Eyes Wide Open by Raine Miller

11 May

eyeswideopen4Big surprises are on the horizon for Ethan and Brynne as they struggle to adjust to what life has thrown at them.

Demons from the past are threatening to destroy the passionate bond they’ve forged despite their vow that nothing will ever keep them apart. A truly devastating loss coupled with the promise of a new hope opens their eyes to what is most important, but is it possible for the lovers to move on from the painful histories that continue to haunt them?

A stalker is still lurking in the shadows, plotting evil amidst the distraction of the 2012 Olympic games in London. Brynne and Ethan are on the cusp of losing everything as the stakes rise.

Will they yield to circumstances beyond their control or will they give every ounce of fight they have left to save each other and win the ultimate prize of a life together?

review

“Are you real?” he whispered, brushing up my face with the back of his fingers in a cherished caress. “Because I’ll want you forever.”

The anxiously awaited third book of The Blackstone Affair does not only live up to its prequels’ high expectations, it exceeds them and then some. It almost appears like the previous instalments were there to set the stage for this book, and let me tell you, goosebumps and all, it was definitely worth the wait. This will not be a book that you’ll be able to put down so make yourself comfortable, have a glass of wine handy and be ready to become even more engrossed in the exquisite love story of our Ethan and Brynne.

We find the young couple exactly where we left them at the end of All In and the emotional rollercoaster ride that their relationship seems to have been from the beginning only picks up in pace from that point onwards. After escaping to the countryside to recover from everything that has happened to them and focus solely on each other without external threats and pressures, we see them completely immersed in one another, with all their defences down, fully absorbing and accepting their feelings for one another. Their bond is as strong as ever, their physical connection setting sparks whenever they lay hands on each other and it is a sight to behold.

“Ethan made me feel desirable. He made me feel beautiful and sexy, from the words that came out of his mouth to the touch of his body in mine when he made love to me. And afterward, when he held me against him like I was precious.”

Brynne is exactly what Ethan needs to extinguish the raging blaze inside his soul and to quiet his demons. Her safety and wellbeing have become his priority and he has become so finely attuned to the needs of the love of his life, that he can sense her every emotional shift and pre-emptively deal with it. By allowing him to protect her and take care of her, Brynne gives Ethan the control he so desperately needs to function.

“Brynne was my heaven. I’d seek out my heaven endlessly.”

Ethan’s protectiveness makes Brynne feel safe for the first time in years, safe enough to show him all her fears and anxieties. His passionate but healing touch calms and grounds her. However, as much as she needs him at this point to stay strong, she is also desperately afraid of losing complete control of her life, of feeling helpless and vulnerable again. This inner struggle tears her apart at times and affects all important decisions that they need to make as a couple.

“The one who had the power to take me apart was also the only one with the power to put me back together again.”

The intensity between these characters is breathtaking, their emotional connection closely rivalled only by their physical one. Desperate to stay together and constantly afraid of losing one another, Brynne and Ethan are faced with a myriad of circumstances that are out of their control and which ultimately set the pace for their relationship. In a story that is a lot more emotional, intimate, raw in every way, we witness the bond between them being challenged, surviving the odds, strengthening from within, and ultimately blossoming into something very little can break.

Ms Raine is a masterful wordsmith and once more her ability to balance impeccably developed characters with a solid plot makes her a force to be reckoned with. It seems that she is able to express in a paragraph what often takes a chapter to achieve. The connection between the characters is not only palpable, it is all-consuming for the reader. We feel their chemistry, their need and aching for one another, their desperation to hold onto each other and protect their growing relationship.

The timeless romance between Brynne and Ethan reaches a very happy milestone at the end of this book, leaving us at a satisfying place, eager for more but quite happy to wait.

“Are you ready?”
I nodded and whispered, “Yes.”
“And nothing changes us.”
“Nothing changes that we love each other.”

5stars

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Read Chapter 1 of Eyes Wide Open: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Pre-order Eyes Wide Open: Amazon | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble
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The Blackstone Affair – Reading Order and Purchase Links
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My Everything by Heidi McLaughlin

19 Mar

myeverything_322x500When Nick Ashford lost his friend, Mason, he didn’t realize he was going to lose his family as well, but that’s exactly what happened.

Alone and in a foreign country, Nick is working on rebuilding his life one patient at a time, that is, until a striking volunteer makes her presence known.

Can Nick finish his year in Africa without risking his heart being broken again?

Or is he willing to start a new chapter in his life before his return to Beaumont?

 

 

 

 

 

review

“You make all the ugly in this world seem just a bit better when I close my eyes at night…”

Just like the first book in the Beaumont series, a second chance at love is the key theme of this companion novella to Forever My Girl. Nick Ashford was the ‘collateral damage’ in Josie and Liam’s story, a man who wished nothing more than to have a family of his own, but ended up losing both the woman he loved as well as the boy he considered and raised as his own son. He walked out of their lives a broken man, heartbroken and betrayed, and in order to distance himself from the constant reminder of what could have been his but now would never be, he left Beaumont and went to Africa to work as a volunteer.

“I needed to volunteer. I needed to feel as if my life meant something.”

We find Nick in a small clinic in the middle of Africa, doing what he does best – helping people. His living conditions are very modest and his working conditions very basic, but this simplicity helps him put things into perspective and re-evaluate the life he left behind. Flashback memories of Josie, Noah and their time together haunt him, keep replaying in his mind and hurting him over and over again. He regrets not fighting for his family and giving up on them too easily, but while his love for Josie slowly fades away, his guilt over leaving Noah behind without so much as an explanation, the boy he raised with her for six years and loved as his own, never does. His conscience burns and gives him no relief.

“Memories. That is all I have from the last six years.”

This is where Nick meets Aubrey, a young volunteer working as a nurse in his clinic. Nick is immediately attracted to her, but cautious not to get involved with her due to the limited nature of his stay in Africa. However, life is full of surprises and Nick is not only given a chance to love again, but to experience the kind of love he’s never felt before.

“When I look at her, I know what true love feels like. It’s the butterflies you get every time that person walks into the room or you get a whiff of their perfume from another room.”

When Nick finally returns to Beaumont, he has to face the ghosts he’s left behind and finally accept that the life he’s been grieving might have never been his in the first place. But his biggest challenge is rebuilding a relationship with the one he hurt the most with his sudden departure – Noah. This is a beautiful and very emotional, albeit too short for this greedy book junkie, story of finding one’s true happiness in life, letting go of a past that holds us behind and moving forward without looking back.

My only objection is that the intimate scenes between Nick and Aubrey could and should have been less fade-to-black and more detailed, more personal. It would have added an extra layer to the special connection between these two characters and given us a further, more vivid example of the unique attachment being woven between them. It should also be noted that this story should not be read without first reading Forever My Girl as it is a continuation of those events and I do not feel that the reader would get to experience the full depth of emotions that this story brings without knowing the background storyline.

4halfstars

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The Giveaway

To win a set of e-copies of Forever My Girl and My Everything, please enter below. By entering, you accept the following Giveaway Conditions. This contest is open internationally.

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BLOG TOUR: Breaking the Wrong by Calia Read

18 Mar

BTW_blog tour banner_RW2

Breaking the Wrong-RW coverEmilia Wentworth would do anything for her sister.

For three years, Emilia has lived in the past, feeling her sister’s pain and hating those who are to blame, including one of the Sloan brothers.

Finally, she has had enough.

The only way to be free is to create a Burn List with all the people who have ever hurt her sister.

As she crosses each name off, she gets closer and closer to her final target.

But, things aren’t always as they seem.

Loyalties are tested.

Boundaries are crossed.

And the truth is revealed.

 

review

“I achieved nothing in my revenge, except handing over my heart to the one person I was supposed to hate.”

Some writers make you feel everything the characters feel, make you take the journey with them, feel every single bump in the road, but then on occasion you come across an author whose writing also makes you feel everything they felt while writing that book. Their writing style is so transparently emotional, personal, honest, that when you finish that story you not only know each character inside out, but you have the impression that you know the author as well. Calia Read is one of those authors for me. While I really really liked the first book in the series, Every Which Way, and even felt that the heroine’s personality mirrored mine to a tee so this made me selfishly invested in her fate, I feel that Breaking the Wrong is an even more intense read. It is gripping, passionate, all-consuming at times, and it won’t allow you to put it down. It’s a story I hold very dear to my heart now because it succeeded in making me fall in love with a character that appeared to have very few redeeming features in the first book, and it gave us a heroine you cannot help but love and feel protective of. This is the story of Emilia and Macsen, two damaged individuals who carry the pain of their past like a heavy burden on their shoulders, but whose love for each other eventually sets them free.

Emilia is a young woman with revenge on her mind. She has moved 600 miles away from the only home she’s ever known to a city where she has no one of her own, just to be close to the one she holds responsible for the wrong that drives her. Macsen Sloan. She infiltrates his inner circle of family and friends to slowly make him notice her and get under his skin. But the more she gets to know Macsen, the more the monster that hurt her sister becomes a distant and abstract image of him in her mind. Every moment she spends with him makes her resolve weaker and weaker, confusing her and creating an inner conflict in her between what she feels and what she should be feeling. The Macsen that she gets to know and fall in love with appears to be incapable of doing what she blames him to have done, and Emilia’s heart starts doubting everything that she has believed in for the past three years.

“I’m sleeping with someone I’m supposed to hate.”

Macsen is drawn to Emilia from the moment her sees her. Her gentle appearance but fierce determination in everything she does pull him in her direction. He does not want to see her but every fiber of his being sees her and wants to see her. The very thing that drives Emilia and makes her the tortured young woman that she is is also what attracts him to her the most – her pain. He sees it simmering under her collected façade, recognizes it and wants to take it away from her, never knowing that he might have been the cause of it. They fall in love, unexpectedly, reluctantly but completely. Their love story is born out of hate, but it develops because Macsen and Emilia are two kindred spirits, longing to be loved and to love another wholeheartedly. They both take a chance on each other, hoping to find a love that would heal their pained soul and erase the past.

“You can’t heal a heart that’s been fragmented. But my wounds were closing. Stitch by stitch, I was starting to feel again. I can’t undo the past and stop everything that has happened. However, I can try to take a tiny step forward.”

By loving her so freely and genuinely, Macsen glues back together the shattered pieces of Emilia’s heart. Her preconceptions about him are replaced by regret, guilt, and pure unadulterated love for a man who understands her, adores her, awakens the deeply sexual woman hiding inside her. She falls in love with him and that love tears her apart every time she thinks of her family, of what is expected of her, making her question her own loyalties. The connection between them is so beautifully developed, step by step, their walls brought down without either of them being able to do anything about it. They just keep falling deeper and deeper…

“Reaching out, I touch Macsen’s back with my index finger. My arms are practically shaking and after a few seconds, I slowly trace the words: forgive me. It’s for everything and to everyone: my sister, my family, my heart, and to Macsen. A small tear falls onto his pillow and I wait for him to tense and turn around to face me, but a minute passes and there’s nothing. One more time, I touch his skin and write three words on his back. Words that I’ve only told my family.”

As secrets finally come to the surface, Macsen and Emilia find themselves battling not only ghosts from the past, but also their own emotions and the love they so unexpectedly found in each other. When the past seems like an endless array of mistakes, their biggest challenge becomes not making another one.

A deeply emotional story of love erasing hate, of love replacing a lifetime of hurt, of love mending the heartbreak from past mistakes. This is one of those books I ‘felt’ from beginning to end, whose every scene moved me one way or another, a story so intense and all-consuming that it will make you lose all sense of reality. Sensual, emotional, scorching hot – brace yourselves for Emilia and Macsen!

“My body is between his spread legs. Even though he’s silent, his chest rises and falls like he has just stopped running. I know he wants me. I shut my brain down, ignore what a mistake this is, and lean forward and kiss the side of his neck. He jumps slightly and I lick his skin. I hear him groan and move my lips upward. A kiss cannot replace the past. But with every kiss to his skin, my hurt becomes a distant memory.”

5stars

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The Author

calia read_picCollege seemed like too much stress for me. Traveling across the world, getting married, and having three kids seemed much more relaxing. Yeah, I’m still waiting for the relaxing part to kick in… I change addresses every other year. It’s not by choice but it is my reality.

While the crazies of life kept me busy, the stories in my head decided to bubble to the surface. They were dying to be told and and I was dying to tell them. That was four years ago. Now, I share these stories with you. I hope you’ll enjoy escaping to the crazy world of these characters with me!!

Connect with Calia: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads
The Giveaway

To win a signed set of paperback copies of both Every Which Way and Breaking the Wrong, please enter below. This giveaway is administered by Calia Read and it is open to US/Canada residents only.

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BLOG TOUR: Play With Me by Kristen Proby

1 Mar

play with me_322x500Will Montgomery is a successful professional football player and seemingly has it all. He’s not used to being told no, and certainly doesn’t take no for an answer. So when he turns his charms on his sister’s sexy rocker-chick friend Meg, he’s not only turned down, but met with open hostility, piquing his curiosity and libido. He’s determined to show her that he’s not the arrogant jock she thinks he is, and to get her into his bed.

Megan McBride is not impressed with Will Montgomery, his fat contract, fancy car, or his arrogant public persona. She doesn’t have time for a relationship, and if she’s learned anything in life, it’s that loving means losing, so she guards her heart ferociously. But she can’t deny the overwhelming attraction to the sexy, tattooed athlete, and when Will starts breaking down her defenses and grabs hold of her heart, will she be able to admit her feelings for him, or will her troubled past cause her to lose the first man she’s ever truly loved?

review

“I know I’m not anyone special. I know that you shouldn’t be interested in someone like me. We are from two totally different worlds.”

Kristen Proby’s unique brand of feel-good smuttiliciousness never ceases to make my heart beat a little bit faster and Play With Me just added its own beat to that particular arrhythmia. In the third book of the With Me in Seattle series, we meet Megan and Will. We were introduced to these characters at the end of Fight With Me and even from that short introduction we knew they would set those pages on fire.

Megan is a paediatric nurse and Jules’ old friend from college. Once upon a time she dreamed of becoming a singer but that dream was cut short when her singing partner left her behind to pursue his own singing career. She is now dedicated to her nursing job body and soul, loved by patients and colleagues alike, but with no one waiting for her at home at night.

Will is Jules’ football star brother. He lives the life of a bachelor, enjoying the perks of his success but dedicating his life to his career. When he meets Megan, he is immediately drawn to her, he wants her and he is not ashamed to communicate that to her. However, Megan is not like the groupies that normally throw themselves at him and his teammates. She rejects his advances, unequivocally showing her lack of interest in dating him. But rejection not being a flavour that Will has often had to taste, he pursues her relentlessly, wearing her reservations down and showing her that all her preconceptions about him are wrong. The more she tries pushing him away, the more he holds onto her and pampers her with loving attention.

A gently developing love story that is initially based on physical attraction alone quickly becomes a whole lot more than that. However, while Will dives into it with no life vest on, Megan stays reluctant to embrace her feelings for him, love not being an emotion she is too comfortable with. Her childhood was marred by a careless and loveless mother whose negligence caused Megan to grow up in foster care. This taught her that demonstrating love towards someone could only lead to vulnerability and ultimately heartache. So she holds onto her feelings for Will, guarding them fiercely and never verbalising them. She hopes that if she does not say those three little words, he would not end up abandoning her like every other person she has ever truly cared for.

“When I can say the words, when I can finally tell you how I feel, please don’t leave me.”

But the heart cannot be told what to feel and even the toughest of walls crack under the weight of a Montgomery man determined to show his woman that she is loved.

“Don’t you see what I feel for you? Can’t you feel it when I make love to you? The way I look at you? Jesus, Meg, you’re all I see. You’re all I want.”

Megan’s trust issues make it hard for her to show others that she loves them and while Will’s love for her is unconditional, genuine, pure, accepting, her doubts keep setting them back, never fully embracing the magic they found in each other. But Will is no ordinary man – he understands Megan and the reasons behind her behaviour, giving her space and time to become truly comfortable expressing her love for him. He is protective, supportive of everything she does and always in sync with her emotional state. He wears his heart on his sleeve proudly and for everyone to see.

“I knew that I’d fall in love eventually. That I’d end up meeting a nice girl and we’d get married and have a few kids and a good life together. But I had no idea that I could love someone so much that it absolutely consumes me.”

A beautiful lesson in patience, acceptance of another’s hesitations to show their emotions readily, and unconditional commitment to prove to that person they are loved. This book is the perfect combination of erotica and romance. The characters are carefully developed and they start getting under your skin from the very first page. This is not a particularly angsty story or one that required resolutions of complex inter-personal struggles. This is a book that will warm the heart first and foremost, while also making it race and skip a beat at times. The scorching hot love scenes alone will make this a very fulfilling reading experience, not to mention that Ms Proby has managed to create another perfect hero to ruin all men for us. This is a book you will inhale in one sitting and will leave you smiling long after you’ve finished it.

“You are mine, sweetheart. Get used to it.”

4halfstars

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The Giveaway

To win ONE of three Play With Me eBooks, please enter below. This giveaway is administered by Kristen Proby.

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BLOG TOUR: Raid by Kristen Ashley

28 Feb

raid_322x500Hanna Boudreaux has lived in the small town of Willow, Colorado all her life. The great-granddaughter of the town matriarch, she’s sweet, cute and quiet.

Too quiet.

Hanna has a moment of epiphany when she realizes her crush for forever, Raiden Ulysses Miller, is not ever going to be hers. She sees her life as narrow and decides to do something about it.

Raiden Miller is the town of Willow’s local hero. An ex-marine with the medal to prove his hero status, he comes home, shrouded in mystery. It takes a while but, eventually, Hanna catches his eye.

But after all these years of Raid and Hanna living in the same town, the question is, why? Is Raid interested in Hanna because she’s sweet and cute? Or does Raid have something else going on?

review

“I didn’t dream as a kid of bein’ a cop or an astronaut, but I gave a lot of thought to the woman I’d want in my bed. I grew older and gave more thought to that woman, but it was also about the woman I wanted in my life. And she was you. Then I met you. And now, every day I wake up I cannot believe my luck because you’re here.”

I have a Kristen Ashley addiction – it’s been diagnosed, I have accepted it, embraced it and have the hazy-eyed look on my face to prove it. Reading a KA novel is like cruising on a sailboat on a beautiful sunny day – your heart is happy, your body is happy, you want to pinch yourself to make sure you are really there. It might get bumpy at times, the waters might get rough, the wind might pick up and make the boat sail faster, but at the end of the day, you will reach the shore, happy as a clam, filled with a giddiness that has no equal. This book was no exception and apart from having all the winning elements of a ‘KA formula’, it had the added message of hope. A hope that no matter how cruel life has been to you, how many scars it has left on your body and soul, how much emotional baggage you are forced to carry with you each day, love can truly conquer all and be its own reward for all that has passed.

This is the story of two people who grew up in the same small town, their families knew each other, their paths crossed on more than one occasion, but while Raiden grew up oblivious of Hanna, she had always been more than aware of his presence in her life, having nursed a crush on him since she was six years old. Raiden was the town’s hero, a man who went to war, earned the stripes of a hero but returned a broken man. His activities since his return were clouded in mystery but his hero status remained intact. Hanna kept watching him from afar, with the innocent infatuation and pure adoration, always hoping he would one day turn in her direction and notice her. But when that day never came, she put her fantasies aside to finally stop daydreaming and create the life she was happy living.

And then one day Raiden noticed her.

“Home. Warmth. Comfort. Nurture. Love.”

He never hoped, dreamed, expected for his luck to change and to find a woman like Hanna. He knew who she was and how beloved she was in their home town. He knew she looked after her grandmother, she was quirky, trusting, sweet, loving, funny, and all those qualities made her exactly the kind of woman he hoped he would be able to claim as his own one day. After a quick courtship and through some nail-biting circumstances, they fall in love, head over heals, all in and never wanting to let go.

“How into you do you think I am?”
“Honey, you crawled around on all fours in a pet store, totally unable to cope with bein’ in my space. You’re seriously into me.”

But Raiden’s demons run deep, they are ever-present and they crawl out at night giving him night-terrors. They are faced with challenges from the get-go, but Hanna is no ordinary woman. She takes the fire blazing inside Raiden, the good and the bad, and she tackles it all determined to stand by her man and help him come out of his dark tunnel, waiting for him in the light with open arms. She never judges his life choices, she tries to understand them and accept him as a package rather than as a collection of rights and wrongs.

“Baby, … you are the only thing in four years that has come close to getting me to a place where I can even begin to think I might be able to bear those flames.”

Raiden is probably one of the most complex characters that I have encountered in a KA novel. He is troubled but he is also a dominant alpha male who knows what he likes and he has no qualms claiming it. He falls in love with the sweet “Peggy Sue throwback from the fifties” Hanna, but he ignites for the wildcat that trusts him to make her lose control. Their dynamic is moving and their hot lovin’ scenes are mind-blowing.

“You get my teeth, Hanna, ‘cause makin’ my own personal Peggy Sue go wild for me drives me f*ckin’ crazy. You do it for me like no woman before you. I lose control because you make me and you get my teeth, and what makes that shit better is you love havin’ my mark on you.”

Ms Ashley’s writing style is flawlessly unique as always. Her language has a life of its own, setting the scene so well and immersing us in a world that we quickly become part of. Her male characters never beat around the bush, they hit the target with every word they utter, using language economically but achieving full impact. Raiden is no different. He tells Hanna exactly what is on his mind, truthfully and succinctly, making him a hero we admire on every possible level.

This is a story about the healing power of love and the loving effort it takes to help a man overcome his demons. It is a story of meant-to-bes and childhood dreams coming true, but above all, this is a story of hope, hope that the future would bring all the beauty that the past never did.

“If you’re the kind of woman who can withstand the blaze of hellfire he’s got burning inside, he battles that and wins, you will know nothing for the rest of your life, no taste, no experience, not even the birth of your children that will be sweeter than the love he’ll have for you.”

4halfstars

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The Giveaway

There are THREE prize packs up for grabs, as well as FIVE e-copies of Raid:

First prize pack:

Signed Copy of Raid (when it’s available in print)
Amazon or BN.com $25 gift card
Raid, Knight and Creed E-books

Second prize pack:

Amazon or BN.com $10 gift card
Raid, Knight and Creed E-books

Third prize pack:

Amazon or BN.com $5 Gift card
Raid, Knight and Creed E-books

To win one of these prize packs, please enter below. This giveaway is administered by Kristen Ashley.

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Never Too Far by Abbi Glines

23 Feb

NeverTooFarHe had held a secret that destroyed her world.

Everything she had known was no longer true.

Blaire couldn’t stop loving him but she knew she could never forgive him. Now, she was back home and learning to live again. Moving on with life… until something happened to send her world spinning once again.

What do you do when the one person you can never trust again is the one that you need to trust so desperately?

You lie, hide, avoid, and pray that your sins never find you out.

 

 

 

review

“No man has ever loved a woman as much as I love you. Nothing will ever come before you.”

Rarely does a sequel to a book you’ve loved and re-read more times than you wish to admit ever live up to its high expectations – you’re afraid the plotline would be thin, the characters taken in a direction you don’t wish them to be taken, the overall ‘feeling’ of the book not as intensely or consistently pieced together. Well, you have absolutely no reason to fear any of that when it comes to this book because Abbi Glines has just helped me achieve a new level of ‘book junkie nirvana’. Never Too Far is EVERYTHING I have hoped it would be and then some.

After the traumatic cliffhanger we were left with at the end of Fallen Too Far, both our beloved characters are emotional train wrecks. Blaire has run away from Rosemary and from the man she loves, and is hoping to find solace in the familiarity of her home town. She is left with nothing in life, no possessions, no plans for the future, no family that she can rely on to help her heal her shattered soul. She craves to have a family again, to feel unconditional love again, to mean something to someone. Everything she has always believed to be true has been shaken, questioned, attacked, and we find our gentle heroine heartbroken and alone.

“I don’t want to be alone… but I am. And I’m scared.”

Rush is battling his own demons after Blaire’s departure. For the first time in his life he has fallen in love with someone body and soul, and for the first time in his life he wants to put her well-being first, before anyone else’s, including his sister Nan’s. His last encounter with Blaire has scarred him deeply because he saw the real effects of what his family had done to her. The memory of her vacant eyes haunt him, torture him and don’t allow him to move on. His guilt for the role he played in Blaire’s heartbreak stop him from going after her again, deep down hoping she would come back to him in her own time.

“She may have had enough time to deal with things. What if she does come back? What will you do?”
What would I do?
I’d beg.

But life is not done throwing them curveballs and very soon Blaire is forced to return to Rosemary, albeit temporarily, and attempt to find her place in the world again. She leaves the safety of her past once more, trading the familiar comforts of her home town for the unknown of a world that has treated her only badly. She bravely takes control of her life and goes back to the one place that broke her.

So what happens when you throw a starving man a bone? He clenches to it and never wants to let go. Blaire’s return has given Rush hope, but he is fearful of scaring Blaire off and making her run away from him again. So he threads carefully, giving her space and time, but his heart and body naturally gravitate towards her and the pull is too irresistible to fight. We see a desperate man, a man who is deeply in love with the woman before him but doesn’t know how to make her trust him again. His desperation is heart-wrenching, playing with our emotions every time we hear his voice and his most intimate thoughts about Blaire. He tries to control his emotions when he’s around her, but his every touch, glance in her direction, need to be as close to her physically as possible give them away.

“I will do anything. Anything, Blaire, just to be near you. I can’t think about anything else. I can’t focus on anything.”

These young lovers are faced with a reality that sets its own pace, making them aware that time is not necessarily something they can freely fritter away. Their biggest obstacle is not the love that binds them together – it is the lack of trust between them. Blaire finds it hard to trust him because all the men that meant anything to her in her life had abandoned her when she needed them the most. She expects Rush to do the same. She accepts it and considers it to be inevitable. But while Blaire might have more tangible reasons for not trusting Rush again with her heart, Rush is unconsciously distrustful of Blaire as well because he is constantly expecting her to bolt. He does not feel worthy of her and he keeps failing her because of that.

“I wondered how many more times I was going to screw up before I ever got this right.”

While Fallen Too Far was ‘Blaire’s book’ because we only heard her voice, Never To Far is no longer only her story. By giving us both points of view and by allowing us to hear Rush’s thoughts as well, he truly becomes ‘our’ hero. We feel for him, we understand him, we struggle with his own inner conflicts. Ms Glines has given us the perfect man to pine after and he is spectacular, inside and out.

The secondary characters are developed even more this time around, we get to know them better, see what motivates their actions and fall in love with a few of them. Especially the one that is getting his own book next – Woods.

This is a book about a love that is all-consuming, a devotion that is truly inspiring, a physical connection that will make your toes curl every time Blaire and Rush share a scene in the story. You will fall in love with these characters all over again and you’ll become invested in them even more. Beautifully paced, skilfully written, I loved every single delicious moment of it.

“She’s amazing. No… she’s perfect. Everything about her is f*cking perfect … I don’t just love her, she owns me. Completely. I’d do anything for her.”

5stars

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BLOG TOUR: Entice by Ella Frank

11 Feb

What if everything you think you want isn’t what you actually need…

Dr. Shelly Monroe is a woman who doesn’t shy away from going after what she wants, but lately good sex has been hard to find. Shelly’s become increasingly frustrated with the men she’s been dating and the men she believes are the right choice.

Joshua Daniels is certainly not even close to the right choice. In fact he is exactly the wrong choice. For one thing, he’s Mason Langley’s best friend and best man. Second he’s too much of a risky complication for Shelly to even consider.

Then why can’t she stop thinking about how delicious he looked that first night she met him at Exquisite? Why is it so imperative to keep her lusty desire for a man that doesn’t meet her preconceived mold hidden from Lena and Mason, her trusted friends?

It seems unreasonable that being with a man completely wrong in theory could somehow feel so right. Then why is it the more she sees him the more enticing he becomes?

“I want to take off all your clothes, lay you down here in the morning sun, and love you from your head to your toes. Would that be okay with you?”

This book needs to come with a health warning: It may cause a rise in blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, hot flashes and a serious case of hot-and-botheredness. I am not sure what it is about Ella Frank’s brand of erotic romance, but I was a hot mess throughout this entire book. The sexual tension between the characters is so well developed, so deliciously woven and timed to perfection, that the reader has no choice but to succumb to it. This story will definitely hit the spot.

Shelly is a young doctor, a successful physician and a woman living on her own means, but as successful as her career is, her dating life leaves much to be desired. After a failed relationship with a man who excited her physically while only being a financial burden on her, Shelly has sworn off men who make her sexually attracted to them and thus vulnerable to their charms. She now wishes to find nothing more than a nice hard working but uncomplicated man, someone that her demanding father would approve of, someone who would not use her like her ex did.

“… a boring suit, a nice man, and a personality that I can predict. That’s what I want, right?”

But whenever we say never, life usually tends to serve us just that. Josh is exactly the type of man Shelly has sworn off – strong muscular body, wavy brown hair, a panty-melting smile and a take-no-prisoners attitude towards the opposite sex – the moment she lays eyes on him she knows she is in trouble. But Shelly is also exactly the kind of woman Josh has tried to stay away from, all upper class and high maintenance. From their first encounter, their heads say no but their bodies inevitably react to each other, their uncontrollable attraction leading them to speak openly about it and making a friends-with-benefits type of arrangement between them. They agree to a discrete sexual relationship, with no emotional involvement or obligations towards each other, strictly to pleasure the flesh.

“You have a body that’s made to pound a woman into her bed. So, I’m really hoping that you can live up to that.”

When two people with not one subtle bone in their bodies between the two of them start a hot sexual affair, fireworks fly left, right and centre, and these two characters quite literally light up the sky. The sexual chemistry between Shelly ‘Man-Eater’ Monroe and Josh ‘Delicious’ Daniels is off the charts – they demand each other’s bodies, fulfil each other’s fantasies and thoroughly satisfy one another.

“Shelly screamed, biting down on his shoulder, as he entered her forcefully, banging her solidly up against the wall. While he continued to pound away at her with one of her legs hitched up and over his naked hip, Shelly couldn’t remember a man ever having such power over her. As she gave herself over to the powerful climax, screaming out his name and shattering all around him, she also knew there would never be another man who would.”

Their out-of-control physical connection, however, is not the only point of compatibility between them. The more time they spend together, the more they realise that the person standing next to them is exactly the one they were looking for. Through alternating POVs, we witness two people slowly but deeply falling in love, but while Josh is ready to take the next step, Shelly stays unwilling to lose focus in her life and surrender the little control over her emotions that she has gained in her adulthood. The product of a dysfunctional home, Shelly sees a little bit of her cheating father in every man she meets and naturally keeps them at an arm’s length. What she did not plan is to find the embodiment of every childhood dream in the very man she now tries to guard her heart against.

“I’m falling for you so hard that I can feel the scrapes on my knees as I’m brought to them… How can you not see how good we’d be together and how much I would love you?”

This story might have been all about the deliciously mind-blowing hot lovin’ at first, but it quickly became a sweet and very romantic tale of wrong first impressions and learning to give one’s heart to someone, while trusting them unconditionally to safeguard it and not take it for granted. There was no part of this story that I did not utterly enjoy. Apart from the sizzling chemistry between the characters, including the secondary ones, the dialogues were a highlight – entertaining, well-written and scorching hot at times. This is a book I devoured in one day and I’m thinking of going for seconds.

“I would lie under the tree and dream about the man I’d end up with – who he would be and what he would look like … And he turned out much better than anything I could have imagined.”

Buy book: Amazon
Connect with Ella: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads
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