Category Archives: BDSM
Review: Raw, A Dark Romance
Raw, A Dark Romance by Tawny Taylor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Beautifully Raw
This was a wonderfully exciting dark romance. I really enjoyed it!
The premise was interesting. I’ve read similar before, but nothing quite like this. Badgered by her friend, Kendall reluctantly signs up for a matchmaking service catering to the excessively wealthy. Presumably they’re looking for a wife, but that’s not quite the actuality of it. Generally they’re more in the market for a fling, or…
Well, then Kace comes into play. He’s a Spanish billionaire who knows no bounds. He’s also the first one to take an interest in Kendall, and he always gets his way. No one says no to Kace, except… well, Kendall does! Repeatedly, in fact.
After her presumed date with the billionaire turns much darker, Kendall’s kind of trapped between worlds. She’s been striving to make ends meet, and while she’s fairly satisfied with life so far, it’s not always the best, you know? Kace could provide that for her, except is he even looking for a relationship or does he just want to use her for his pleasure for the week? Whether she likes it or not, that’s what his initial plans are, but sometimes plans have a way of going awry…
What I liked about this was Kendall’s sort of rough nature. She’s not all that impressed by Kace and his billionaire attitude. Yes, he’s strong and demanding, but why should she do what he says just because of that? She can be pretty headstrong and stubborn herself. It’s a match of opposites, but they end up going together in an intriguing sort of way.
Who will break first? Except do they even want that to happen? There’s a bit of danger and risk here, but I felt an interesting connection between Kendall and Kace that I really enjoyed. He’s used to getting his way, but in order to get it this time he’s going to have to do things that he might not really be ready for. Kace is strong and stubborn, but maybe sometimes it’s hard to keep it up if you forget the reasons for your stubbornness, too.
They don’t really go together very well at first, but I think that’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed reading about them. I was curious to see where everything went and how things would progress. I can’t really say that I wanted them to be together at first, but I wanted to see how they would react to each other and grow on each other.
It was a fun story to read, with a lot of depth and psychological intrigue to it, along with a thrilling dark romantic allure. If you enjoy dark romances, I think you’ll really like this one.
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Review: Only Pretend
Only Pretend by Nora Flite
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A Seductive Confliction
I’ve read all of the Hard Body Rock books by Nora Flite and really enjoyed them. I’ve also read Tears of Tess, though I haven’t delved too deep into dark romance besides that. I do like it sometimes, but I think other times it’s done a bit oddly and too far for me.
Saying that, I really enjoyed Only Pretend. It had some of the same elements that I’ve come to enjoy from Nora Flite’s books, but with a sense of something more like in what Pepper Winters’ writes.
Only Pretend is a wonderful story, but there’s a definite sense of darkness and depravity going on. After Celeste is not only fired from her job, but also broken up with by her boyfriend, for being “boring” as he says, she decides to find a new life for herself. I really liked the idea of that, too. I think sometimes everyone imagines what it’d be like to pretend you’re someone else for a day, right? So this is like that, except…
She gets what she wants in a way, and then way more than she could have ever imagined. Leonide is sensually provocative, but with some absolutely dark desires. He’s that man you love to hate, who can pull your strings and bring out the best in you, providing you with immeasurable pleasure, but… what does he want in return?
That’s really the driving question that I kept wondering about throughout the novel, and I think that’s one of the things I liked most about it. We start off knowing a little about Celeste, but not everything. And Leonide is a complete mystery initially. Where did he come from, what is he doing, and why?
Celeste started off trying to pretend, but maybe there’s even more pretense to all of this than we know?
If you like Nora Flite’s other books, or Tears of Tess, I think you’ll really enjoy this one. It’s got a seductive style that really keeps you reading. I liked the thrill and suspense aspects, too. There’s some darkness, obvious, so you really need to be able to handle some adult themes, but… I think everything in this book is the sort of thing you really want to read about, but maybe not talk about in “polite” company? Haha. Curiosity is a dangerous and compelling thing! But oh so wonderful, too.
Highly recommended! I loved this book.
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New and Improved! (Plus my first weekly sale)
This is really exciting for me, and I hope it’ll be just as exciting for you! I have found a way to increase the quality of my eBooks by quite a bit, and I am in the process of updating old stories to fit these new standards.
I mostly have D2D to thank for this. Now, don’t get me wrong or anything, my older eBooks are fine. There is literally nothing wrong with them whatsoever, and they still contain everything. I’ve already gone through and updated some to have nicer covers, plus better descriptions, and some other minor changes, but with D2D’s conversion software(plus their simplified distribution, but that’s probably only super exciting to me, so I won’t ramble about that one), I can provide basically -better- than “professional” quality eBooks to you all.
Now, I say -better- than professional quality, because, honestly, the major publishing houses don’t actually do anything really above and beyond for their eBooks most of the time. They are essentially just as good as mine in terms of format, and while obviously the story quality is different(you never really know what you’re going to get sometimes), besides that there’s nothing really setting my books apart from anyone else’s besides format.
Here’s some examples for you:
Alessandra Torre’s Blindfolded Innocence
E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey
My Vanima’s Dirty Dilemma
Now, obviously all those contain different content, which is mostly beyond anyone’s control, but the format’s vary widely depending on how much effort the publishing house/author puts into it. Blindfolded Innocence started as a self-published book and was picked up by Harlequin, but despite that it’s not really anything more than simple. Also, the cover inside the book is potentially going to show up as a giant square or some awkward shape depending on what you read the book on. Don’t get me wrong, the story is the same, and I do like Blindfolded Innocence so I’m not trying to bash Alessandra Torre by any means, but the person who formatted her eBook did the absolute minimum in order to make it presentable.
On the other hand, Random House did an amazing job with Fifty Shades of Grey. It looks super first-class and really nice. I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey yet(I know, I know! I’ll buy it soon!), but I’ve heard great things about it. I think it’s awesome that the eBook version is so crisp and nice looking, too. You can tell that her eBook formatter put a lot of time and effort into it.
Then, mine. That’s the first I had a chance to switch over, so the content is kind of widely different than Blindfolded Innocence and Fifty Shades of Grey, but the concept is there. The cover in the book(which is something that not a lot of self-publishers do for B&N, since it’s not a requirement there), plus the really crisp title and copyright pages, and then the Table of Contents. You can’t actually see it, but the Table of Contents in my book is in the -back-. This seems odd, except you can access the Table of Contents for an eBook through different menus, so putting it in the back is actually nice since it doesn’t clutter up the front of the book. That’s more of an opinion thing, but I’m a fan of having the ToC available(through menus) but hidden so you don’t -need- to look at it if you don’t want to.
Anyways, the whole point is that, before D2D, I was kind of stuck with “good” but not “amazing” eBook formatting. I like to think that everyone still really enjoyed them, because the content was the same. My stories are still fun and sexy and exciting, but the formatting was always something I struggled with. It’s either a.) Expensive! or b.) -VERY- time consuming. As the sole person in charge of my writing(I literally do everything, and I already spend tons of time on it! Editing, formatting, cover art, editing again, and more), it was impossible for me to get my eBooks up to super pro level. As you can see from the Blindfolded Innocence example, this is considered fine, though.
But, ugh! I’m a perfectionist. I don’t like -fine-, I want AWESOME! So, D2D is amazing, and as long as they continue to be amazing, all of my future eBooks(and eventually all of the past ones) will not only have a great story with wonderful characters and some really erotic sex scenes, but they will also look really nice on whatever eReader you own. They are also helping me get more of my books onto the iTunes iBookstore, which I think is wonderful.
Anyways! Hey! Sorry for the rambling a bit, but this is really exciting to me. To kick this off, I wanted to offer a great sale this week. I will be offering Vanima’s Dirty Dilemma for only $0.99(or equivalent if you’re purchasing from another country). This is a 67% discount! It is technically the second part of the “Vanima’s Initiation” series, but you can read it as a standalone if you’d like(or go buy the first, also, which, total between the two, would still end up being a 33% discount overall).
Vanima’s Dirty Dilemma is a contemporary fantasy novelette about a teacher who is mistaken for her niece by the sorority president at the Magic Academy where she teaches(they’re both elves, and so they age slower than humans, so even though Vanima is older, if she puts on college student clothes she looks very similar). I don’t want to say it’s exactly like this(because it’s not), but think of it like Harry Potter, if they were all in college, with sexy hazing rituals and mistaken identity. It’s dirty, but in a delightfully erotic way. I redid the cover just for this(though the woman on the front is still the same; and beautiful). I know you’ll love it! =)
Vanima’s Dirty Dilemma is a BDSM Monster Erotica novelette and will be available for $0.99 until January 25th, 2013 at these select retailers(some are currently processing to convert to the $0.99 price point. I apologize for the delay if they don’t show up immediately as that, but if that happens it should be switched in a couple hours):
Amazon | B&N | Kobo | ARe | Smashwords (Use Coupon Code: BP42G)
Cerys du Lys 