Book Review – Saint

Saint by Ruby Vincent

This magnificent tale is a little slow to start but keep with it, because it picks up fast and when it does, it’s a heck of a ride!

Addy, Saint, Brutal, Cash, Mercer – I fell in love with these characters and the gritty world they inhabit so hard. And then the twist came and I just sat there staring at the page. Wow. I won’t say any more because you have to experience this book without knowing what’s coming to really enjoy it.

Saint is the first book in the Saint and Sinners series (four books and the series is complete). I’ve already started reading the second book in the series (Cash) and am loving it.

Saint is available to read here on Amazon and free in Kindle Unlimited.

Daddy P.I. 0.5 Glow Up

I’m working with a new cover artist, the wonderful Haelah Rice, who is doing professional glow-ups of some of my covers. I’m absolutely in love with her aesthetic and can’t wait to show you what she’s done for Teddy’s Boys!

Here’s the first one, the new prequel cover. If you already have the Daddy P.I. series prequel, you can download the new cover from this post or from Bookfunnel here!

If you haven’t read the Daddy P.I. series prequel, what are you waiting for?! It’s free!

Book Review – Priceless

I discovered humiliation kink a few years ago, after many, many years of thinking it was beyond my personal squick level. (Never say never.) Although Priceless is new adult (college age), like many bully romances, but is not really a bully book. The hero and heroine have barely any interaction in public and what there is is actually nurturing and supportive. This is a “pure” humiliation kink book, where the hero and heroine play humiliation games in private.

I’m still up in the air about whether I enjoy the public bullying or private humiliation games more, but I LOVED this book and immediately went and bought it after reading it KU because it’s a rainy-day book that I’ll read again and again.

The premise is really simple: the heroine has poor financial control and gets herself in a tight spot where the utilities are turned off on a cold night and her party friends aren’t there for her. The hero, who has seen her around campus before, overhears her call to one of the party friends, realizes she needs quick cash, and offers her an opportunity to “earn” it.

The premise is simple, but the characters are not. These are nuanced, fully-fleshed, living, breathing characters who I wouldn’t be surprised to bump into at a campus coffee shop. What I liked even better? They don’t exist in a vacuum. They have people around them – some friends, some who look like friends and aren’t – who are affected by their actions. I absolutely loved the way the author traced through the ripple effect, particularly of the hero’s actions.

On top of this immersive characterization, the author writes BLAZINGLY hot s3x scenes. They are 🔥🔥🔥. I’m in awe. I’m now reading through this author’s back catalogue and love the next book I picked up (The Boys Next Door) just as much so far.

Priceless is available on Amazon here and free to read in Kindle Unlimited.

Book Review – The Midwife and the Orc

Have you discovered Finley Fenn’s Orc Sworn series? If not, it’s time you did.

The Midwife and the Orc is the fifth book in the Orc Sworn series. Each book in the series has featured a different human female/Orc couple and a different clan. This is Joarr and Clan Bautul’s story, and it is FABULOUS.

If you’re already a reader of this series, throw out everything you thought you knew from the previous books. I thought I knew Joarr – I didn’t. I thought I knew how the war between the men and Orcs would go – I didn’t. I thought I understood how Joarr and Gwyn got together – I didn’t. There are wonderful, unexpected twists and turns in this book, and they’re all perfectly plotted. It never felt rushed. The pace never flagged. Perfect execution.

There’s a sense of lightness and fun in this book that hasn’t been prominent in previous books. It fits perfectly with Joarr’s character – the flip side to his spy sneakiness is his sense of fun. The clan twist is absolutely brilliant and well done for somehow making me care about the Bautul clan when I never have before.

Huge kudos to the author for making the heroine a composed, competent character. There were never TSTL moments with Gwyn. She makes hard choices; she takes risks, but she always knows what she’s getting herself into and she’s never self-pitying. She’s also a woman who has been profoundly disempowered by her father and her fiancée, and all that rage and despair has turned inward, as it does. Her self-harming is understandable and delicately handled. The bonding moments in which Joarr teaches her to redirect her rage and despair wrung tears out of me.

My favorite characters from the series make appearances, and I particularly loved seeing a different side to Silfast and Stella’s relationship. I’ll admit I flinch every time Jule shows up now because she can play the heavy, but her role here isn’t too heavy and it was nice to see her being maternal.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It’s absolutely going on my favorites shelf to be re-read and savored when life gets a little too heavy.

The Midwife and the Orc is here and free to read in KU.

Book review – Feed

I absolutely LOVED this story. It’s an enemies to lovers in a very untraditional way – a succubus and a Death’s Head Moth fae are paired by a kind of kinky fae Tindr, only they’ve been co-workers and fierce rivals for a long time. That adds a huge amount of tension to their amazing hook-up.

The story is one long s3x scene, but it’s perfect. There’s fairy weirdness. There’s pronoun ambiguity. There’s moth parts (who knew?!). It’s wonderful. And the best part? The domly affection and respect moth-boy has for the succubus. He expresses it in every touch, long before a few sentences where he tries to tell her how he feels. It broke me in the best way.

There’s a novel-length story coming (this one’s about 14k – an hour’s read) and the author has another story releasing this month, which I immediately pre-ordered after reading Feed.

Very special and highly recommended.

Feed is available here on Amazon and is in Kindle Unlimited.

Teddy’s Boys – A Glossary

Some of the character in this series speak a northern English dialect (Manc) that may not be familiar to readers from other countries (or even other parts of the UK), so I thought I’d provide a glossary. General British words and phrases are indicated as “British” while words and phrases that are distinctive to Manchester are indicated as “Manc.” 

People from Manchester (Mancunians or Mancs) also use rhyming slang, a dialect that replaces words and phrases with others the original word rhymes with. For example, “stairs” are “apples and pears” in Cockney rhyming slang, so one might say, “I fell down the apples and pears.” I’ve indicated rhyming slang as “RS.” Rhyming slang can be impenetrable to outsiders (it’s meant to be, since it was developed to evade detection by the authorities), it’s highly regional (rhyming slang spoken by a Manc may make no sense to someone from London or Birmingham), and I’ve included it sparingly to give the reader a flavor because it can be so difficult to understand, even in context.

Mancs often shorten Christian names with “az” or “ez” to indicate intimacy and affection. Gary becomes “Gaz,” Charles becomes “Chaz,” etc. It’s more common with men than women, although Teddy’s crew call her “Tedz” and “Tez.”

I’ve also included some places in and around Manchester that have a connotative meaning to Mancunians which would not otherwise be clear to outsiders.

Download the Glossary as a PDF:

the-bad-boys-of-bevington-seriesDownload

Review – Savage Prince

This series just gets better and better.

I loved-loved-loved Nikolai and Dahlia’s story (Ruthless King), but I think I like Maxheim and Tess’s story even better. Maybe it’s the second dip into the complex world this author is building that made it feel more complete, more fully-fleshed? Maybe it’s that I’m more invested in this family and their struggles? I’m not exactly sure what made this book stronger in my mind, but it is.

This is not light, fluffy omegaverse, so sensitive readers should take care. As with all omegaverse, there are power imbalances and Maxheim, underneath his surface frost, is caring, but 100% alpha. There’s human trafficking, which I find slightly triggering, but it’s done sensitively. As with Nikolai and Dahlia’s story there’s a great deal of angst and some big hurdles for the characters to overcome. But the darker themes are balanced against humor, warmth, triumph of the human (sort of!) spirit, and the building of the Skolov extended family. Ultimately, this is a book that will uplift you, even if it wrecks you a little on the way. 

I’m looking forward to Alexi’s story!

Highly recommended and available here!

Review – The Bully

This is the third book in Sophie Lark’s new Kingmakers series, which is dark, college-age, mafia romance. Her premise – that mafia families from all over the world send their kids to an isolated school where they become the next generation of mafia leaders – is refreshingly different, lovingly thought out and realized (I loved little touches like the classes they take in Torture Technique, Money Laundering, and Espionage), and as always with Sophie’s books, beautifully written.

The “hero” in this book, Dean, was introduced in the first book of this series as part of a love triangle, and my heart broke for him then. He’s even more tragic in this book, desperate for love and yet going about it ALL wrong. The heroine, Cat, is introduced in the second book in the series, and she’s all kinds of wonderful – clever, devious, but heartbreakingly unsure of herself. This book could be read as a stand-alone, but you’ll get more out of it if you read the first two books in the series and they’re wonderful, so why wouldn’t you?

Most of Sophie’s couples bring out the best in each other, and that’s never more true than with Dean and Cat. It’s wonderful to watch them mature into the best versions of themselves in this book. The love story is real and raw and with the constant tug of war between Dean and Cat, super-steamy.

Highly recommended and free to read in KU here.

Review – Lords of Wrath

This is the second book in the Royals of Forsyth University series. I reviewed the previous book here, which I absolutely loved. Big 5 stars.

I’m not sure how I feel about this book. I was extremely excited for it when I finished Lords of Pain. There is a disclaimer at the beginning of the book and I think sensitive readers (if any of them made it through Lords of Pain) should heed it. This book gets extremely dark, including a punishment scene that I stopped reading twice and took a break from because I found it beyond my personal squick threshold.

Overall, I think the book is good, but not great. The pacing is slightly off, with the first half dragging and the second half feeling slightly rushed, particularly the ending. The editing isn’t quite as tight as the first book, where I noticed almost no typos. There are a number in this book. They didn’t detract from my reading experience as a whole, but there were enough that I noticed. That added to my impression that the book was rushed.

Maybe the theme for this book is the adage (attributed to Confucius), “seek revenge and you should dig two graves, one for your yourself.” There’s a ton of revenge going on in these 300 pages. (The book felt much longer than that, perhaps because I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to.) The heroine gets revenge on her bullies, but her whole “plan” struck a sour note with me. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the heroine’s revenge in the Rich Boys of Burberry Prep series or the heroine’s refusal to stoop in the Hannaford Prep series. There’s a point where one of the boys says the heroine has two M.O.s, run or make things worse. Unfortunately, that’s true from a plot perspective. When the heroine finally stops running and makes a stand against the boys, her revenge plan is just, frankly, stupid. There was no way the boys weren’t going to figure out it was her, and when they did, their retaliation went beyond sadistic into dehumanising. I can’t see any believable happy ending for these characters after that.

There are also some D/s undertones in this book, particularly between Tristian and the heroine, where he tries to “train” her by giving her aftercare and incentivising her submission. There’s a particularly ugly kink theory that involves “breaking” a submissive, reducing the submissive to the point where nothing but the dominant’s will matters. As this literally strips the submissive of the ability to consent, I’m very wary of this theory, and it felt like that underrode this book in a way that made me uncomfortable. Whether it was conscious or not on the part of the authors, the boys do break the heroine. It’s unclear to me if, by the end, she’s starting to take control and build herself back up. The final scene with between the heroine and the boys suggests she is, but it felt more like a submissive returning to an abusive relationship and trying to negotiate some limits on her abuse instead of the heroine reclaiming her agency. I guess the third book will tell, but I’m not nearly as excited about it as I was for this book.

Lords of Wrath is on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited here.

Review – Lords of Pain

I am a big fan of bully romance. It feeds my humiliation kink and I’m okay with non-con in this context where I’m not okay with it in pretty much anything else (I *need* that consent, particularly in kink books). However, I struggle with the trope when it comes to high school because of the age of the characters, and if they’re written more maturely, it breaks my willing suspension of disbelief.

Lords of Pain hit ALL the right notes for me. It’s set in college instead of high school. The characters are convincingly older/more mature/more advanced in their bullying. The three guys are just privileged/complicated/screwed up enough that I could understand why they bullied. The premise (girl seeks out her former bullies to protect her against an even bigger villain) is somewhat strained, but I was willing to go along with it. The heroine is annoyingly naive at the beginning, but her trusting nature becomes pivotal to the plot, so stick with it.

The book is really well written – super emotional. These are both new to me authors but they did not disappoint at all. Very cleanly edited, too. 

I did NOT expect the book to go so dark. And it does. Serious emotional warfare. And when the girl begins to strike back, the guys better look out. 

Can’t wait for the next book. Highly recommended.

Lords of Pain is on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited here.