Tag: books

Posted in Spicy Romance

The Orc and the Innkeeper

Posted on by Little Bee

By Cora Crane

Rating 5 out of 5 Stars

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

The Orc and the Innkeeper was one of those books that I could not put down. I found myself gasping and kicking my feet giggling throughout the story. It follows two characters who start out as “enemies”. Thorak traumatically teased Mariah growing up. It was so bad, that all these years later, she is still suffering the effects. Situations occur and they pretend to be fake engaged in order to get a human investor to work with Thorak.

The story follows the standard framework for a typical romance novel: the background information on both characters, the eventual coming together, the romance, the third act breakup/blowout, followed by the reconnection, HEA. This story also relies heavily, I mean HEAVILY, on the miscommunication trope. I mean like, the whole story. I would normally mark down in ranking for that, but the whole story was still just so fun and so cute. It is a great little cozy, spicy, monster romance, and I was here for it the whole time.

I really enjoyed all of the side characters. I think each one enhanced the story to help further it along. The characters all had things going on in their lives, but all still were brought together. There were several points of high drama, I will let you read those for yourself, and they definitely amped up the miscommunication tropes.

I liked that the internal “racism” wasn’t just one sided. There were humans who did not want to do business with Orcs (which is the whole purpose of this story) and even Orcs who were very anti human (such as Thorak’s parents, and Thorak’s bullying of Mariah when they were younger). I like how it showed the progression of these characters to adopt new mindsets, and how it is not always easy to do so.

The spice was nice, but it is not SUPER spicy. It has enough, but comes a bit later in the book.

Overall, the story was well written. I read it so fast, it is not a terribly long book. I am definitely looking forward to Ecco’s story in book 2. I think Elderberry Falls needs to have a vacant house so I can just move right in 🙂

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

In Love With the Leshy

Posted on by Little Bee

By Danielle Sibarium

Rating 3.5 Stars, Goodreads/Amazon Rating 4 Stars

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

I have read one other book involving a Leshy so I was really excited to have the opportunity to read another. Leshy make great romance reads, but I feel they are lesser known and used in books. If you do not know what a Leshy is, it is a pagan Slavic deity that rules over the forest, hunting, etc. They are essentially a type of forest spirit, can play tricks on others, shapeshift, etc. The story itself gives a little about the lore, such as one of the characters being a Druid and creating the Leshy in the story.

I feel like what a Leshy is comes off kind of easily to understand. It is very subtle. I, for the most part, really loved Em (the Leshy). The third act break up was a little intense. There are triggers in this book, though they are not listed in my ARC copy, unknown if they will be there listed in the book, but I do see one on the goodreads page.

I have two main issues with this book and why I feel it is more 3.5 stars if I could give it that. The first would be the flow of the book itself. Again, I have an ARC, so it very well can be cleaned up and read better in the official copy, so please take this for what it is worth. During the first couple of chapters, I was getting very confused because it would switch back and forth between a memory she had with her neighbor and back to her being chased in the forest by some bad guys. It would do this every few paragraphs, and wouldn’t use any kind of indication, like italics, that it was a memory. My other issue is with Erin, the FMC. I get that coming into contact with a Leshy or some other being you never knew existed can be a bit much, I just felt like Erin was incredibly wishywashy and overall unpleasant. She offended the few people around her and most of the animals she came across on a regular basis and was never really apologetic. Just snappy and like “well I never knew this existed give me a break,” without really making the effort to try.

If you are looking for a spicy book, this is not. There are some tense scenes during the story where there is some heavy petting and Erin trying to get Em to have some spicy times, but the actual spice is in the last 10ish% of the book. Again, their are some mild scenes, but its mostly Erin being thirsty, and understandably so LOL.

I rounded this book up because even with the reasons I disliked it, I still did enjoy the story. It has some dark themes, so be on the lookout for that. I still didn’t like Erin by the end, but it was good. I did read it in one sitting.

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.