January Round-Up & Catching Up on My Reviews

January went by very fast and I didn’t read that much!

As a lot of other bloggers, readers or tweeps I’m also trying to find a better balance between reading, blogging, bloghopping, emailing, tweeting on the one hand and my EDJ (evil day job), RL friends, hubby & other hobbies on the other hand. And I have especially a hard time finding a balance between all the activities in the first group, because there’s only this small amount of free time in a day (and the EDJ and my man do the demanding thing very well ;) so no worries there).

But the more I bloghop or twitter for example the less I read. Every time the reading gets the worst of it compared to one of the other activities, which sucks to be frank. Don’t think I don’t wanna bloghop or tweet, nope, that’s not it, I really enjoy doing that (that’s part of the problem). It’s just that I want to read more, especially after hearing and reading about all the great book recs on your blogs and in your emails and tweets *sigh*.

Has anyone found a solution to this dilemma yet? Please let me know!

And then there’s the reviewing part! I don’t mind reviewing a book a few weeks after I’ve read it, in fact I prefer to create that little distance in time to look at a book with a more objective view. But even for me it’s taking too long now – I still haven’t reviewed this fabulous book that I’ve read in 2009 and then some more in 2010! The thing is that I’ve read all these books that were 4 or 5 stars reads for me and because of that I want to do a proper review, nice and long (for example my High Five, Low Five format).

But I better face it: that’s not gonna happen!

So I decided to do a January reading AND reviewing wrap up in one post. They will be short an it’s not that I’ve read that much so this shouldn’t take too long… And I already reviewed a couple of them earlier...

(P.S. It turned out to be longer than I thought. So, sorry for that – maybe you can read it in several small pieces or skip most of it ;) – I just had to get it out of my system!)

Here’s my reading list:

Read in 2009
The One That Got Away by Madeleine Urban & Rhianne Aile, 5 stars

This was one of the best M/M reads of 2009 for me! I can really recommend it. For a change it’s a book with no angst in it. The characters are well developed and the smexing is long anticipated but scorching hot when they finally get to it. The story is about two friends, one gay one straight. One of them breaks his shoulder and needs some help during his recovery. So his straight friend moves in with him. Because of the injury, the heroes share some very intimate moments and something starts to sizzle. I thought that the authors did a great job of making their feelings tangible and showing how lust and love developed steadily. This book is especially highly recommended to all my M/M virgin friends because of the new to gay sex hero who’s been lead into this wonderful experience by his kind and loving friend.

January 2010
1. Faith & Fidelity by Tere Michaels, 5 stars

And boy did my year start with another great M/M read! It has the potential of becoming the best M/M book of 2010 for me. At least one of the best! Here we have two alpha guys, both cops who become friends after the wife of one of them died. Their lonely souls connect and gradually they start coloring each other’s lives again. The buildup is beautiful. One day an intimate touch of consolation opens the door to a more physical relation. Everything is new to both of them since they never were with a man before and one of the heroes has to deal with his feelings of guilt towards his deceased wife. All elements that are worked out very well. The opening scene is heartbreaking so be prepared to shed some tears and the angst is big in this relationship. This made it not a light read, but every now and then I love an emotional rollercoaster like this one!

2. Cuffed and Dangerous by Bronwyn Green, 4 stars

I actually reviewed this one. It was my first experience with the paranormal genre and it was good! I received this book from Bronwyn Green as a present!

3. Mind F*cked by Mia Watts, 4 stars

This was another fabulous paranormal romance, this time of the M/M kind. It’s about a very attractive half-breed faery who has the ability to read other people’s minds. Due to that fact he became quite cocky because everybody is lusting after him thanks to his looks. When he meets (his average) Joe he can’t read his mind which is unusual and makes him very insecure. During the security job they are involved in together he starts falling in love for the first time in his life but Joe is skeptical about his feelings and his feary background. It was foremost a very funny book! And the characters were wonderful and very right for each other (even the magic approved of it). The security mystery was a nice addition to this pretty original love story although that particular part was a bit predictable and lacked real suspense. It’s the first book in a series, the next books feature Sage’s siblings and I’m really looking forward to their stories! Even for the humor alone I would want to read them!

4. Beth's Acceptance by Teal Ceagh, 4 stars

And yet another paranormal romance! I did a good job on this new to me genre, didn’t I? This is also the first book in a series (of three) which seems very promising. Take a human, a vampire and an elf and put them together in between the covers of a book and you get one very steamy romance! That’s what this book is in a nutshell. Then there’s something going on with ugly evil creatures and a war that has to be fought. The three protags have to prevent the creatures taking over by forming a holy trinity. I know, this sounds like pretty heavy stuff but it was not that bad. I could easily comprehend what was going on and had no trouble believing any of it. The only thing that happened too fast for me was the woman’s acceptance of the paranormal world she had no clue about until then. And this world saving thing is not wrapped up in this first book of the series but will go on in the next two I presume. The romance story did have a nice happy ending though. I like that in a series! The smexing in this book was excellent too. To become a real trinity there was some unusual love making going on between these three sexy protags, really unusual *won’t say more*. In short, I loved this novella enough to wanna read the sequels, that have different H/h. I won this book over at the Blackraven's Erotic Cafe blog.

Look here for my selection of a sexy, smutty scene from Beth’s Acceptance.

5. Blind Faith by Claire Thompson, 4 stars

Great short M/M novella about two on-and-off lovers who haven’t seen each other for over a year. When one of them returns from one of his wanderings around the world and want to meet the other again, it turns out that his lover has been in a car accident almost a year ago. He was badly injured and lost his sight permanently. This comes as a shock and changes their relationship. I loved the dynamic of this couple. The heroes are hot and have a good chemistry going on. Their loving is sweet and Ms. Thompson knows how to develop a story well. It was too bad that this wasn’t longer, that’s the only thing I disliked besides the overly clichéd ending (it involves a cruise ship, need I say more?).

Look here for my selection of a sexy, smutty scene from Blind Faith.

6. Hard to Hold (Hold trilogy, #1) by Stephanie Tyler, 3 stars

I did a High Five, Low Five review about this book last weekend. It was a bit disappointing due to my own high expectations.

7. The Broken H by J.L. Langley, 4 stars

Last but not least, another good M/M story, recommend to me by K.C. from Smokinhotbooks who is celebrating 14 days of man love over at her blog (with great giveaways!).
It’s actually the second book in this author’s Ranch series, but can be read as a standalone. I myself have yet to read the first book, The Tin Star. And there even is a third one! The Broken H is about two stepbrothers who haven’t seen much of each other the past decade. But now they are forced to run their father’s ranch together for a while after he had a heart attack. One of the heroes is a cowboy with Indian blood who is the adopted son and the other hero is the more muscular but younger one and the town’s sheriff. Turns out that their split from ten years ago is caused by their mutual feelings of lust and love. They start to figure out how deep their love really was and is while they explore each other’s bodies eagerly. Not much of the ranching is actually involved it was just the immediate cause for their renewed friendship and new loving. I liked their inventiveness in the bedroom (verra steamy!) but I loved their emotional relationship! It was nicely developed and the information was well dosed. Really good read!

So this was my first month of the year. I better turn up the reading speed, otherwise I won’t get the 100+ books of the Reading Challenge done!

And as a reward for those who have made it to the end of this post... here's some man candy. Enjoy!

Contest Winner & Short Review of Cuffed and Dangerous by Bronwyn Green

Hi everybody, like I promised I’m about to announce the winner of the pdf copy of Bronwyn Green’s Cuffed and Dangerous! Before I do so I gotta say that I think the winner is one lucky girl, just like I was when Bronwyn sent me her book as a present. I thought I’d take a sneak peek at it before drawing and announcing today’s winner… so I at least had a faint idea about what I was giving away… and I just couldn’t put it down after that!! The first pages pulled me in right away and before I knew it I’d finished the story. I’ve read it in one breath! Luckily it was only about 50 pages long… otherwise I would have been dehydrated or worse ;)… although I wouldn’t have minded reading a little bit longer about Bronwyn’s threesome.
And the funny thing is, it was about shapeshifters! As some of you know I’m postponing reading the paranormal genre for a while now, because I had these doubts if it would be my cup of tea. I courageously bought a few paranormal books and won some others but kept pushing them to the bottom of my TBR tower. The back blurb of Cuffed and Dangerous didn’t say anything about the heroes being werecats, so I was tricked and I didn’t mind at all! I’m just saying so the winner knows what she gets!
If you want to know a wee bit more about my honest thoughts on this book, you can find them at the end of this post.

But let’s not let you wait any longer - the winner of Cuffed and Dangerous is:

Beth

Congratulations Beth! Please email me at eroticromance[at]live[dot]nl so I can send you the ebook, because I don’t have your address.

I want to thank Bronwyn again for making this giveaway possible! Thank you so much! And all of you who played and became followers of my blog, thank you too!

BTW I choose the winner with the help of Random.org.

There were 20 items in your list. Here they are in random order:


1. Beth
2. Marissa
3. Booklover1335
4. elaing8
5. joder
6. Patti
7. Tricia
8. Leontine
9. Cathy M
10. Sweet Vernal Zephyr
11. CynCyn
12. Molly Daniels
13. Minx
14. Cecile
15. Mandi
16. Marquetta
17. adrienne
18. UniquelyMoi
19. Tracy Tabor
20. Andrea

Timestamp: 2010-01-08 12:15:54 UTC

Bronwyn Green
Cuffed and Dangerous
Resplendence Publishing, November 2009

Genre & Keywords: Paranormal, Shapeshifters: Feline, Ménage, M/F/M, Bountyhunting, light bondage play

Rating: êêêê
Heat level: ¹¹¹

The Back Blurb:
When a bounty claim becomes a fight of five against one, Jude Caulfield and Gideon Wells step in to help hunter, Wrenn Saunders, before she’s mortally injured. Wrenn soon learns that three is a good number whether in a fight or in the bedroom. Especially in the bedroom—and that’s just where Jude and Gideon want to keep her.

I’ve said it before, I like a book that opens in mid action and Cuffed and Dangerous did just that and the first pages pulled me straight into the story. I intended to only take a little peek but ended up reading it in one haul. It’s a short story (about 50 pages) and when the space is that limited lust and love are always fighting for attention and the heat is mostly the winner. The same goes for Cuffed and Dangerous. Although there’s a happy ending and a glimpse of love, the romance in this story is not overly developed. The heat on the other hand… o lala… that’s very well done!
The sex scenes were really scorching hot and frequent! From the first to the last love scene the two heroes know how to seduce their girl into some sweet and tender but hot and ultimately satisfying lovin’! And although the three protags didn’t know each other before the encounter in the bar where Jude and Gideon helped Wrenn settle the fight against five werelions there’s an instant attraction and a genuine affection from the beginning between them.

There, the word werelions fell! Yeah, that’s right, I’ve finally read a book about werecats! It was my first, I was kind of a paranormal virgin and… the werecats didn’t freak me out! At first there was only one short shifting involved when they had to fight the lions, but the description of that wasn’t extensive so I could get to know the heroes first as men, and that was good. They were described as good looking hotties with the protecting quality alphas tend to have. Wrenn clearly fell for the men and certainly not for the cats. In fact she hates the fact that they are shapeshifters, since she had a traumatic experience with the sort. Wrenn makes a great heroine, she’s feisty, independent and tough – all qualities I like in my heroines. Ms. Green gave her a plausible background and more depth than Jude and Gideon. Except for their appearances the guys were pretty much interchangeable. I can’t remember which one of them was the cougar and which one the panther. They are rather flat characters and it was easier to identify with Wrenn than with one of them. But then again they played the parts they were meant to play perfectly.

So overall my first experience with the paranormal genre wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was freakin’ awesome and I’m ready for more! I think, but I can’t really be a good judge of that, that the paranormal aspect was on the light side in Cuffed and Dangerous, since the hot lovin’ was so prominent and the shapeshifting was just a given without elaborate explanations or rules or anything. Most of all I think that Ms. Green’s easy writing and way of making a story flow, helped me a lot with my paranormal deflowering, ‘cause if it wasn’t for that I would have never been sucked into the story like I was now. She really knows how to grab your attention and hold it throughout the story!
I already purchased another one of her stories: Handcuffs and Lies. And of course I couldn’t help myself and take a sneak peek again. And this story also begins in mid action and pulled me in immediately. But I managed to put it down to write this post ;) I’m not sure if there’re shapeshifters involved as well, since the back blurb doesn’t tell… But with or without them, the blurb sounds promising anyway!

Todays Man Candy & Reminder of My Giveaway of Cuffed and Dangerous

It's been a long day with lots of boring office stuff so I'm just doing a quickie with this hottie ;)

And I wanted to remind you of my Giveaway of Bronwyn Green's Cuffed and Dangerous. Tomorrow is the last day to make a chance of winning this novel by leaving a comment here >>>

Good Night!!

Todays Man Candy, End of the Year Giveaway & What I Found in My Mailbox

I had such an amazing day yesterday! It seems that I have a lot of those wonderful days since I started my blog! Therefore I just can’t help myself, I really feel like sharing this with you! And what better way to begin than with sharing one of my delicious hunks…

But keep on reading because at the end of this post I’m gonna give away an ebook!

[image]

Okay, now to the other good stuff.
First thing that made me smile was the mailman… delivering my new toy: the Sony Touch (PRS 600)! Yay! I instantly fell in love, not with the mailman but with the ereader of course. After some initial struggle with downloading the software it was really easy to transfer all my ebooks to the Sony. Well, I didn’t transfer them all at once, because that would’ve taken too much time and I wanted to start reading quickly. But I will get to that.
I’ve almost finished my first book reading with the ereader. I must admit that I have to get used to the screen, ‘cause it’s darker or more grey than the average paperback page and it doesn’t give light like my laptop. But it feels really comfortable holding it and it fits in my purse, so now I can take my ebooks everywhere!!

Second thing that made my day was a visit from author Mia Watts to my blog! And the most amazing thing was, she brought a lot of her friends with her who left the nicests of comments on my post Mia Watts totally surprised me! What are your experiences with authors?
Mia posted a link to that post on some of her author loops at Yahoo. It was the first time I ever heard about it… yeah yeah, call me silly for not having a clue about Yahoo… ;)
And now Mia tempted me to join by writing “Janna, I'll hold your hand into the yahoo room. C'mon, babe, you can do it! Free excerpts and inside info on contests, sales, plus socialization with authors and other readers.”
See? How can I resist that!? I signed in and will go take a look later. Are any of you familiar with or members of a Yahoo group? I mean, am I the only one who didn’t know about them?

The third wonderful present that I got yesterday was two of Mia’s writer friends emailing me directly, chatting with me and sending me a copy of their books! One of them is Bronwyn Green, who emailed me Cuffed and Dangerous. The other one Jambrea Jo Jones who sent me Magnus! Maybe some of you remember my post last month in which I blabbered about my soft spots… The hot looking Magnus was one of them!
I can’t tell you how thankful I am for these wonderful writers being so generous! You can imagine that this made me feel special and very happy!


The good thing is that I can let you share in the presents! Because Bronwyn Green sent me two copies of her ebook Cuffed and Dangerous *cough* 1 extra by accident *cough* and she wrote me that I could give away one of them to a random commenter! Isn’t that great? Thanks so much Bronwyn!

A Handcuffs and Lace Tale

When a bounty claim becomes a fight of five against one, Jude Caulfield and Gideon Wells step in to help hunter, Wrenn Saunders, before she’s mortally injured. Wrenn soon learns that three is a good number whether in a fight or in the bedroom. Especially in the bedroom—and that’s just where Jude and Gideon want to keep her.

Read an excerpt here >>>


Here’s how you can win a pdf copy of Cuffed and Dangerous:

All you have to do is leave a comment at this post and be or become a follower of my blog (look at my right sidebar for the button). This giveaway is international. I’ll pick a random winner on Friday January 8th, so you’ll have until midnight of January 7th to leave a comment and become a follower.

Good luck everyone!