Tag: Reviews

  • All the Trees in Pearl

    I just finished reading Emily Ryan-Davis’s, All the Trees in Pearl. Set in Colorado in 1868, it’s the story of a woman who travels across the country to marry one man, and ends up finding another. The attraction is evident from the start and you don’t have to wait long to get some steamy sex scenes between our hero and heroine.

    The characters themselves were a little contradictory. The heroine sways between being perfectly proper and a lustful lady. The hero is equally undecided between being harsh and unforgiving or the perfect prince. Most of the story fit the ranch/western feel of the setting well, although there were a few things that didn’t seem to jive with what I think of as being typical of that period.

    However, this is an erotic story and the sex was very hot! It is frequent, non-monotonous, and has a very real feel to it.

    I’d definitely recommend All the Trees in Pearl as a light, fun read, with plenty of heat to back it up!

  • Halfway To The Grave


    Hello boys and girls, I am Dawn and I will be your blogger for today! For my first post, I thought I’d review a favorite book of mine. Halfway To The Grave, by Jeaniene Frost, is an urban fantasy romance starring Cat Crawfield. I’ll try not to spoil the ending for you, but I’ll give you a brief look at the main characters and the plot.

    Cat’s mother (who you will despise and pity) was raped by a vampire at what we assume is a young age. She kept Cat and so the whole town treated her horribly for being an unwed mother. The fact that she filed a report for rape, is apparently of no concern to the townsfolk. This is the ONE thing in the book that galled me. This is set in the 2000’s, yet her family and the whole town acted as if it was 1950.

    Anywho, back to the story! Cat’s mother raised her to believe that she was half evil and that all vampires were completely evil and should be killed. Cat killed her first vampire at 16, and continued to do so with her mothers full support. (Can you tell why I don’t like this mother??)

    So one night, while out killing vampires, Cat picked the wrong guy. This was a master vampire who quite easily overpowered her. Bones is a vampire bounty hunter who forces her to work with him. He trains her ruthlessly and together, they work to take down a group of killers.

    I’m afraid that is all I can say with turning into a squee-ing fangirl and ruining the story. The plot was full of twists and turns and the voice of the story was excellent. I could not put the book down till it was finished. This is actually one of the few books I have ever read twice, and the only book I’ve read more than twice. My copy is now worn and tattered and dogeared at so many places I’m afraid I’ll have to start using tabs and color codes!! The writer managed to pull out a “new” vampire story, which gets harder and harder as time goes by. I was very impressed and will definitely be picking up the sequel, One Foot In The Grave, when it comes out this April 29th!

  • Seduced by Darkness


    Okay, first – a disclaimer:     This is the second book in Ms. Devlin’s Dark Realm series. Perhaps if I had read the first part, my impressions would have been different.

    ***This is a spoiler-free review.***

    The story had lots of interesting elements: a vampire hero who was previously a Templar Knight; a captive demon escaped from its mausoleum prison because of a hurricane; the chaos and devastation that ensue after said hurricane; a vampiric, jaded but closet submissive heroine, who is also a New Orleans cop.

    Overall, if you are looking for a quick, very steamy read – this book does the trick. Ms. Devlin has a gift for keeping the sex scenes from feeling monotonous, and the writing direct and well-paced.

    The prose was clean, and the characterizations were good – though I have to say that Chessa’s issues were enraging at times as an obstacle to her acceptance of Nic. And Nic’s accent and pet-names for her switched from the old cliche ‘ma petite’ to a cowboy drawl, to some sorta Cajun-ish feel too often for my tastes. The antagonist started with a bang, very creepy and sinister, but I was a bit disappointed with the resolution. The book was left wide open for the story to continue.

    There was a lot of potential here, and while I was interested to see how it all came together, the story left me with an ‘unfinished’ feeling that irks. Erotica is not my usual genre of choice, but paranormal romance is. For paranormal romance, this book is a stretch. It falls much easier into the erotic romance/erotica category. The sex scenes dominate most of the book, and while they do drive the relationship plot forward, I found them distracting from the battle against the main antagonist, which had the potential to engage me much further.

    Even though my reaction was luke-warm, the book did keep me turning the pages. I think it’s a testament to Ms. Devlin’s skills at pacing and writing scenes that demand attention, even if the action-driven plot took a very secondary position.

    I don’t have an erotica scale to grade it, but on my paranormal romance scale, I gave it two and a half bleeding hearts out of five.

  • Kat’s Site Reviews – sexyjack

    Happy Monday!

    Today officially begins our rotating schedule of blogging here on the WRB. I’m Kathleen (or Kat) and you’ll be stuck with my random ramblings every other Monday. I’ll try to keep things as entertaining and informative as possible!

    Today I’ll be reviewing an excellent photo compilation site, sexyjack. I was actually just having a discussion last night with some friends about how many hours we have collectively spent viewing this site. It is fabulous! The site consists of page after page of sexy photos. It ranges from classy subtle to the more obvious erotic. The photos are mostly of women, but they throw a man in every now and then too (usually doing something sexy with a woman).

    My favorite thing about this site is that it’s updated daily. That’s right, daily! It just doesn’t get any better than that.

    Now, to tie this into writing (since this is the blog of a bunch of writers). On our group forum we periodically post a picture as a prompt and then each write a flash story in response. I had never done this before, but find that it is a really great exercise. It’s a lot of fun and very interesting to see the wide variety of entries that are posted all based off the same picture.

    I enjoyed doing these exericses enough that I thought it’d be great to compile a few pictures of my own to pull out and use as prompts whenever I needed inspiration, or wanted to take a break from my current project. As an author of erotica, it just made sense to look for sexy pictures (see, it’s not just about the porn!). This is what led me to sexyjack. As an example of the type of thing I’m talking about, check this out:

    Does that picture not just scream for its story to be written? I think so.

    So, that’s my rambling for today. Hope you enjoyed it. For more from me, you can check out my individual blog here.