Tag: Book Reviews

Posted in Spicy Romance

Bad Neighbor

Posted on by Little Bee

By Maya Nicole

Rating 5 out of 5 Stars

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I am always happy to read a book by Maya Nicole! I have read quite a few, many voluntarily which led me to being able to be an ARC reader also. I am happy to have gotten Bad Neighbor, book 2 in the Badden Brothers trilogy. You can also find my review for Bad Nanny as well :).

Bad Nanny followed the oldest brother, Gabriel. You find out about Noah and his feisty new neighbor and her cat in the first book. Bad Neighbor picks up from the meeting point. Noah met Jade and that was all she wrote folks! Jade is a smoking hot, super independent, self made millionaire with her own Adult Novelty company….who also sent Josie a whole barrel of lube in Bad Nanny. Jade has had a rough go at love, starting with her family and ending in every bad relationship or man in general. Noah really had to work to gain Jade’s trust and eventually love.

You can’t help but love Noah Badden. He is a green flag from start to finish. He never waivers from Jade, even though she is resisting letting her walls down. He just keeps giving her unwavering and unconditional support. Every chance he gets to defend her, stand up for her, fight for her, etc, he takes it.

There is not really a third act break up, the whole relationship was kind of up and down. It had roadblocks they had to overcome, but their relationship only grew stronger with each one. That was kind of nice. Book ends in an HEA. It ends, but there is a book 3 that will follow the youngest brother.

Maya Nicole is such a great author. Her stories are so creative and they just capture you from the very beginning. I will always recommend her books to anyone! If you see a lot of 5 star reviews, it is because she is truly a 5 star author!

Posted in Spicy Romance

Accidentally Summoned an Incubus

Posted on by Little Bee

By Belle Blakley

Rated 5 out of 5 Stars

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

First of all, Belle Blakley, how dare you. How dare you make me want a magical house. Like, it is 2024 and magical houses should be a thing by now. Also, how dare you make me want my own incubus. Purely for research purposes. Purely.

I really enjoyed the Her Monster for the Night short novellas…you can check out my reviews for those as well as I reviewed them earlier this month. I found myself begging and wanting more in those stories, and here we have one. (completely unrelated to Her Monster for the Night, just not a short little story but an actual book almost 200 pages!)The start of a trilogy. It ends on a HEA, but the stories will mingle with other characters and essentially follow different witches summoning their fated mates.

In this series, to protect their coven during the Salem witch trials, the coven leaders had made a deal with Hecate to help protect them and they were mated with a specific clan of shadow demons, incubi. On Samhain, the witch could cast the summoning spell and it would launch their fated mate from the shadow realm they lived and boom! Mated. I wont go into the full specifics, you should read those for yourself. The witches and their mates (and eventually families) live in bespelled magical houses that have their own personalities. Alexis (Lex for short) found herself having to go to trial after hexing her former boss after being harassed by him. You know the type I mean. She was given this old house to stay in while she awaited trial and the house forced her into summoning her mate, which she had no intention to. The rest of the book basically is about her resisting mating at first, and slowly her and Lochran getting to know each other. Lex wanted to focus on healing while she prepared for her trial.

Everyone’s personalities were so unique and fun. I want to live in the community that houses Briar Coven. I can’t wait to read the next stories….I especially can’t wait to read Hell’s Gate series that follows a pack of werewolves. One of the werewolves, Billy, is Lex’s best friend. Billy, a female wolf, from a very hidden (spelled hidden) wolf pack, slowly starts becoming an alpha. Lex and Lochran find themselves being packed up with Billy while she is becoming an alpha. I will leave the other twists for you to enjoy 🙂 I can’t wait to read her story with Jake!

Belle Blakley has such a unique writing style, that reading her books does not feel like work. They just flow so well. There was a good amount of spice, and early on so you don’t have to wait. No third act break up, though her trial and after affects occur in the third act of the book. It was just such a well thought out book. It was both plot heavy and had a good amount of spice, that even if the characters weren’t actively engaged in spicy acts, boy were they thinking them! You won’t be disappointed if you read this book.

Posted in Spicy Romance

Zodiac Hybrids

Posted on by Little Bee

By Leann Belle

Rating 5 Stars

I received an advanced review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I have read Leann Belle before and I really enjoyed her writing. I was happy to read this mix of paranormal/shifters/zodiac/astrology story and I look forward to reading the other books as they come out. For the record, this is supposed to be a dark academy romance, but I missed some of the darkness I guess LOL. I am sure it will come. I liked each of the dynamics and I enjoyed seeing the first two men get kind of sucked in to Lila’s orbit.

I can’t wait to find out what Lila is and for her to find out also. I like her naivety in this sense and I will enjoy watching her become stronger, because I know she will. These characters are older even though it is an academy story. Lila is 22, Marcus is 26, and Adrian is 34. I am not sure how old Ceto is, but we only got a small introduction to him and I look forward to seeing him more.

Definitely check your triggers, as there are elements that people may not enjoy. This story ends on a cliffhanger, and definitely leaves you wanting for more. There were only a couple of spicy scenes in this story, but they were nice and spicy so they were not out of place. There was good world building and setting the lines of the story.

My only real confusion is the nature of Marcus and Adrian’s feud. I wont give any spoilers away, but it seems trivial, and I didn’t quite understand why Marcus is intent on Adrian losing control. I know Lila is supposed to be a pawn, but with the way it is shaping up, it looks like the guys are the ones in trouble here.

Posted in Spicy Romance

Guarded by the Spider (Monster Security Agency)

Posted on by Little Bee

By Cassie Alexander

Rating 5 out of 5 Stars

Audiobook Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

I received a copy of this ARC to read and listen, I am leaving this review voluntarily.

First, let me preface with saying, I do not like spiders. At all. They make me pukey and give me the heebie jeebies. HOWEVER. I LOVED this book. “Nine” and Sloane are honestly perfect for each other and I could not get enough.

“Nine” is what most of the characters in the book call Nia’n’an throughout the book, he is the spider type humanoid-ish monster. He is dying because he has not found his mate. So he is sent on a mission to rescue a billionaire’s daughter who has been kidnapped. He is sent by himself, since he is dying, so as to not put any of the other team at risk for an impossible mission. They are unsure if they are bringing out Sloane alive, or as a corpse.

Sloane is probably one of my favorite FMC’s to date. She is such a strong character. She was kidnapped at her concert after it was shot up and people died. She was underground for over a month, caged like an animal, by her captors. She is taken by Nine who she can’t communicate effectively with because his translator broke. She falls in love with him quickly and does not understand its because they are fated mates. She is terrified of him, and then turned on by him. She is incredibly funny with her comments she makes, often thinking he does not understand her.

The majority of the story goes back and forth between the two of them and their self monologue. Nine definitely has those touch her and d!e vibes. I also like that he has his own organic, all natural, self made shibari rope because he just trusses Sloane right on up wherever he can make her stick. He also uses it to hold her in place during the few spicy scenes they have. There are only a couple of spicy scenes, but boy are they spicy. They each have their own self spicy scenes, Sloane can’t stop with the self pleasure because she does not know or understand it is her body’s reaction to being by her mate.

I do wish the book went on a little bit longer. Towards the end they are trying to conceive a baby and it would just be nice to know if the vial provided by Sloane’s father actually helped them produce a child, and what that child might be like. Nine is really great with other people’s kids, and I love the way he responded to her when she was upset thinking she was infertile. That entire scene had me cracking up, he was very nonchalant with his “sacs” of his baby making juice and hiding them LOL.

The narrators were *chef’s kiss*. They were very EXPRESSIVE in their scenes. The spicy scenes made you feel like you were a fly on the wall or apart of it. The duet worked really well together. I will be looking for more of their works in the future. It is Avery Caris and Jonathan Lake.

Posted in Book Reviews

Highly Flawed Individual

Posted on by Little Bee

By T.C. Roberts

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I received a copy of this book for free and am leaving this review voluntarily.

I would like to point out that I am not really the target audience for this book, with that said, once I started reading it, I often found myself sucked into wondering what next could possibly happen to Archie Flynn.

This book is considered a “lad-lit” in that it is quite literally written for lads. It incorporates all the things: women, fighting, self-loathing, etc. It follows Archie Flynn, a 30 year old single male who LOVES the ladies. He is certifiably an Fboi. He can’t even ballpark his body count. One day after a series of escapades with multiple women, he finds a “pimple” on his “member.” The rest of the story really centers around this and the stages of grief at the loss of his manhood. During this time, he meets a woman, named Jezebel, who is a MMA fighter. Because of this bump, he has to actually take the time to get to know her as a person and not just jump in bed with her as soon as he can…though that is what he wants to do though. During this time, he often lies to her to try to put himself in a better light, and she always figures it out. Archie really does give me the ick though, but he was perfectly written for the reasons of this story.

I really feel like this whole story from beginning to end is a comedy of errors. Archie can’t really catch a break. The book was slightly chaotic for me, and I would have to take breaks. Archie sometimes mumbles on and on, and my ADHD just could not with it. The book also starts at the end. I know that does not make sense, but it starts with him fleeing the country, and then it goes through the story of how he ended up there where he had to flee the country, and ends at the incident that causes him to flee the country. I wish I had a bit more information about what happened after he got on that plane and left.

I feel like this book has it all. I also feel like Archie can be incredibly relatable. I think, at some point, all of us has been at a point where something happened in our lives that we decided to bargain with God. Watching Archie go through every stage of grief was also relatable. Some people experience these stages in the extreme, and Archie sure was dramatic about it. I also liked Jezebel. Though, in my opinion, she was definitely too good for Archie.

Posted in Spicy Romance

Punished by the Prince

Posted on by Little Bee

By Elle Lacerta

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This review is kind of a tough one for me. I really want to rate this book higher, but there is so much about the book that makes me go back and forth between 3 and 4 stars.

I really like the premise of this book. It is a good idea, and if you just take the story for what it is, it is exciting and makes you want to keep reading the series to find out what happens. The end of book one left you on a cliffhanger making you want to read the next one, and that happens again with book two. I do like Iris and Rowan, and I like seeing the relationship develop. I am itching to see what Alex and Naomi are up to, because we know they are up to no good. I am excited to see what happens in the next installment.

There are different BDSM elements in the book, this book focused mostly on the punishment aspect. I felt for Iris’ first punishment, it was a bit intense.

Ultimately, my biggest issue with the book is the overall editing. It doesn’t have grammatical/spelling errors and such, but it is the actual content itself. It is hard to tell how much time actually passes because the narrative jumps around. For instance, she is in class at the Academy for magic learning, and it talks about a class she is in. It goes on for a bit with her learning, and then it says “The day went on, and Iris managed to make it through her classes,” and then it immediately goes back to the class she was in and the class finishes. After an incident when the class finished, it then jumps back to talking about the rest of her day. It does this a lot, there are several scenes where I felt confused, this is just one example. The library scene was another example of being all over the place. I know the author is working on editing some of the books, but this is really my only and biggest critique of the stories so far. It just really needs cleaned up and fine tuned.

Posted in Spicy Romance

Petals & Promises

Posted on by Little Bee

by Elizabeth Knight

Rated 4 out of 5 Stars

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This book is the second part following up from Clouds and Daydreams. The first book ends on a cliffhanger, and this book picks up right where it was left off.

I want to start with my negative feelings first. I thought the whole Randall situation was handled too quickly. So much of the book focused on fixing two of the alphas and their relationship with their families or bringing closure etc, that the entire end and finale to the Randall situation happened way too fast. I feel this way because so much of the story and Bailey-Rose’s trauma and fears stem from the abuse and situation from book 1. I can’t believe I am about to say this, but I wish there were more non-spicy intimate scenes. There are so many spicy scenes, some of them almost feel kind of forced and I just quickly read through them. There were some great non-physical intimacy scenes, and I just wish there was more of that as well in there. Because they all deserve that for sure.

I really love Bailey Rose. I love her child like energy and her view of the world. I love that she has overcome so much, and she just keeps trucking along. It was fun watching her experience new firsts that she has never been able to do because of her heart condition. I also like how each of the alphas meet a specific need and compliment each other, making it cohesive. This book truly was meant to heal and grow for everyone.

Finally, I am looking forward to reading Eli’s book!! I want him and Crew to have their own HEA now that Bailey Rose doesn’t have to be so sheltered.

Posted in Spicy Romance

Beastly and Bookish

Posted on by Little Bee

By Catrina Bell

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Stars.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Beastly & Bookish is one of the three books in the Horned Up for the Holidays series. You can find the other reviews Holidays Ablaze and Holly’s Unjolly Christmas here. It does not matter in the order that you read them, none of them spoil any parts of the stories for the other.

This book has a Beauty and the Beast feel. “Ugly” beastly demon and nerdy, fiery, librarian. They were best friends when they were younger, and then Rom’s family moved away for a business venture. Eventually it brings him back to Winter Bliss. It is a second chance romance for Rom and Noelle. It includes tropes such as forced proximity and one bed. It is a paranormal, Christmas, fantasy romance.

The story was good, it took me a little longer to get through than the other two books. I liked the story fine, and I found myself smiling and feeling genuinely happy for the characters, but something in the book just didn’t connect with me. I still gave it high stars because I want to point out that sometimes I have outside influences that affect my mood when reading, and I feel like this kind of happened here. Their story is really cute, and extremely spicey. My one real irk with it, and I only say this because I point it out every time it happens, is the lack of communication is so frustrating, but I know if they did communicate how they felt, I would probably find it boring. LOL. So just ignore me please. I don’t read a lot of second chance romances, but this one is a spicy hallmark second chance romance you should add to your list.

Posted in Spicy Romance

Holidays Ablaze

Posted on by Little Bee

By Lucy Limon

Rating 5 out of 5 stars

I received a copy of this book from the author, but my review is entirely voluntary and honest.

Holidays Ablaze is another book that can be found in the Horned Up for the Holidays set. It is a complete standalone, though certain scenes do tend to cross over while you read each book, introducing you to different characters that are a part of a different story. All of the stories take place in Winter Bliss.

The FMC, Sofia, is a sassy, spicy Latina chef. She has an obsession with fire, which she ended up getting out of control when she was younger and it scared quite a bit of her body. She was supposed to open a restaurant in the quaint little community, but her business partner pulled out of the deal when he saw parts of her burns and high tailed it out like only a jerk will do. She was out collecting logs when she saw a demon get dropped out of a helicopter on a lake on her property. From there, we get to see the steamy tension spark to life between them. Samite is red hot, and the kind of flame she might be tempted to let burn her up.

The spice is HOT in this one. WHEW. I needed a fan for these scenes. The story was not entirely spice, in fact, I wouldn’t say there are a LOT of spice scenes, but the ones that we get, are so sizzling, it does not even matter.

I do not believe there are any TWs to look out for. Its a cozy, holiday romance, with a HEA. Samite is a bit grumpy and untrusting, but the relationship that builds between him and Sofia (who is not a pushover and holds her own against the Demon) is so fun to read as it unfolds. This book does contain a third act break up, but the MCs use the time to really determine what is important to them in life.

Posted in YA Book Reviews

Scythe

Posted on by Little Bee

Scythe by Neal Shusterman, Narrated by Greg Tremblay

Rating: 5 stars

I started listening to this book in 2018, however, it took me a while to get into. But! I have finished it, and it was well worth it.

This story is post apocalyptic where people, called Scythes, similar to grim reapers, “glean” individuals randomly to help with population control, disease, and crime. Two teens are selected by a Scythe to become his apprentices. When the conclave found out he took on two, without permission, they decided at the final test for the scythedom, only one would be chosen and their first task would be to glean the other. This made their apprenticeship even more difficult knowing that at the end one would have to end the other’s life. During the course of their apprenticeship, their mentor committed suicide and they were split up to continue their apprenticeship with other scythes, separately.  Further, it was indicated, that the edict of one gleaning the other would still stand.

For the sake of spoiling, I won’t go any further in the synopsis. The rest of the story followed them individually with their new mentors. I really appreciated how the book ended and I was not expecting it. It makes me very excited to listen to the next book because I need to know what happens next.

I enjoyed Greg Tremblay as the narrator. I thought he did well for the voices and giving the story life. I am happy he is the narrator for Thunderhead (book 2 in the series). In fact, now that I am finished, I went ahead and got Thunderhead from Audible so I can give it a start soon!

If you read this book and get stuck, please keep going, because it is worth it! Normally a book that is slow for me and takes me a while to get into, gets a lower rating, even if the ending is great, but this book is different. I really enjoy Shusterman’s books, and when I started this book, I had a lot going on and I take that into account of why it took me a while to connect with the story.