November 10th, 2009 — 4 Stars, Big Misunderstanding, Category, Comedy of Manners, Contemporary, G-I, Greece, Love Triangle, Mistaken Identity, Science, Teacher, Writer
This category romance would make a great farcical romantic comedy movie. Just keep reading and you’ll know what I mean.
The Bryants – Jane (heroine), Guy (brother)
The Dysons – Stuart (fiancé), Pauline (future sister-in-law)
Two pairs of brother and sister pretend to be married to each other in order to land a job on an archaeological site in Greece. The heroine is engaged to the brother of the other pair. Her future sister-in-law crushes hard on the site’s leading archaeologist. The dig boss and hero fights falling in love with the heroine. The only supposedly single man on the site falls hard for the future sister-in-law. The only one not romantically inclined is the brother of the heroine.
Sounds crazy? It was!
The hero, Dr. Nikolas Vallas, hates adulterers. He rides hard on the heroine, Jane Bryant, who he sees as the worse of the lot. Guy is either clueless to his wife’s behavior or doesn’t have the masculinity to reign her in or divorce her. Pauline is a creature to pity as she’s utterly clueless to her husband and best friend’s deception. Stuart is a cheating bastard. But Jane--- she takes the cake. She cheats on her husband, with her best friend’s husband, and the son of his long time friend, Tim.
Tim figures out the deception and what Nikolas perceives as more acts of adultery is in fact very innocent. Tim is using Jane as a sounding board for his attempts to win Pauline’s affections. Pauline however is mooning over Nikolas and doesn’t like Tim’s attention one bit. Jane meanwhile is reeling from something Tim said about love. He said something along the lines of “If you’re really in love, you couldn’t wait to be married.” Jane finds herself falling in love with a man who hates everything about her and seems to be falling in love with Pauline.
Petals Drifting is a very erroneous title for the plot. They’re there in the off season for tourists. It’s not fall. It’s more like spring. Anyway, the story is very tense, very quick, and solid. I devoured it.
Rating: 4 Stars
Buy: Petals Drifting
 |
|
US $9.99 |
Sale |
 |
|
US $1.00 |
Sale |
 |
|
US $17.84 |
Sale |
 |
|
US $14.99 |
Sale |
 |
|
US $4.99 |
Sale |
Online Stores
November 5th, 2009 — Erotica, J-L, Kiss and Tell
by Elaine Lowe, guest blogger
My husband is my own personal hero. On the inside of his wedding ring, I engraved, "My Hero", and that was long before I was ever a romance writer. He is the master of making me smile and blush, my sounding board, the fixer of all things tech, my inspiration, the Lord High Bug Squisher, and the only one who can make my brain stop whirring and appreciate just being. He's also my research partner! As I write erotic romance, he really likes his job.
We met in high school, believe it or not. Though we didn't start going out until college. He was a guy who was a friend of a friend, someone I knew and liked, but who just seemed a little bit odd, a little bit crazy and a little bit incomprehensible. He still is, and I love it. In college, we happened to be in the same dorm at a very big university, and since we knew each other already we got to talking. And talking, and more talking. Until I realized that every minute I wasn't with him, I missed him terribly. That all the unrequited crushes I'd had in junior high and high school were nothing to the magnitude of the emotion I felt when I was with him.
And miracle of miracles, he felt the same. After one crazy all night session of talking and my first kiss, we've been together ever since. Sixteen years of knowing that I'm never alone, that somebody always has my back. We've taught each other everything, and we know each other inside and out.
We've faced joys and challenges together, including raising our beautiful, brilliant autistic son together with love and understanding. Always, my husband does his best to take of us, to share everything that he is. He's patient and kind, playful and damned sexy. I love him, and a little piece of him, that core of goodness, is within every hero I write.
Visit Elaine Lowe's website to learn more about her books and to keep up to date! You can also find Elaine on Twitter!
Learn how to participate in the Kiss & Tell feature here at LRP.
Online Stores
October 23rd, 2009 — 2 Stars, Book Review, Category, Contemporary, Executive, Gentry, Great Britain, Housekeeper/Maid, J-L, Mistress or Courtesan
This is about another plain Jane like yesterday’s book. Her name however is Jessica and she’s the cleaning lady at the hero’s office. She works on his floor and makes his office ready for the next day. Since he works late hours they run into each other often.
Later in the novel we learn that before the novel started the hero would use Jessica as a sounding board and sometimes he even took her advice. Jessica finds these moments the most intimate of her time spent with him – and this is after they’ve slept together!
The hero comes up with a crazy insane idea that if he arrives to parties already spoken for, perhaps his friends won’t attempt to hook him up. He gets Jessica to be his fake girlfriend and then his real mistress. She agrees figuring she’ll never have another chance with a man like him or Salvatore himself. Overtime she realizes being a mistress is very cheapening especially as she’s falling in love with him.
When he tells her he can’t possibly marry her because she wasn’t a maid as she had sexually relations with at least one other guy. He then proceeds to tell her that the woman will marry will be a virgin and Sicilian. It really just confirms what she already knew but it was very unromantic to say the least.
This novel wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t very good. There were a lot of plot elements that cold have been exploited. I felt like the author dropped them in and then decided to forget about them. For instance, Jessica’s roommate was very jealous about Jessica’s new position as Salvatore’s mistress. Then there was the selling of the diamond bracelet he gave her, the blowup was big but read very inauthentic.
Rating: 2 Stars
Buy: Bought For The Sicilian Billionaire's Bed 
Buy eHarlequin: Bought for the Sicilian Billionaire's Bed
Online Stores
