the polarised feelings of those who could use magic and those who couldn’t.

In essence, this is a dark fantasy, coming of age tale. We see and hear of bombs, rape, murder, prejudice and violence against women. It’s all shown in context, but it’s the kind of dark human behaviour which we don’t usually see in a fantasy romance. It gives the story some extra punch, but it does mean I came away from the story feeling a little darker about the human race as a whole. If shades of grey are what you enjoy in your fiction, this book is for you. I, for one, look forward to a sequel, hopefully one with slightly less prejudice.

Filed Under: Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

All I Ever Wanted by by Katrina Mills

August 22, 2016 By Leave a Comment

WANTED
All I Ever Wanted by by Katrina Mills
Publisher: City Owl Press
Genre: Contemporary
Length: Full Length (320 pages)
Heat Level: Spicy
Rating: 3.5 stars
Reviewed by Quince

You Can’t Go Home Again…Except For Summer Love.

Eat a stick of butter or return to her hometown? School teacher, Kinsley Bailey, would rather risk the caloric overload. Staunton, Virginia is laced in bad memories of a mentally ill mother, an estranged father, and the first boy who broke her heart. Yet the news of her father’s death has forced her return to the nightmare. Now in the heat of the summer, Kinsley’s left unraveling the mysteries surrounding a house, an antique gun collection, a flabby basset hound, and a safety deposit box that no one in the family wants to discuss.

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Kinsley Bauley is a 33 year-old school teacher forced to return to her hometown due to the death of her father. Kinsley is full of resentment mostly towards her father, who took off when she was eight and never contacted her again. She also holds some grudges toward Bastian Harris, her childhood best friend and first heartbreak. Now she is back and she will find out some inconvenient truths that should have been told to her a long time ago. Also she will meet Bastian again.

Kinsley is an interesting character; she was working in a corporation and one day she decided to become middle school chemistry teacher. She has a good life, but she still is dreaming about her first love. I had mixed feeling about her during the story. Sometimes I perceived her as a strong and independent woman, and sometimes she acted like silly immature little girl. But in the end she turned just fine.

Bastian Harris is yummy hero. He is cool, he is nice, he has a daughter he loves a lot and he is much more down to earth than Kinsley, although he has his own issues. But his issues are much more real than Kinsley’s. As a couple they are great match; sweet and lovable.

The story is set in a small town and it has all the regular characteristics of stories in this kind of setting i.e. colorful characters, noisy and amusing old ladies and funny animals (in this case a dog).

My biggest issue with All I Ever Wanted is the foundation on which the whole story is built. I find the idea way over the top that Kinsley was thinking about Bastian for so long. I cannot believe that she kept wondering for 20 years why he did not continue a relationship after the kiss they shared when they were both 13 years old. I cannot believe that she was dreaming about him for 20 years, while pursuing her career, making big bucks and having a good life.

If you do not try to analyze backstory too much and take it as it is, All I Ever Wanted is a lovely and funny story.

Filed Under: Reviews, Romance Tagged With: , , , , ,