Tag: Romance

Some spice, but more romcom/fade to black type of romance

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

Once Charmed, Twice Cursed

Posted on by Little Bee

By Shaylin Gandhi

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

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

Once Charmed, Twice Cursed in a nut shell is about two people, one who was blessed to be lucky (always) and one who was cursed to be unlucky (always, and deadly so). They met when they were children, and fell in love. If they touched, their Marks would break and they would be normal. She wanted it and he didn’t. He did not want to take her luck.

I liked the uniqueness that follows this story. You know eventually that it will end how it ended, but it was a ride getting there, and a few times I thought to myself “this author is going to end this badly isn’t she” lol. She definitely made me second guess myself a lot.

I did feel some parts were slow, especially in the middle. It really picks up the last 30% of the book. This book is mildly spicy, with it mostly being in the last 1/3rd of the book. The story was still sweet. I really loved Weston. Even if he didn’t want to take away Bria’s luck, I loved his devotion to her.

Over all, it is a good, light read and I recommend it!

Posted in Spicy Romance

Tangle with the Mages

Posted on by Little Bee

By L.A. Monteiro

Rating 4 out of 5 stars

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

This is the second book in the Seasonal Spice series. I recommend you read the first book, 50 Shades of Orc, prior to reading Tangle with the Mages. This book is supposed to be a kind of continuation, in the first book, there is a prophecy surrounding a witch, but it is incredibly unclear. I did not feel any more clarity during this book either. For some reason, I thought the witch would end up with Tom’s brother because that is how it felt from book 1. I know book 3 follows along where book 2 left off, but, even though I haven’t read book 3 yet, I feel like they could have just been released as one book instead of 2.

Overall though, I did like the book. I liked that it took some creative liberties. I like that Irene was a sentient plant and that she melded with Cassia. I thought that offered a unique take. This book is not very spicy, I would say maybe a 3.5 out of 5. There are definitely some scenes in here, and the book is not very long, but I felt they could have been spicier like the first book.

Overall, its a fun, quick read! I look forward to working my way through the rest of the series.

Posted in Spicy Romance

Knot Forgotten

Posted on by Little Bee

By A.J. Moran

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

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

A.J. Moran is a new to me author. I started with an ARC of a new Omegaverse/non-shifter book that is just released. This book has elements of dark romance, and is reverse harem, no MM in the pack. It is not super traditional along those lines though. It is also a bully omegaverse, but was mostly light bullying and only for a small percent of the book.

One of the things I really like is that the FMC is a strong character, even when she has had to flee in fear from past situations, she doesn’t let it break her. I like when an FMC is not wishywashy and can stand on her own. She also actively has anxiety attacks from her trauma and I thought the story handled it appropriately. She does get in her head a lot, and some of the initial issues in the story would obviously not have been there if they would have just talked, but that is the point of the story isn’t it 😉

Her and her 4 best friends grew up together, eventually, she presented as an omega, specifically their omega, but something happens and she disappears from their lives. They reconnect when they end up at the same college and accidentally share a co-ed living space in the dorm. They do not recognize her and she goes by a different name, so it takes a bit to figure out who she is. That is really when you see the bullying. Eventually the truth comes out and everything stops and the rest of the book is their love and relationship taking its course. It is not an easy path and they face a lot of challenges.

I liked each alpha, and I liked that they were well thought out characters. Each one had their own inner demons to deal with but they all loved each other for them anyways and worked together to help everyone. This book has some great representation: mental health/bipolar/active anxiety attacks and one alpha is deaf. Each of the alphas were easy to like, even in the beginning when they were not nice to her.

There is some decent spice in there, which of course picks up as the book goes. This book may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But as far as omegaverse goes, this is definitely up there with some of my favorites. I look forward to reading more in this story line.

Posted in Spicy Romance

Matched with a Merman

Posted on by Little Bee

By Belle Blakley

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

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

This is book 2 in the Matched with Monsters, short, paranormal, erotica series by Belle Blakely. It takes place after Liz from Matched with a Vampire‘s book comes out. Liz, Sarah, (both from previous book), and their friend Bryce, go on a private yacht to celebrate Liz’s book release and success.

Bryce is about to ask for a divorce from her no good, cheating, gaslighting husband. Liz and Sarah convince her to try out the supernatural escort service and get herself a merman. She does, and it turns out the hot deckhand she has been ogling is the merman who accepts her request.

I really liked the spicy scenes in this one. While I liked the spice in the first one, the ones in this book were hot. I really liked the way the underwater spicy scenes were handled and how/what he gave her to help her breathe while underwater. The story is developed, having enough plot that the spice doesn’t fall flat.

Once again, minor spoiler alert, the happy ending in this story does not mean the guy gets the girl. Bryce desperately wants to go on her sort of spicy self-discovery after that last years of her life married to her husband have treated her. I love that for her!

Posted in Spicy Romance

The Enforcer

Posted on by Little Bee

By Delta James

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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

When I selected to read this book off of BookSirens, it indicates that it can be read as a standalone. This is book 6 in the series, and I felt like there were things I was missing throughout the book, so I am not sure that is wise if you have not read the others.

I will start more with the things I did not like, and end on the things I did. There were moments in this story where I really did enjoy the book, but mostly overall, a lot of parts felt forced and underwhelming. Please keep in mind, I may feel this way because I have not read any other story in this series.

Alicia’s bratitude is a bit on the extreme end. When she is in her feelings and getting ready to make a run for it, she is incredibly rude to her other coworkers/friends, who are showing her a kindness they don’t have to. I did like that you saw her grow and come into herself as she dealt with her trauma and everything happening in the story. I do think her and Brock go well together, but again, parts felt forced, meaning a lot of the conversations felt choppy. A lot of this story is super fast paced and it was hard to really establish a timeline of events in the story. I felt because it was a shorter book, scenes had to be rushed through and I had to go back and re-read pages because I was confused by the conversations as they did not seem to match up with what was happening in the story.

I have mentioned in past that I have issues with repetitive things in stories, such as repetitive descriptors. I became hyper fixated on the the amount of times the story mentions something about “being family” that it almost felt the like the Fast and Furious franchise. It felt like almost every single chapter, someone mentioned being family and Alicia being family.

I did like the uniqueness to the story. I do not want to give away spoilers, but I did like the premise. I wish there were more to it, it just kind of felt like it ended after Ewan was taken into custody. I pegged who the mole was at the beginning, not sure if that was intentional or not. It was interesting to see how certain characters in the story got linked together. This book has DD/lg elements to it. I do wish it had more of that d/s element, such as playing in the club. The book kind of just ended after coming back from a restful vacation. There seems to be a bonus chapter, but it blends in with the last chapter of the book and it threw me off a little bit at first. I do feel if I had read some of the other books and learned more of the dynamics of the characters and Cerberus, that I would have liked everything more.

When there are spicy scenes, they are pretty decent. I like the elements of consent, and enthusiastic consent. I liked that Brock stopped when he thought Alicia was unable to consent after they had gone out and had some adult beverages. Definitely check your trigger warnings, as there are some heavy things happening in the story.

Posted in Spicy Romance

Bad Nanny

Posted on by Little Bee

By Maya Nicole

Rating: 5 Stars

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

The Nanny Trope is normally not my style, but I really enjoyed other books I have read by Maya Nicole so I was excited to get the opportunity to read this one.

First, let me start out that I LOVE Josie. She is such a breath of fresh air as an FMC. I also love that she is into puppetry. That whole element really made the story that much more enjoyable if I am honest. Seeing Delaney grow and how Gabriel changed over time was also nice. I do enjoy a good grumpy/sunshine in a contemporary romance.

I don’t really have anything negative to say about this book. It is very well written. There is not really a third act break up, but definitely a third act kerfuffle, but it works itself out incredibly quickly. Due to Gabriel’s anxiety, he is quick to react without thinking, and that does not really get better until the end of the book. I wont go into why he has anxiety, as it will discuss it throughout the book, but there is a lot of trauma him and Delaney have to overcome. I think that is why I like Josie even more. I am a social worker in my career, and I have worked in and with the foster care system, Josie is a gem of a human in this story to not have given up and ran. Part of trauma and felt safety is that push to see if you will leave them too, and she stuck around. I really enjoyed just watching everyone grow and come together.

There are also a lot of funny moments, and stolen sweet moments. If you want something that will hit all the feels, and includes some spicy scenes, this is a great book to pick up! I can’t wait to read the other brothers’ stories!! They were great side characters and this book makes you want to know them more also.

Posted in Spicy Romance

Merry Little Misery

Posted on by Little Bee

By Melody Rush

Rating 4 out of 5 Stars

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

Merry Little Misery is a cute grumpy/sunshine romcom that is literally between a billionaire misery consultant and a broke happiness coach. The setting is around Christmas time.

Annabelle believes joy can get anyone through anything. She often has blinders on for what is really happening underneath and Grayson doesn’t think that is how to get through life. During the story, they are forced to work together with a mutual client. As time goes on, Annabelle grows on Grayson, and he hates it. He is set on trying to sabotage Annabelle’s plans to bring back the Joy Festival.

The two eventually start gravitating towards each other, they start making out and a few spicy scenes of fooling around. There is one actual spicy scene, the rest are more behind closed doors/talk about it/mention it later kind of scenes.

This story would make a cute movie and it offers what a sweet, holiday, romcom should feel like. I do think that the billionaire was a weird add on. It never really had a purpose until towards the end of the book. I will say both characters had a lot of growth by the end. Annabelle’s family dynamic was sad, especially how they treated her. I felt that Annabelle could be snarky with other people, but when her family would say anything or make comments, she would kind of just shut down. This is how it is for a lot of people, but would have been good to happen more often and not just one major outburst.

Other than that, overall the story was a cute one. I read it very quickly. Definitely makes for a fun holiday read. I definitely recommend.

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.