Tag Archives: Addiction

Speakeasy (True North # 5)

By Sarina Bowen

Synopsis

Sometimes you fall for Mr. Right. And sometimes for Mr. Right Now…

May

Did you hear the one about the girl who walks into a bar and catches her live-in lover kissing someone else? No? You’re the only one in town who missed it.
Luckily Alec is there to wrap me up in strong arms and carry me out the door before things get too ugly. And that’s not all Alec is good at. Our unexpected chemistry makes him the perfect rebound guy.

Alec

I should know better than to hook up with my rival’s little sister, but the fiery look in May’s eyes really turns my crank. She needs cheering up, and I’m just the guy for the job.
It’s not like I’ll fall in love. Not even after a string of scorching hot trysts, and the realization that we’re good at the same things: wild nights and familial disappointment. I don’t do love, never have, never will. So this is the perfect arrangement, for both of us.

Nobody would approve, but nobody has to know…

Review

SPEAKEASY is the fifth book in the True North series, and I’m sorry to say it was my least enjoyable read from this series.

I liked Alec, who was fun to be around and who treated May like she hung the moon. I liked May, who battled her alcoholic demons every day, and while the struggle at times was immense, she won that battle every day too. I think Sarina did a great job of getting her readers inside the mind of a recovering alcoholic. Not only did I like them as individuals, I liked them as a couple as well. I also liked that we got to see how three of the previous four couples were doing in their lives and how their relationships were progressing.

While I liked the characters and their story, there were two things I wasn’t a fan of. I didn’t like the lesbian fantasy scenes that I felt Alec pushed May into talking about, which he did so purely to satisfy his own sexual curiosity. I also didn’t like how down on themselves Alec and May were throughout the story. I got to a point where I just could not handle their “I’m not good enough” thoughts anymore.

SPEAKEASY is told in dual POVs and comes with a HEA for Alec and May. While it’s part of a series, it can be read as a stand-alone. As per Goodreads, there will be at least one more book in the True North series, but at the time of writing this review, book 6 is currently untitled, makes no mention of a release date and doesn’t mention who it’s about. I’m thinking it might be about one of Alec’s brothers.

Speakeasy (True North # 5)

My Rating:

Buy Links: Amazon | iBooks

Visit Sarina Bowen: Click Here

True North Series

Parker (Face-Off # 1)

By Jillian Quinn

Synopsis

Meet Alex Parker, the NHL’s most notorious bad boy both on and off the ice.

As the top defenseman in the league, Alex was on a winning team, so close to the Stanley Cup, before he hooked up with the wrong puck bunny—the team owner’s granddaughter. Oops! So, they sent him packing to Philadelphia to play for the Flyers, one of the worst teams in the league.

His agent wants him to clean up his act. He drinks too much. He sleeps around too much. That’s why his agent assigns Charlotte Coachman, aka Coach, to whip him into shape. Coach is a sexy sports agent that challenges him, makes him want to become a better man. After Coach takes Alex under her wing, he wants her all to himself. But she has strict rules about dating clients, and he likes breaking them.

Review

I love hockey romances, which is why I picked up PARKER. Sadly, I read PARKER a week ago and when it came time to write this review, I couldn’t remember anything about the characters or the story at all, and that is never a good thing.

Going by my notes I took at the time, I found it repetitive, it wasn’t holding my attention and I didn’t feel the chemistry between Alex and Charlie. The story and its characters certainly had potential, but overall it fell a little short.

PARKER is told in dual POVs and is the first book in the Face-Off series; a series where I assume all books can be read as stand-alones.

Parker (Face-Off # 1)

My Rating:

Buy Links: Amazon

Visit Jillian Quinn: Click Here

Face-Off Series

Reliquary (Reliquary Series Book 1)

By Sarah Fine

Synopsis

Mattie Carver’s engagement party should have marked the start of her own personal fairy tale. But when her fiancé, Ben, is violently abducted the next morning, her desperate quest to find him rips her away from small-town life and reveals a shattering truth: magic is real—and Ben is hooked. It’s not the stuff of storybooks. It’s wildly addictive, capable of producing everything from hellish anguish to sensual ecstasy almost beyond human endurance.

Determined to find out who took Ben and why, Mattie immerses herself in a shadowy underworld and comes face-to-face with the darkly alluring Asa Ward, a rogue magic dealer, infamous hustler…and her missing fiancé’s estranged brother. Asa has the power to sense magic, and he realizes Mattie is a reliquary, someone with the rare ability to carry magic within her own body, undetected. Asa agrees to help find Ben on one condition: Mattie must use her uncommon talent to assist his smuggling operations. Now, from magic-laced Vegas casinos to the netherworld clubs of Bangkok, Mattie is on a rescue mission. With Asa by her side, she’ll face not only the supernatural forces arrayed against her but the all-too-human temptation that she fears she can’t resist.

Review

Reliquary is a story of a girl that has everything she thought was true ripped away from her when her fiance, Ben, is kidnapped the night after their engagement party. When the police didn’t seem to be doing enough to find Ben, she decides that she owes it to him to do everything possible to help him.

As Mattie follows every lead she can, she finds out the world has magic and it is traded and stolen like a drug. She also finds out that she is very special. She is a Reliquary and is able to not only hold magic in her body but she is able to lock it away and make it basically undetectable.

While Mattie is following a lead into a underground magic club, she comes across Asa, Ben’s estranged brother. He never gives any indication that he is willing to do anything for his brother but at every opportunity to leave he chooses to stay with Mattie. Along the way she finds our that Ben isn’t everything she thought he was, but she still loves him and will do anything for him.

I thought that this was an interesting take on a novel about magic. I also loved the dynamic between Mattie and Asa. Asa, even though he had his reasons, was a total ass through most of the book. (And that kind of makes me love him even more). Everyone has something to hid in this novel and I look forward to the next one in this series.