After The Kiss

After the Kiss 

by Lauren Layne

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

My Review:
This was a book that was worth staying up late for. I kept saying I'd only read a couple more pages before bed, but I just couldn't leave the story.

Julie is a the resident dating expert at Stiletto magazine. She's great with first kisses, first dates, first anythings. But the idea of being in a relationship; having “couples movie night”, is horror inducing for her. Then her boss gives her the assignment to write about what happens after the “firsts”.

Julie decides her best course of action would be to go undercover and pretend. Find a guy that's obviously long-term and just grin and bear it for the sake of her article. Her friend picks out Mitchell and even his name makes Julie grimace. He's a long term guy through and through, but when they meet, she's surprised by their chemistry.

But at the same time, Mitchell just got out of a boring long term relationship and is persuaded to have a fling. It's a bet between him and a coworker and the coworker picks out Julie – knowing that she's always, only looking for a fling.

Mitchell doesn't believe in seeking chemistry and Julie doesn't want to be saddled with someone round the clock or long-term. Mitchell doesn't actually like Julie's made up flirtatiousness, but both of them sort of like who the other is underneath everything. The story reminded me of “How to lose a guy in 10 days or less”. It was a sweet story and fun to see how these two opposites attract.

Julie starts finding that she actually likes being around Mitchell and is surprised to realize that she misses him on days they're not together. It's a first for her and she's not totally sure what to do about it. For the first time, she feels natural with someone. The things they do together seem easy and right.

Each of them start the relationship on the wrong foot and they both have secrets. If their secret reasons come out, it could spell the end. Neither one knows if the other will be able to forgive and when the sh*t hits the fan, there's actually a much bigger explosion than I expected.

Mitchell was sweet and caring, but there were a couple times I was shocked by his misogynistic attitude. Wearing skimpy clothing does not mean someone is “selling something”. He said some pretty nasty things and I thought he could have groveled a bit more to make up for his attitude and lies, but I was still satisfied at the end.

Julie describes herself as a little insubstantial, but she really likes herself. She enjoys her first date lifestyle and isn't looking for anything more than that. Her reasons are eventually revealed, but I liked that she was confident and happy with who she was. It didn't feel like she had to change, so much as see other facets of herself. I started the book thinking that it would be rather insubstantial too, but both characters were well written and had some gumption behind them. I do wish that Julie had told Mitchell off a couple times and forced him to change his attitude a little more, instead of just getting comfortable in her new role of long-term partner.

This was an emotionally fulfilling book. I cried during the sad parts and a couple of the happy parts too. And finished the book feeling like everything worked out in the end. I'm hopeful that this author will write stories for Julie's two friends as well. They deserve their own happily-ever-after too.

I received a complimentary ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Intro Post

Bear with me as I get my blog started. My name is Petra.  I love to read, I play the piano when I can, work out and run a bunch of times every week and help out at my kids' schools.  When I can, I clean the house and cook healthy food.

I read almost all romance novels, but every now and then I through in something a little different - self-help, sci-fi, theology, humanities, etc.  I also read a lot with my kids so occasionally I'll have a kid's book review.  Seeing that the kids are four and seven at the moment, we read picture books and early chapter books for now.

I love experimenting with recipes and trying to get more vegetables into my kids.  But I don't usually have much time to cook, so I only make things that go pretty quickly.  I use my Vita-Mix quite a lot, I try to cut down on processed grains and sweets, so I keep my eye open for homemade treats made with healthier ingredients.

I participate in Kaia F.I.T. a couple times a week and I try to run, swim, do yoga, or something like that a couple extra times a week.  It helps my mood a lot and has made me so much stronger than I once was.  I try to give myself a couple physical goals to stay motivated.  I just recently started running one mile in under 10 minutes.  I've been signing up for 5Ks and trying to get my time down on those too.  Maybe one day I'll try to do a half-marathon or something, but it feels like that's a long ways off still.

My hope is to store all my book reviews here, along with whatever else I think of; stuff like recipes, kid stories and other things I've been thinking about. I have a bunch of reviews that I've worked on over the last few years that I will start archiving on here. Some of them are pretty rough, I know. Some are really short or not very informative, but I'm working on it. This has been my way of getting my brain back after having kids. My youngest is now over 4, and I feel like I'm finally starting to get my word-recall powers back.

I hope you enjoy my journey along with me.

Restraint

Restraint

by Charlotte Stein

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

My Review:
I read this book twice already since I bought it. It's just that good. (It's also only about 50+ pages, so it's pretty short.) It's one of those novellas that feels rather timeless. You don't really know how old anyone is, what they do, what they look like or where they belong outside this one snapshot of time. But they're real people that could fit in as anyone.

Mallory is going on vacation with her friends, James and Lucy. James invited Mallory's arch nemesis, Artie. Artie makes it pretty clear that he doesn't like Mallory, and she's gearing herself up for a lousy vacation. By the end of the book, you think there might have been a little bit of matchmaking goes on, but you just can't be sure.

Mallory is outspoken, knows what she likes and can have a really filthy mouth. She's fun and flirty and she catches on to things pretty quickly. I love seeing things from her point of view. She starts out being oblivious, but quickly catches on to everything that's going on around her.

Artie turns out to be really repressed. He doesn't think he's normal and he definitely doesn't know how to deal with being attracted to someone. In this story, it plays out sexually, but the idea is so universally functional. He feels uncomfortable showing anyone who he is under his “proper” mask. It takes Mallory's flair for the overly spontaneous personality for him to see that nothing bad happens when you let yourself go after what you want.

This story is very short, but it felt complete on it's own. You're not given a full-novel, now we're married with kids happy ending, but there's the promise at the end that they've worked out their problems. I believed that they were meant to be together.

Some of the lines were definitely laugh inducing. Like: “Unless he snuck into my room when I wasn't looking, and banged a gong he doesn't have, I'm not really sure how he has anything to be worried about.” Now I will constantly picture people walking into rooms to wake people up by banging gongs.

If there's one thing that pulls me out of this story, it's the British use of the word “jumper”. Especially considering that Artie went to Bible College, “jumper” makes me think of this: http://thingshomeschoolerslike.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/1-jumpers/, but that's definitely not what is being referred to in this book (or in Charlotte Stein's other books) and I always have to remind myself of that.

This book is hot and graphic and shows Charlotte Stein's trademark ability to turn just about any set of words into an amazing piece of art. Even descriptions of people that you would think are completely yucky, turn in to masterpieces of attraction and glimpses into the human psyche.  

Wrong Bed, Right Guy

Wrong Bed, Right Guy

by Katee Robert

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Review:
Another first-time-by-this-author book for me. I thought about reading book three in this series, but decided I should really start with book one. This one was a well developed, emotionally rich story. Two characters coming from opposite sides of the tracks, learning to find peace with who they are.

Elle is such a unobtrusive heroine. She's shy, has trouble standing up for herself and basically tries to make herself invisible. But somehow she gets the gumption to try to seduce her boss, Nathan. The funny thing is, it's Nathan's brother Gabe that she ends up seducing. And that's pretty much how the whole of Elle's life goes. She finds her spine and her own distinct personality through Gabe's force of character. By the end, she's capable of owning who she is and following whatever her heart desires.

I didn't like how she treated Gabe when things got rough. She really did paint him into a corner and make it seem like he wasn't good enough for her. But she really pulled through at the end and owned up to her issues. It felt like she really grew and understood what her issues were and decided it was time to solve them.

I would have loved to see more of Elle's interactions with her painting. The few times it's mentioned, it seems like such a huge part of her life, but we only get a few brief glimpses of her painting.

Gabe is a pretty hunky hero. He's loud, uncouth and tattooed. Everything Elle's convinced is bad for her, but she secretly likes a lot. I loved that Gabe could be alpha and push Elle without turning into a jerk or objectifying her. The tattoos were slightly a turnoff for me, in that I saw a picture of the idea behind one (skin pulled back to reveal some Bible verses) and it really grossed me out. It just looked a little too real and gory to me. I don't think I could go for a hero who looked like he had skin peeled away from his arm. Luckily, the tattoo design itself is only mentioned a couple times so I didn't think about it too much in terms of the story, even though tattoos as a whole were a huge part of who Gabe was.

As an aside, I couldn't figure out one of the Bible verses mentioned. Hosea 11:9 was supposed to remind him of what his mom thought he should aspire to be. But the verse says “I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again. For I am God, and not a man – the Holy One among you. I will not come against their cities.” (NIV) Maybe I'm just missing something, but I couldn't connect what he should be aspiring towards.

Gabe and Elle were good multi-dimensional characters and I liked the secondary characters too; Gabe's brother Nathan and Elle's friend Roxanne. They both added some extra depth to the story and balanced out the two lovebirds' angst. Elle's mom was pretty nasty and was definitely a tough situation to reconcile, but the author did a pretty good job of keeping it real and forcing Elle to stand up for herself without simply brushing the conflict away afterwards.

The story ticked along pretty quickly and I will definitely be looking for more books by this author. This one had a perfect amount of angst and character growth. I loved the path that Gabe and Elle took to find their happily-ever-after. Nathan's story looks interesting and I'll definitely be buying the rest of the books in the series soon.

Waking Up Married

Waking Up Married

by Mira Lyn Kelly

Rating: 2 of 5 stars

My Review:
This is my first foray into the Harlequin KISS line. I think I saw this book when it first came out, but I didn't buy it right away. I wasn't sure what to expect with this new line of books, but the premise of this one sounded like fun. In fact, I just read another book that starts out similarly – couple meets in Vegas, gets married and then has to deal with the fall out. The cover of this one looked like a nice romantic comedy-type, so why not. But I just couldn't get into it. It felt slow and heavy, like a bad muffin. You keep hoping it turns around, but it just kept dragging.

First up is our heroine, Megan. She's got some guy problems. Seemingly guys just don't stay around with her. She's really nice, looks like a on-track sort of person, but decides that she just doesn't want to deal with the whole romance thing anymore. She just wants to have a baby. I can applaud her for her straightforwardness and her internal decision-making process. She's figured out what she wants and she's going for it.

But as we move through the book, we see that she actually has a lot of daddy issues, boundary issues and she really can't enjoy the beginning stage of a relationship because she's so scared that the guy is going to leave her. With her underlying issues, I'm surprised she was able to have a couple relationships before this one and that she was able to get to the point where the guy left her. It felt to me like she doesn't let herself have that honeymoon period in a relationship. She wants all or nothing – 25 years married couple or single matron. She just can't handle the in between. I could understand the fearful place that was coming from, but she sure takes it to the extreme. If that were the only thing, she'd still seem pretty likable, but then she's got the boundary issues.

Megan's only interaction with anyone not related to her new husband is her cousin and the cousin's two other bridesmaids. (The cousin's wedding is the reason they started out in Vegas.) This trio is a pile of work. They're just nasty to Megan. I didn't mind it too much at the beginning of the book because they were there for the wedding. Megan says she doesn't know them well but keeps the peace for the sake of the wedding. I can respect that, but then when things are going bad for her, she calls these same women. And sits meekly while they ridicule her and have their little cliquey, nastiness to each other about Megan while they're talking. Megan gave me no indication that she had friends or any form of life outside what other people chose to bestow on her. Whether it was Connor or these non-friends, she thinks she's a steady, decisive person because she was going to choose artificial insemination, but every single part of her life that we see in this book shows her unable to care for herself physically or emotionally. She gave one small shove of independence late in the book, but that was it.

Then we have Connor. Typical Harlequin billionaire-type. Used to getting what he wants but he has a troubled past with a broken home growing up. He seemed very strong, arrogant, and unflappable, but often strayed into the douchy category to me.

Connor starts out talking with his friend at a Vegas bar and you can just see him rolling his eyes as his friend asks if he's dating. He starts narrating to himself that his guy friend loses his man-card because he's talking about feelings. And these were simple questions like “how are you holding up since your almost-fiancee dumped you?”. Strike one for the douchy-hero.

He doesn't want a love relationship because that's just too messy. But he does want a companion-wife with benefits. He gives a lot of mixed signals with stuff like wanting Megan to “fall for him” (his words), but really, this is just a happy companionship. He's jealous and possessive of Megan almost from the start, which seems to be Harlequin-speak for “I'm falling in love and I don't even know it”. I can handle a little bit of jealousy or possessiveness, but it starts straying into “ownership” in this book. He's known Megan for one day and when she gets dressed up for her cousin's wedding, he just can't handle that other people will see some of her thighs or the shape of her butt and goes so far as to try to cover her up with his coat as soon as he can. Strike two for the douchy-hero.

They decide to give the marriage a try, so Megan (obviously) moves part-way across the country to live with Connor. Megan ends up testing Connor with all her worst flaws to see if he can handle who she is. Connor catches on to what she's doing and doesn't really care one way or the other. He'll deal with bad food, facial scrub masks, pajama days when Megan's working all day, just as long as she stays with him. It's meant to be sweet and vulnerable for both of them, but when Connor's internal monologue says he can touch her butt because “he needed a reminder as to why he was going to choke down the coming atrocity. An incentive of sorts.”, it veers into objectification instead of caring. Strike three for the douchy-hero.

I liked Connor's friend, Jeff. I almost wish he was the hero instead. It would have served Connor right to lose Megan to Jeff for being such a douche. But then again, Megan didn't show a lot of promise or backbone, so I probably wouldn't want to stick Jeff with her anyway. Jeff showed himself to really care about Connor, even though Connor really gave him no reason. He kept Connor in line even when Connor was a jerk and the times that Jeff makes an appearance in the book are more lighthearted.

The ending was satisfyingly emotional. Megan grew some backbone related to Connor (but not to her “friends”), Connor groveled in a nice way, and I was glad to see them together. But the journey to get there didn't feel worth it. Neither character seemed to grow personally, even if they did resolve some of their afraid-of-love issues.

His Risk To Take

His Risk To Take
by Tessa Bailey
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Review:
After reading the second book in this series, I decided I had to come back and read the first one. The description didn't grab me right away and I'll admit, the book took a while to grab me too. Troy is a very dominant, confident male and at the beginning, Ruby doesn't seem to have much positive going for her.

But I really liked where Troy and Ruby went in this story. They're both broken, hurting people and they find a way to overcome and heal together. And the sex is pretty hot, if you like dominant male sex. Troy's got a filthy mouth, so be prepared. But he's also not skeptical about his ability to love, which I really liked. He doesn't sit pretending that he probably doesn't like Ruby all that much and he's not a jerk. A couple times I felt like his dominant tendencies got in the way of him and Ruby having a relationship; he's not good at keeping her informed about what's going on, but he gets upset when she takes things into her own hands. I felt it was sort-of unintuitive for him that he got upset because Ruby “didn't trust him”, but he didn't really give her a reason to either since he kept her in the dark.

Ruby grew on me and I was pleased that I never felt like smacking her. She skates the edge of the law, but she has good reasons and I always understood where she was coming from. She was the reason I almost didn't read the book (because I didn't think I'd like her), so I was pretty impressed that her character didn't annoy me while I was reading. She was strong and did what she felt was necessary without second guessing herself. I loved that even when she wasn't sure if she could love someone, she found a way to put her feelings into action even if she couldn't say the words.

For me, the very best part of this book is the ending. It was simply perfect. That's where you really feel it was all worthwhile. Sometimes the dominant sex felt like it kept you from seeing the rest of the story, but the ending wiped that all away and I was completely in love with both Troy and Ruby. Overall, I like book two of this series better than this one, but this is still a worthwhile read.

The Things That Make Me Give In

The Things that Make Me Give In 

by Charlotte Stein

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Review:

The Things that Make Me Give In by Charlotte Stein

blog, amazon and goodreads
4.5 stars
Oh Charlotte Stein, how I love reading anything you write! I don't know exactly how I'd classify this one. It's a large collection of short stories. Do I recommend it to first time Charlotte Stein readers? Or maybe just the seasoned ones who want more? I'm not sure. On the one hand, I don't think it shows the true star-power of Charlotte Stein's writing, but it does give readers a small taste of all the different kinds of stories that she writes. I loved reading it, but it was a little different than her other books.


Each story was unique. Some were romantic. Some were just about sex. Some seemed like early drafts of a scene that later turned into it's own book. They were all about 20-30 pages I think (reading on Kindle it's hard to judge that sort of thing).


Between all of these stories, there's just about every kind of kinky sex you can think of. It doesn't have as much of Charlotte Stein's unique turn of phrase that I'm used to from some of her other works. But most of these stories included her signature: messed up people trying to work things out, which mostly involves sex.


Ms. Stein's way of tying all the stories together at the end was simply masterful. I love the sense of empowerment that she gives her characters and I love that she never lets them use excuses as a cop out. Even if they start out that way, they find their own power by the end.


I think in the end, this wouldn't be my first choice in a re-read if I were picking a whole book, but if I were only thinking about reading for 20-30 minutes and really wanted a super, sex-filled story, I could probably pick any one of the stories in this book and be satisfied.