Book Club: July

I have a Jack Reacher book finished, and I really should try and get a review done for Lindsay Buroker's Emporer's Edge series. EE cannot be a BMBR, but it might have to be. I'm also going to try and start reading something off the piano--ooh ooh! I need to start the Hunger Games' books that I borrowed from my neice; she probably wants them back ;).

So, those are the books on the plate for July if you'd care to join me.

BMBR (Smut Week): Surrender part 3: Juliana Stone's Offside

Girl goes to Sweden to play hockey, girl gets concussion, girl gets sent home, girl runs into guy that she lost her virginity to as a teen, guy starts falling for her, but he's feeling guilty because he thinks that he'd slept with her sister all those years ago (triplets--what do you do?).

This one was more of a novel length, which was kind of cool in a free book of six stories. I also contemplated for a looooong time about buying the other three books. I didn't, and I can't remember why.

Bottom line: it's well-enough written that they'd be worth the three bucks or so, so I was probably just trying to be a good girl. But I don't remember having a burning desire to get them. Maybe I'll see if the library has them.

BMBR (Smut Week): Dane by Liliana Hart (Surrender part 2)

Meh.

It was hot, but I found the whole Dane-left-town-ten-years-ago-and-returns-home-to-find-his-ex-with-a-nine-year-old-and-within-one-day-she-takes-him-back-forever thing a little bit unbelievable.

I would've been more pissed. Maybe made him wait at least a week.

BMBR (Smut Week): Surrender: Part 1: The Awakening by Erika Wilde

Holy Fucking Hot.

In volume 1 of The Marriage Diaries, empty-nester Jillian wants to spice things up with her ex-Navy SEAL, Dean. He's always been a little too considerate in the bedroom. She's tired of Vanilla, thank you very much. So she encourages him to act out their wildest fantasies. It's a little Fifty Shades but with a mature-relationship thing that totally works because the trust and love are already there. There's the visit-to-his-office scene, the bondage-in-the-living-room-with-his-tie-and-belt scene, an in-public scene, lots of teasing, and eventually she builds them a playroom in the basement.

There's just enough plot to move things along from one "scene" to the next, but maybe a bit too much self-reassurance (but that could be in one of the other six...), but the frank speech and hot sex more than make up for it.

I went and spent four bucks for the "boxed set" of the first 4 volumes. (It was still cheaper than 1.50 each for #'s 2-4.)

May I say again, Holy.Fucking.Hot. Some of the best foreplay ever. As in, it doesn't matter how tired I am, even just scrolling through bits of the first scene to remind myself of who the players are, I want to go jump my husband. Like right now.

BMBR (Smut Week): Surrender: 6 sizzling authors. Six ways to surrender. Part Prologue.

I was trolling for free books on Amazon (for Kindle), and I came across this little box of six sexy stories by six different authors. Some are sexier than others, all were decently written, and two led me on to more books by the same author. And I gladly paid for those other books. And my husband really didn't mind.

Since I'm too busy to go for all six here at once, I'm going to tackle them one at a time. Next post...

BMBR (Smut Week): M.S. Parker's Club Prive Series.

I'm on my phone and don't know how to put the accent on the 'e' so just pretend that it's there.

Super quick to the bottom line: even at a buck an ebook, book number 4 in this hot-chick-with-low-self-esteem-meets-super-rich-playboy-who-doesn't-know-what-it-is-about-her series didn't make it past Sample Land. I think 1-3 only made it because I kept hoping that it would get better, but the erotica couldn't out maneuver the blah.

BMBR (Smut Week): Rachel Van Dyken

This week, and oh how I'm going to try to do a review a day, is all about Smut. Or, what I like to call foreplay. If it kills brain cells, reads like an eight grader who's failing her English class wrote it (see last post), or makes me groan (and not in a good way), it's not good Smut. If it's well written (but not over-written for it's genre), has some great tips that would make "Cosmo" blush, and makes me want to jump my husband at any point while I'm reading it, it's good Smut.

Here we go.

If it weren't for the fact that I inadvertently started with the third book in Rachel Van Dyken's Eagle Elite series (Elite, Elect, and Entice--I think that's the order) and so ended up paying for it and the first one, and therefore felt like I had to keep reading, Elite probably wouldn't have made it past the Sample Stage (these are on my Kindle).

All of these books are somewhat rife with (minor) grammatical errors and some continuity issues, both of which usually kill a book for me, now matter what the story is about.

And yet, I fucking devoured them. As in, I couldn't put them down. I was a bad, bad girl at work.

And, oh my goodness, as I was reading them I realized that they followed Jennifer Crusie's Sex Scene Rules. That's right, the sex scenes were pretty much only descriptive when they meant some sort of character or relationship development. At all other times they were implied. The former happened more than the latter, but hey, who am I to complain.

Holy shit. I did not see that coming. Not only did I not see it coming, I didn't see it when it jumped in front of me, waved its arms, and yelled "Ooga Booga!" really loudly. I didn't see it until the third book. Probably because I thought I was reading Erotica more than I was reading Romance. Turns out, it was Erotic Romance. And then when I saw it, I was stunned. I thought I was stupid. But then I just realized that I was distracted. By all the great sex (and not just in the book). And the story, actually. Which, weirdly enough, was written in such a way that even when there wasn't sex, it turned me on. As in, I was already good to go when I jumped my husband, and that happened often enough that I know that he won't mind my buying the next installment.

So yes, they are worth the 3-5 bucks per e-book.