When I started Stranded with a Billionaire, I knew it was going to be a silly read. The title gave it away, as did the whole billionaire premise to begin with. What I didn’t know was that I was already going to be shaking my head incredulously inside of the first five pages. So, I decided to do something I haven’t quite done before in a review, which is something of a live-blog of this book. -> 3% Wasting no time at all, our hero […]
And for today’s selection of menage pr0n…
I’d been curious about the rest of Alisha Rai’s oeuvre since reading A Gentleman in the Street, a book that was funny and declaratively feminist. It’s also, you know, erotica — and quite an adventurous one at that — so its focus was much more on physical couplings than an emotional connection. Still, I liked Rai’s style, so I wanted to see which of her themes translated across her other books. From that, I can’t say what prompted me to start with Glutton for Pleasure, […]
The cream of the crop
Guys. GUYS. I’m pretty sure Christina Lauren, like, really listens and responds to feedback. This book would have been written too early to claim a direct line of insight from the epic post on slut shaming in romance, but I feel like the cultural tides that made way for that post influence Christina Lauren very much. 1) Luke, the male hero, out-and-out declares himself a feminist. 2) In direct contrast to almost every other book featuring a recovering rake, this one goes out of its […]
Predilections Schmedilections – A Contemporary Romance
Another contemporary quote erotic unquote romance in which the hero specifically talks about “violating” the heroine. From Amazon: When reserved flight attendant Bianca gets one look at billionaire hotel owner James Cavendish, she loses all of her hard-won composure. For a girl who can easily juggle a tray of champagne flutes at 35,000 feet in three inch heels, she finds herself shockingly weak-kneed from their first encounter. The normally unruffled Bianca can’t seem to look away from his electrifying turquoise gaze. They hold a challenge, […]
My first wish for 2016 is for Bettie Sharpe to publish more stories.
I was hooked about two pages into Ember, a romance retelling of “Cinderella” featuring a heroine who is a (mostly) benevolent witch and a prince who is literally cursed by Charm — everyone who meets him loves him, finds him salivatingly handsome, and can’t help but do what he wants. I knew immediately I would want to read everything by this author, which, I’ll mention now, is devastatingly little that is available: three novellas and one short story on Amazon and none published after 2012. […]
Good sex, meh story, sloppy feminism
Over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, I recently read an interesting discussion about female sexuality and dating, and how well that is represented in the current climate of contemporary romance. One of the points of view discussed was that despite the explosion in popularity of online dating and, in particular, apps like Tinder that facilitate no-strings hookups, that scene is seldom portrayed in the genre. All too often, the heroine’s sex life before the hero is glossed over, minimized, or even laughably dismisssed, with authors […]