2 stars-- Never Tear Us Apart (Never Tear Us Apart #1) by Monica Murphy

Never Tear Us Apart had me curious. It showed up on my doorstep with the promise of a dark and twisty read. It totally had my number and I enjoy Murphy--she can deliver such vastly different experiences with her series--so it definitely peaked my interest. And for the most part I enjoyed this twisted tale of two people damaged so thoroughly during their childhoods coming back together years later as adults. And things went well...until they didn't. There are going to be some semi-spoilers so *waves hands about* be warned and all that.

2 stars--Sweet Ride (Playing for Keeps #3) by Cathryn Fox

I have been loving on this trilogy something fierce. Fun, sexy, make you smile goodness. And I was really excited about diving into Sweet Ride and spending time with Jag as he tries to convince a girl he knew in high school (and thought of as the one who got away) to spend a week with him on his dude ranch to see if they have what it takes for something more.

I liked Alix and Jag. Both hearing a little bit of time they knew each other in high school and the spark that still simmered. They had a fun bit of teasing between them and some very hot moments once she settled down at the ranch and decided to explore some erotic fantasies with him. They were enjoyable people and I really wanted to know more about each of them. And, well, yummy hot sex. Total plus! And whew it got hot!

Bites & Nibbles--Some Quickie Reviews--Yield to Me by Sarah Castille, Chasing Danger by Katie Reus, Scandalously Yours by Cara Elliott

Amateur MMA fighter, Marcy Foster is determined to win the state championship. But dark secrets and a broken trust mean there's one submission she just can’t master. Fortunately Club Excelsior has hired a coach who knows all the right moves.

Sexy, confident and commanding, fight consultant Jax demands control, both in and out of the ring. But once he has Marcy against the ropes, Jax knows he’s in too deep. He has the dominance to give her what she needs, but once he unleashes her hidden passions, there's no going back.

Under Jax's skilled hands, Marcy submits to her deepest desires. But when her personal and professional worlds collide, she is forced to face a brutal truth — yielding to her darkest needs may be the one thing that costs her the fight...and her heart..

Type: Contemporary, Novella     Heat: 3 out of 5      Rating: 2 out of 5

Yield to Me (Club Excelsior #1)

Amazon | All Romance | Book Depository | Goodreads

Jason (Anita Blake #23) by Laurell K. Hamilton

"Enjoying pain with your pleasure is something you either get, or you don't. If you get it, then you don't really need it explained, because you know how good it feels, and if you don't get it then no amount of talking is going to convince you it makes sense."

But sometimes you have to explain the unexplainable, especially if the love of your life needs to understand, or she'll leave you. Jason Schuyler is one of Anita Blake's best friends and favorite werewolves, with benefits. J.J. is his lady love, an old flame from childhood who dances at one of the top ballet companies in New York. She's accomplished, beautiful, and she's crazy about him, too. Neither of them wants to be monogamous, so what could go wrong?

J.J. is enthusiastically bisexual, with an emphasis on the female side of things. She plans to keep sleeping with women, because Jason can't meet that need, just like she can't meet Jason's need for rough sex and bondage. J.J. doesn't understand why Jason isn’t content to go elsewhere for a need she can’t fulfil, so Jason asks Anita to help him explain.

Anita is having her own relationship growing pains with her only female lover ever, Jade. Jason suggests that J.J. might be able to help Anita with her girl problem, while she helps him with his kinky explanations. With some encouragement from a few other lovers in Anita's life she reluctantly agrees, and J. J. makes plans to fly into town for an experience that none of them will ever forget.

Type: Paranormal Romance but really just Erotica
Heat: 4 out of 5
Rating: 2 out of 5
Cover: 1 out of 5--it's just not verra good. Makes me think of being inside a vagina and looking out at the man candy about to plunder. *flails hands*

Amazon | Book Depository | BAM | Goodreads

Alright *rubs hand down face* Where to start with this one. Jason.

I didn't hate it. But I didn't love it either. And in the end...not one that's going to stick with me (in a good way) or be a repeat read which is disappointing for a series that's long been one of my favorites.

There are two main bits to Jason

1) Jason's human girlfriend doesn't understand his need for rough sex so he's asked Anita and the guys to help explain it to her...up close and personal like by showing her how rough he likes it while she watches (don't worry--that's her kink--but she can't understand his)

2) Anita has a female lover for the first time and it's just not doing it for her. None of the guys can teach her oral with this female lover so Jason's girlfriend who is bi is going to step in and give her a how to on licking girly bits.

And so begins a 255 page sex scene.

No. Really. 255 pages. :slow blink: Okay maybe 250 pages. There was a set up on them talking about said sex-a-thon.

His to Claim (His To Claim #1-6) by Opal Carew

What if you could have everything you’ve always wanted, but it cost you the life you’ve always known?

Rafe Ranier was my boss and secret crush. A rock musician by night and head of a billion dollar empire by day, Rafe could have any woman he wanted. But I was just the shy secretary he never noticed. For years I obsessed over him, until I finally realized I had to walk away. I needed to leave my secure life behind to discover who I really was.I never expected Rafe to follow me.Now I’m on the road with his band, Savage Kiss, and all my secret fantasies are coming true. But I fear I’ve made a huge mistake, because if I get any more attached to a man I can never truly have, my heart will be broken beyond all repair.

Type: Erotica
Heat: 4 out of 5--menage elements though HEA is m/f only
Rating: 2 out of 5

Amazon | All Romance | Book Depository | BAM | Goodreads

Well. This one did not play out how I'd hoped. I was really looking forward to His to Claim. I've enjoyed Carew in the past and, hello, hot rockstar billionaire romance where the two have a past? That is right up my freaking alley. I love all those bits and pieces. But His to Claim landed more in the hot mess category than stellar erotic romance for me and more often than not left me seriously confused as Rafe (who also goes as Storm when with his band) and Melanie--his former employee-- try to figure things out both with each other and what they want in life.

Alright so what did work for me. 

Sea Panther (Crimson Storm, #1) by Dawn Marie Hamilton

After evading arrest for Jacobite activities, Scottish nobleman Robert MacLachlan turns privateer. A Caribbean Voodoo priestess curses him to an eternal existence as a vampire shifter torn between the dual natures of a Florida panther and an immortal blood-thirsting man. For centuries, he seeks to reverse the black magic whilst maintaining his honor. Cruising the twenty-first century Atlantic, he becomes shorthanded to sail his 90-foot yacht, Sea Panther. The last thing he wants is a female crewmember and the call of her blood.

Although she swore never to sail again after her father died in a sailing accident, Kimberly Scot answers the captain's crew wanted ad to escape a hit man. She's lost everything, her fiancé, her job, and most of her money, along with money belonging to her ex-clients. A taste of Kimberly's blood convinces Robert she is the one woman who can claim the panther's heart. To break the curse, they travel back in time to where it all began—Jamaica 1715.

Type: Paranormal Romance--Shifter/Vamp--light
Heat: 3 out of 5
Rating: 2 out of 5

Amazon | Goodreads

I really, really wanted to love Sea Panther. Like really wanted to. It has so many of my favorite things--kitty shifters, vampires, tortured hero, heroine on the run, neat location--most takes part on a ship--and I enjoyed it quite a bit at first but the more and more I got into the story the more it fell apart for me and in the end I just wasn't wowed at all despite a couple things that did work for me. 

Kimberly's ex set her up to take the fall in a financial disaster and one of her clients has supposedly put a hit out on her so she needs to get away and spots a help wanted ad for a sailboat in need of a new crew member that's headed South. So she joins them and their Captain--who is a vampire shifter searching for a cure for his disease--as they journey South and try to escape those out to get her. 

Mini Reviews: First Strike by Pamela Clare & The Witch's Dream by Victoria Danann

First Strike (I-Team # 5.9)

Laura Nilsson knows what she wants: a successful career as a broadcast journalist—and a little fun between the sheets now and again. What she doesn’t want is marriage or kids. When a ripped and sexy stranger intervenes to stop a couple of drunks from harassing her in a hotel bar in Dubai City, all she can think about is spending the rest of the weekend with him—in her bed. There’s just one little problem. Unmarried sex is illegal in Dubai.

Navy SEAL Javier “Cobra” Corbray is on his way home from a rough deployment in Afghanistan when he finds himself having dinner with “the Baghdad Babe.” What she wants from him—sex with no strings—could land them both in prison. Still, he’s more than happy to oblige her. She’s confident and sexually assertive, and he’s secure enough to lie back and let her make the first strike. But, as she’s about to find out, he’s more than her match.

Yet, neither Laura nor Javier has any idea what lies ahead—or how this weekend of mind-blowing sex will impact their emotions. Will they act on their new-found feelings in time, or will they let something special slip away… perhaps forever?

Warning: This story ends with a cliffhanger.

Type: Contemporary Romance/Erotica, Intro Novella
Heat: 3 out of 5
Rating: 3 out of 5

Amazon | Goodreads

First Strike is a quick steamy prologue novella that gives the naughtified version of how the main characters of Pamela Clare's Striking Distance meet during a chance encounter in Dubai. And all the steamy bits as they fall into a lusty illicit weekend tryst that could land them both in hot water because of laws against pre-marital relations in that country.

Locked (Alpha Group #1) by Maya Cross

Who is Sebastian Lock?

The bar Sophia Pearce is in doesn’t look like much. The wine is bad and the decor worse. But when a sudden attack of curiosity leads her to sneak past security and into the back room, she discovers something unimaginable. The most lavish party she’s ever laid eyes on, in the most unlikely of places.

But that’s nothing compared to what comes next, to the man she meets back there. Sebastian Lock. Gorgeous, commanding, and radiating charm, he is exactly the sort of silver-tongued rake Sophia has sworn to avoid. Unfortunately, he doesn’t care much for her promises.

Every instinct tells her to run, but the chemistry between them is as inescapable as gravity. Soon, he’s opening her eyes to a whole new world of pleasures, pleasures she never thought she’d enjoy.

There’s just one problem. Sebastian is more than he seems. Between the famous company he keeps and the almost paranoid secrecy of his employers, he’s a puzzle Sophia can’t quite solve, and his insistence on keeping things casual forces her to confront the demons of her past.

Can she learn to trust again? Or will Sebastian’s privacy tear them apart?

Type: Supposed to be Erotica/BDSM
Heat: 3 out of 5
Rating: 2 out of 5

Amazon | All Romance | Goodreads

Yeah. So, this was one of those reads where I'm left going what the hell? Did I read a *completely* different book than everyone else? No, really. Did I? Because I am totally missing it on this one. Locked was supposed to bring a mysterious hero...a smart heroine...kink and some nice heat and drama as the hero and heroine have an instant attraction and start smexing each other up. And...I didn't really get any of that. At all.

2 stars--Santa Baby by Alesia Holliday

Sometimes you just have to say "Deck the freaking halls." At least, that's how Leah feels about Christmas. She has a holiday tradition: she gets dumped at Christmas. Always and only at Christmas. With only 12 days till the fateful day, she's glad she's alone. The only thing she has to worry about is a horrible boss. And a dead-end career. And clients who drive her insane. 

But sexy photojournalist Luke has other ideas; he wants to make Leah's Christmas dreams come true. And he only has twelve days to begin a romance that will endure until the last bell has been jingled. 

Love, laughter, and a little touch of revenge--that's all a girl really needs in her Christmas stocking.Alesia Holliday is the funnier (and much cuter!) alter-ego of New York Times bestselling author Alyssa Day. Alesia writes light & funny; Alyssa writes dark & twisty. Both love crazy plots, intense suspense, and characters you'd love to invite over for dinner.

Type: Chick-Lit
Rating: 2 out of 5