Love Romance Passion » Ethnicity

Review: Encompassed (Immortal Series, Book 4) by Em Petrova

Sandra Scholes — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Reviewed by Sandra Scholes

It is interesting the amount of cross genre fiction there is out for readers to have a look at. Encompassed, book 4 is Em Petrova’s chance to show how she can weave a ship’s captain and a Mayan Princess into a loving relationship.

There is a reason Dante and Maria are together and it is to do with the Calling, a way of them bonding with full knowledge of whether they are good for each other. They love each other very much, and their immortal companions notice that too. After a while though, that feeling of love and affection starts to leave them and while others like them are only just getting that feeling, they long to get it back and have the fulfilling relationship they once had.

It isn’t long before a love triangle develops with Dante being distracted by Gracie, another immortal who is influenced by the Calling too. Before this can happen and Dante is torn away from her, Maria has to go back to the place where their feelings were first felt.

I liked how Em Petrova had the original concept for Gracie, the heroine in this new novel. Originally she was under another name and in a contemporary spanking story. She gives her heroines a comical aspect and isn't afraid to create unusual stories in order to somehow make them seem real to others. She has a great descriptive mind and can make the reader truly believe they are there in her chosen world.

Rating:

Buy: Encompassed

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Review: Off the Record (Love on the Line, Book One) by Camryn Rhys

Lynn Reynolds — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:45:46 +0000

Reviewed by Lynn Reynolds

Katrina Parker is a chef at a new restaurant. Because of a mix-up, she’s seen buying some food at the local supermarket. There she gets a nice surprise by meeting Emily Reed. Emily’s son Ben seems fascinated by Kit’s coat. Kit is fascinated by Emily but she’s not sure if Emily feels the same.

They meet later when Emily shows up at Kit’s restaurant. Both women give off mixed messages which just confuses the other. Camryn gives us some indication in how Emily feels by giving us glimpses of her fantasies. You’ll just have to read to see if any of Emily’s fantasies come true.

Kit wants redemption for a less than stellar food critic review so she cooks a meal for Emily and a co-worker. We get to see the connection between the two women blossom. I like how Camryn keeps the story real by showing how prejudice still exists. But those prejudices don’t stop the women from forming a relationship.

Camryn also leaves the reader wondering what life has in store for Emily and Kit. But what happens to Ben? Does Kit’s restaurant become a success? What better way to end a story, where one of the characters is a chef, but with a delicious sounding recipe.

Rating:

Buy: Off the Record (Love on the Line)

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Review: The Bride of Casa Dracula (Casa Dracula Book 3) by Marta Acosta

Keira — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:00:01 +0000

In the third installment of the Casa Dracula series, Milagro finds out that marrying into a vampire family isn’t nearly as glamorous or easy as one might think. The Council has a bunch of hoops she has to jump through and the more she learns about them the less appealing it becomes and the more estranged she and Oswald are.

It should have been as easy as signing some papers and all the extra security Oswald wanted her to have would have been bestowed. Instead they want her to renounce her American citizenship for Vampiric citizenship and abstain from sex with her fiancé until after the wedding. What business is it of theirs anyhow? If that wasn’t enough they stick her with a vampire wedding coordinator for the family side of the ceremonies! Can you guess who they got? Cornelia, Corny, Ducharme.

Corny claims to be on Milagro’s side but she’s sticking Millie with all sorts of unpleasant tasks – creating a vampire fruitcake and sewing wedding clothes for herself and Oswald. Then while borrowing Cornelia’s car to run wedding errands the car quits and Millie nearly dies. Police get involved and Oswald doesn’t believe her when she says she’s not acting paranoid… but it’s not paranoia if everyone seems to be out to get you.

One of the things Millie is most concerned about is the bloodletting that Oswald seems to expect once they get married. She hasn’t been able to stand getting cut up and licked since Ian saved her with is blood. She’s also not interested in cutting Oswald and half the time she doesn’t realize her own strength and hurts him. When she runs into Ian she tries to deal with her issues and get him out of her system at the same time – it leads to an unexpected revelation – that Ian has a heart and Milagro can indeed break it.

Outside of wedding plans, Millie is ghostwriting for Don Pedro. While the job is about her writing his memoir, she’s fabricating everything. Joseph Alfred Joseph, someone she met while setting up the deal with Pedro, comes to visit and gets involved with Corny. Oswald wants to hire a new partner and expand his business, something that really bothers Milagro and the two fight over it among other things.

At every turn, instead of bringing them together, the wedding seems to be breaking them up and worse Millie’s confused about her feelings for Ian and Oswald’s parents dislike her with a burning passion. What’s a girl to do?

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Marta Acosta THE BRIDE OF CASA DRACULA Casa Dracula 3 2008 TSPK

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Review: Haunted Honeymoon (Casa Dracula Book 4) by Marta Acosta

Keira — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:07:38 +0000

Head's up there are some spoilers in this review. Ye be warned.

In the final installment of the Casa Dracula series, Milagro must make the toughest choice of all and that’s following her heart. She’s with Ian currently, but every time she thinks of Oswald, her heart aches. The idea of leaving Ian though causing just as much heartache which confuses her because she swears her hormones hijack her brain whenever he’s around.

When Ian hires thralls, Milagro is severely tested, but Ian confronts her about the issue. Then she sees him snacking on their next door neighbor, Christine (Cricket) Poindexter, and while the woman seems to be enjoying it a little too much, it’s the last straw for Millie. Of course with Ian, Milagro is always looking to find fault so she can run from him. He poses too much of a threat to her heart compared to the safe and fascinating Oswald.

A torrid fling in England and finalizing a second contract with Don Pedro is just the thing she needs to distance herself from all she’s feeling. Ian is none too pleased and they have another confrontation. When Wilcox Spiggot comes to America to continue the affair, he’s killed and left to decompose on Milagro’s bed in her loft.

She assumes it was Ian but his thralls say he wasn’t in the country. Leaving, she stumbles across a scene at the neighbors. Cricket in an attempt to win Ian has been draining her blood in doses and saving it for him, this time she accidentally cut an artery and bled to death. Her husband freaks out, slips on the blood and goes down hard on the floor cracking his head.

Cue a super secret special force team that hauls Milagro away. This is where the opening prologue and the story realign. Book four of Casa Dracula is noticeably darker in theme than the previous while still keeping the ongoing humor element. The one thing I will tell you about the dark portion is that it’s not very long and there’s no rape. Milagro uses her wits and escapes going to Mercedes and then onto the ranch looking for help.

Oswald is not happy and a series of events occurs that results in Milagro having amnesia. At first nobody believes her but it soon becomes apparent Millie is indeed suffering some trauma. The Grant family calls in a shrink who comes to the ranch to help her out while they petition for recovery time from the Council who wants to investigate and interrogate Milagro.

Is this the second chance Milagro needs to turn things around with Oswald or will she realize her heart belongs to Lord Ian?

When she asks for the reasons both men claim to love her is very eye opening set of moments for her and some of my favorite moments in the series.

If you haven’t yet tried the Casa Dracula series, and you love vampires or comedy romances, you need to snatch up these novels immediately!

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Review: Happy Hour at Casa Dracula (Casa Dracula Book 1) by Marta Acosta

Keira — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:10:07 +0000

In the first installment of Casa Dracula, Milagro De Los Santos, Miracle of the Saints, reluctantly goes to her college boyfriend’s party celebrating his huge success as a newly published author. She thinks his novel is garbage, but the critics love it. She also thinks he’s a superficial stuck-up snob and isn’t proven wrong.

At the party she runs into Oswald Grant, a handsome man who asks her to join him for drinks at his hotel. Never one to deny herself a good time, Millie follows him back. Just when she thinks all he’s interested in is Sebastian Beckett-Witherspoon, Oswald kisses her and so exuberant are they that they accidentally nick each other and swap a little blood.

She thinks she’s been drugged but little does Milagro know she just traded smoochies with a certified vampire, even though he and his family will go to the ends of the earth to claim that all they have is genetic autosomal recessive disorder.

Her reckless behavior attracts Sebastian’s attention, but he’s not what he seems. As a card carrying member of CACA or Corporate Americans for the Conservation of America, Sebastian’s main goal is to eradicate the threat of vampires and use their blood to serve a higher financial purpose.

Gabriel, a gay bodyguard from the Grant family, rescues her and brings her to the ranch where Milagro finds out that Oswald is engaged. The more she hangs out with Winnifred (Winsome) Jardine, the more she likes her and the more despicable Oswald’s behavior seems… when Winnifred’s cousins Ian and Cornelia (Corny) Ducharme show up she latches onto the group.

Hot wild sex with Ian blows her mind, but Ian is much darker and more dangerous than a sincere and serious girl should want and so when she finds out the reasons behind Oswald’s indiscretion she bumps uglies with him. Then Winnie shows up pregnant and Millie can’t hardly stand herself and runs away... and right into disaster with CACA and her ex.

It ends happy, and Milagro gets her man, but did she get the right one? The love triangle theme continues in the next three books and explores this theme along with others like classism, racism, and finding personal happiness. Keep an eye out for those reviews!

For a fun time with a heroine who’s smart, sassy, and funny and just a little naïve who stumbles from one disaster into the next, you should try the Casa Dracula series, a perfect blend of the supernatural and comedy of manners. Acosta will leave you in stitches from laughing so hard while at the same time craving the next bite.

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Review: Midnight Brunch (Casa Dracula Book 2) by Marta Acosta

Keira — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:18:55 +0000

In the second installment of the Casa Dracula series, Milagro meets many more vampires as they come to celebrate the naming ceremony of Sam and Winnie’s baby, an event she just so happens to be excluded from which irks her to no end. Why must Oswald and the Grants always keep her out of the loop?

When Oswald takes off to perform cosmetic surgery for underprivileged children with clef palates, Milagro attends Nancy’s wedding to Toad Todd. She asks Ian to be her escort so she won’t be ignored the whole evening and together they end up hijacking the attentions of society queen Gigi Barton of Barton’s facial tissues (It’s nothing to sneeze at if it isn’t Barton’s!)

The evening ends in disaster when Milagro saves Ian from a faceless thug and is slashed deeply through an arm. The blood loss is devastating and Ian acts quickly transfusing some of his blood with hers and giving Milagro the vampire infection for the second time. It heals her but also brings about some dire consequences. Every time she touches somebody, be they vampire or human, she gets bloody and gory visions of their insides and the urge to attack (and drink) overwhelms her.

Not willing to put the baby or anyone else at risk from the ranch, Millie takes up a job offer from a Fancy University acquaintance, Skip Taylor, in the desert to rewrite the script Teeth of Sharpness. When famous Thomas Cook, a Latino actor, takes over her room and blackmails her into being his assistant, Milagro folds like a deck of cards. It doesn’t hurt that Thomas seems to be the only one who doesn’t bring about the scary visions.

When tabloid writer for the Weekly Exposition, Bernie, tries to tell her that the hotel Paragon has some sneaky and suspicious dealings, Milagro laughs him off. Then he leaks pictures and a story about her and Thomas and a flying goat eating monkey, irking Milagro to know end, but she has to admit the flying monkey is suspicious and so is the hotel’s Diamond Club members… and the crazy vampire Silas and his New Vampire Century who might be behind her hiring for script rewriting.

Concerned about Milagro, Edna shows up at the Paragon Hotel demanding answers and even Oswald cuts his trip and humanitarian efforts short. He’s determined to get to the bottom of Milagro’s behavior and she’s equally determined to figure out what’s going on in La Garbage, California.

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Review: Dangerous Desire by Diane Escalera

Carla F. — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:54:44 +0000

by Carla F., guest reviewer

When Sienna Diaz’s beloved Beagle Zola is taken from her home, she turns to a detective agency for missing pets called Top Dawg. The owner Cruz Santino is an ex-cop whose investigation reveals that Zola was grabbed to use in a dog-fighting ring. Even though Sienna is devastated by Zola’s abduction, she can’t help but be attracted to Top Dawg’s very hot owner. In turn, Cruz is instantly smitten with Sienna. He wants to get Zola back not only because it is his job, but he also wants to get to know Sienna a lot better.

Likes:

Cruz. How can you not love a smexy guy who finds missing pets for a living?
Sienna was an “older” woman with a daughter in college.
How Cruz and his dog Roman work so well together.

Dislikes:

As torn up as Sienna was about Zola, it was difficult to believe that she would be interested in sex at all let alone would just hop into bed with Cruz after knowing him for only a day or two.
Sienna’s best friend Tori was just a little bit over the top for me.
Even though I knew that the book was about a dog-fighting ring and that there would be an HEA, it was difficult to read the parts of the book describing the conditions of the dogs. Fortunately, Escalera never gets into too much detail.

Overall:

A different kind of damsel in distress story with a hot pet detective. If you really love animals, you might feel a little tension in the dog-fighting parts. Just remember that there is a HEA out there.

Rating:

Buy: Dangerous Desire, Dangerous Desire (UK)

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Review: Dangerous by Diana Palmer

Keira — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 09:58:21 +0000

You can tell why Diana Palmer is counted as one of North America’s top 10 romance writers. It takes all her considerable skill to turn her tragic hero, Kilraven, into a man ready for love and romance, which she does with magnificent aplomb.

When his wife and child were brutally murdered seven years ago, FBI agent Kilraven swore vengeance. It’s been years and the case believed cold, but when he gets a window of great opportunity to talk up the wife of a senator who might be involved, he knows he will do anything, hurt anyone, to seize it. The perfect way to get close is to pretend marriage to young socialite Winnie Sinclair and honeymoon at her Bahamas vacation home. He’s upfront and blunt about his proposed marriage of convenience to Winnie, who’s been not-so-secretly infatuated with him.

Q: Why marriage?
A: Because Kilraven is not a man-slut. Before Winnie, he’s only been with his late wife (who turns out to be manipulative and adulterous.)

Kilraven is a Native American hero who shuns his heritage while his brother embraces it. It’s mentioned bluntly in the novel and examples of his refusal to be Indian include: short hair, going by last name Kilraven instead of Blackhawk, etc.

Winnie is a shy violet and a virgin due to two protective older brothers and a nasty dad, who’s now passed away. She’s known pain herself, having lost her mother who ran off with her uncle when she was younger and her father taking out his anger on her, leaving her with scars on her back. Winnie has a touch of magic about her that gives her eerie insight into things she shouldn’t know about. This frankly bothered me because the story is clearly not a supernatural one. I was bothered more so when others started to have or claim to have this almost psychic supernatural ability.

The love story is slow because the hero needs to grieve, which he’s refused to do until he’s caught the people responsible for his daughter’s murder. Kilraven is constantly holding Winnie back with one hand, trying to protect them both from folly. He knows he can’t give her what she wants and deserves. She just wants him. He’s worried about the ten year age gap and how that looks. It’s clear throughout the novel that he’s slowly falling in love with her against will, which makes for a delicious read.

Rating: 4 Stars

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Movie Review: Keeping the Faith Starring Ben Stiller, Edward Norton, and Jenna Elfman

Keira — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 09:21:34 +0000

This love triangle features a priest, a rabbi, and a–oh you heard that joke have you? Well, drat there goes my punch line!

Anyway this movie is a bit old, but I saw it for the first time the other day and I’m so glad I sat down to watch it, VHS tape, preview ads, broken remote and all. Can you imagine? Wow! If you’re a person who has a hard time watching Ben Stiller because he stars in movies along the same vein as Will Farrell you’ll be pleasantly surprised by his comedy routine in this movie. There’s nothing over the top, gross, or poorly done on his part to disrupt the romantic overtones of the story.

Jake, Brian, and Anna were friends in eighth grade until tragedy struck and Anna had to move away. Jake and Brian continued on being the best of friends. They were both interested in religion and teaching each other about their faith. Eventually their interest lead them to seek becoming leaders of their respective faiths. Years of study, devotion, and passion for their cause lead us to present day where Rabbi Jake Schram (Ben Stiller) and Father Brian Finn (Edward Norton) are making a splash in the community. New York will never be the same. As luck would have it Anna Riley turns up after all their years apart, as a high power executive woman ready to kick butt and take names and with a little... erm... faith reconnect with old friends. She laughs herself silly upon hearing their occupations.

Jake and Anna are immediately attracted to one another, but Jake must marry in order to receive his due (a promotion when the old Rabbi leaves for retirement). Unfortunately the woman must be Jewish and all the mothers in his congregation are trying to hook him up with their daughters and he can't say no for fear of offending them. When Jake gives up trying for the perfect Jewish girl, he pursues Anna with a vengeance and passion that leave them both stunned and Jake a little fearful. Nobody will understand - not his parish, not the board members, and most certainly not his mother.

Meanwhile, Brian is struggling his his vows of celibacy as he faces the undeniable truth: he's in love with his best friend, Anna. Every conversation, every touch, every look feeds into his confusion. He's reading more into her every action. When things come to a head after a teary phone call from Anna, Brian is stunned, hurt, and furious with his other best friend Jake.

Will the friends be able to patch up their broken hearts, misunderstandings, and keep the faith? Watch and find out!

Rating: 4.5 Stars

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Guest Review: Dangerous by Diana Palmer

Aggie S. — Sun, 29 May 2011 09:17:54 +0000

by Aggie S., guest reviewer

Kilraven had lost his wife and daughter a number of years ago and like anyone who loses a loved one it stays with you forever; but in this case it seemed that there was more to her death than just dying in a fire. Kilraven takes a temporary transfer to a small town in Texas to solve the murder of one of the town’s inhabitants. There is also another case from many years before that was never solved; he finds a link between the two.

There is a dispatcher who is infatuated with Kilraven and doesn’t think he knows it, but how he keeps avoiding her is very interesting. For the Christmas party she has drawn his name for a secret gift, and she paints a picture for him, that leaves Kilraven wondering how she knew what to paint…

Kilraven needs to meet with a Senator’s wife in the Bahamas. Kilraven finds out that Winnie’s family is their neighbor down there and he needs her help. He talks Winnie into marrying him to make it look respectable for the townsfolk when they leave on a “honeymoon” together. It was agreed that this marriage would be in name only. Kilraven does not want a wife and he definitely does not want children.

As you start this book it does become hard to put it down as there are so many things going on at one time. Whose daughter is Winnie? Whose son is Matt? Who is responsible for all the deaths, the Senator, his brother or someone else?

Dangerous is a definite must read and very hard to put down!

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