REVIEW/RELEASE BLITZ: Cockpit by Joanna Blake

~Synopsis~

She's the one who got away. But I live for the chase…

I'm a thrill seeker. I fly the fastest jets in the world, and ride my motorcycle when I'm on the ground. The only thing that matters to me is speed. Why would I ever think about settling down?

Jenny Reeds, that's why. One look in those hazel eyes and I found a thrill no dogfight could match. For one wild, unforgettable night, she was mine. I wanted to keep her close but she disappeared without even telling me her last name.

I did my tour and flew combat missions in desert skies. But I never forgot her.

Now they have me pushing papers and training new pilots. I thought I'd be bored to tears. Guess who I run into my first night back?

It's her, my wild-eyed, fiery-haired beauty. Turns out she's the General's daughter. But that won't stop me. I'm persistent and it doesn't take too long before she's back in my arms.

Only one problem. She's kept one hell of a secret from me. She had a baby while I was overseas. My baby.

Now I want them both under my roof. Permanently. I've never failed a mission yet and I don't intend to start now.

Cockpit is a standalone novel with a guaranteed HEA and no cheating. This edition includes bonus materials and will end before 100%!

GOODREADS

Cover Designer: Mayhem Cover Creations

Photography: James Critchley

Cover Model: Andrew England

~Book Review~

4.5 Stars

Derek Jagger has a reputation as “Sergeant Panty Dropper.”  Jenny Reeds is looking to sow her oats during an impulsive wild streak. And their one night together before he ships out leaves Jenny in a completely new role.

Despite his old playboy ways, Jagger is all in once he meets Jenny.  He can’t get her out of his mind during his time deployed, and he’d like very much to find her. If only he knew her last name.  And then of all of the bars in the world, he walks into hers. And their second chance comes full swing.

“He was kind and gentle and sweet and passionate…and filthy. Very, very filthy.”

Jagger and Jenny have quite the chemistry and their encounters are pretty sizzling. There’s no shortage of heat in this story.

“He grunted like an animal as his tempo increased. I was still coming, still feeling the electricity that passed between us when we came together.”

It’s definitely a sexy story, largely light-hearted though there’s a bit of angst/drama around the middle.  Jenny didn’t always make the best choices, and Jagger didn’t always react the best, but it was also clear they had good reasons for their mistakes and being told via their dual first person point of view helped with understanding their dilemma and actions.  Overall though, I liked Jenny, especially so when she had no patience for old fashioned ideas.

“My father was an idiot. My fiancé was an idiot. Basically I was surrounded by idiots. Sweet, handsome idiots.”

I adored Jagger for the fact that he was so enamored of Jenny and the ways he went about winning her heart. It was clear that they had something he hadn’t had before and that she was special to him. While the virgin/manwhore and secret baby troupes are not typically my go-to reads, the story really pulled me in right from the start and characters made it work.  I was engrossed and reading into the wee hours of the night. The fact that both of them were celibate during their time apart, and there was very minimal OM/OW drama really helped seal the deal on the romance, keeping the story sweet and focused on the issues solely between them.  And Jenny’s father and fiends made humorous additions to the story.

~Excerpt~

I sat back and waited for her shift to end, enjoying the memory of the way her luscious body had melted against me. It was getting close to time when she asked me if I wanted anything else. I took my time, staring up and down her body.

"Oh yeah honey, I can think of a lot of things."

"I'm not a piece of meat, Jagger!"

"No, you're definitely not a piece of meat. But you do look tender."

She threw my check at me and turned tail to see to her other tables. I made my last beer count, sipping it slow as molasses until I was the last guy in the place. She started mopping up. She 'accidentally' mopped over my boots.

I smiled and stood up, throwing a fifty dollar tip on the table. Her eyes widened. She stared at me as I walked out of the bar.

'Course I was waiting out front for her when she came out fifteen minutes later.

She stared at me. I stared at her. Then she walked up to me and tossed that fifty dollar bill in my face.

"I'm not for sale, you sonofabitch!"

I looked right at her. She was angry. But she had mistaken my meaning.

"I didn't say you were."

"Then what are you doing tipping like that?"

"I took up a seat in your section all night. Seemed fair."

She stared at me belligerently.

"Well, I'm not taking it."

"How about a twenty?"

"What are you, a cash machine?"

She huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. Her glorious, perfect, mind bending chest. I pulled out a ten and a five.

"Fifteen?"

She yanked the money out of my hand so fast I got rug burn. Then she stomped off. The woman had a pair of legs on her. And she made good use of them.

I was whistling as I followed her home.

AMAZON

Joanna Blake loves good old fashioned romance, men who open doors and work with their hands. Hot Blooded Heroes is a series of sizzling stories about True Blue American men and the women who love them. She's thrilled to be collaborating with Pincushion Press on her new series! Come along for the ride!

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BOOK REVIEW: Yours by Kim Linwood

4 Stars

If you’ve read Mine, then you’re already familiar with Danny Holmes and Bianca Chou, supporting characters in that book. But if you haven’t, it’s not necessary to follow this story although I highly recommend Mine if for no other reason then it’s a fun, sweet, and sexy story.

So Danny and Bianca became acquainted when she participated on a tropical island Bachelor style reality show, and Danny was posing as the butler though really he was the best friend of the bachelor.

“In the biblical sense we’re pretty close. We just never talked all that much.”

Now it’s a month later and the two have reunited for a cruise, her consolation prize from the show.  Bianca’s hoping this new adventure will provide them with time to connect beyond the physical; meanwhile Danny hopes he can keep up the pretense of having more money than he really does.

Though this is a novella, it actually has good story development. The only places it seemed to fall a little short is on the love scenes which often get derailed by other hijinks. Perhaps for that reason I couldn’t quite determine the chemistry between them. What can I say, I sorta craved more action with Danny’s danglies ;-)

Speaking of Danny, he’s quite a good guy, a real catch. A med student, he seemed solid and stable but with a fun, flirty demeanor that was cute.

“‘Your arse does this cute little wiggle when I smack it, and when you come, the way you moan grips me by the balls and nearly unmans me.’”

I really felt bad for him when their vacation kept going awry. Bianca was just okay. Even though the events that befall them weren’t technically her fault, for some reason I still felt like she needed to up her game to be more worthy of such a good guy like Danny. None the less, I was still rooting for them to have things go their way.

Told via Danny and Bianca’s first person point of view, the story also interweaves cameos from characters featured in Kim Linwood’s previous books (see list below)—a nice treat to revisit some old favorites. 

GOODREADS

Previously Available Exclusively in the Red Hot Sizzle Anthology

Now Available on AMAZON!

~Also by the Author~

Mine

 Bossy

Rebel 

One Flight Stand

Payne

BLOG TOUR: Dark Mafia Prince by Annika Martin

~Blurb~

Aleksio

Don’t look at me like that. So trusting.
Like you think I’m not a monster.
Like I won’t wrap your hair in my fist and bend you to my will.
Like I won’t sacrifice you, piece by piece, to save my brother.
I’m the most dangerous enemy you’ll ever have because every time you look at me, you see somebody good. That friend who died.
And when you look at me like that, I die again.

Mira
I spent years making myself invisible.
A good girl, apart from the noise.
Then you came back, beautiful and deadly in your Armani suit.
Don’t look at me like you still know me, you say.
But I remember your smile and those sunny days.
Before they lowered your small casket into the ground.
Before they told us the prince was dead.

GOODREADS

~Book Review~

4 Stars

Aleksio Dragusha had his future empire ripped away from him when he was a young boy right along with his baby brothers.  But he’s back for vengeance and to reclaim this throne in the mafia world.

“Don’t let anyone tell you crime doesn’t pay.”

Mira Nicolla still sees the innocent prince she played with as a child before she believed him dead in the attack against his family.  Though a mafia princess herself, Mira has no desire for that violent world and lives practically a separate indentify behind the façade she’s had built to keep herself safe.

Mira is a bleeding heart and at certain places I wanted her to be a bit more… badass. Maybe even Aleksio too. Don’t get me wrong he’s an alpha male and possessive but given his mafia heritage I think I expected him to be more deviously dangerous.  I kinda felt the attempts to mold him into a romantic hero left him a little too soft at times for a dark character in this romantic suspense, though I did like Aleskio.  

“She has every reason to hate me but she’s mine….She’s mine. She always was. And I’ll probably do some more things she hates today, but she’ll still be mine.”

On the romantic front I just craved something more—definitely more steamy times but also more development between them. There’s quite a few places where they’re doing their own thing and then there’s the whole different approaches to the world that had both of them playing a game of ping pong with whether they could be together.  On the plus side, there is also absolutely no OW/OM drama—nadda! Both are single and no mentions of past lovers. You don’t see that nearly often enough these days.

The suspense part kept me turning pages and not wanting to put the book down! I’m still dying for more resolutions and to meet the infamous baby prince—an angle that most definitely had a unique and original spin. There are some very interesting developments there that I can’t wait to see how it unfolds. The intrigue and action-adventure aspect really propelled the story and kept it engaging.

This is the first book in the series about the three princes and while it doesn’t end in a cliffhanger, the overall story arc is ongoing, though each book features a different brother. This story is told via Aleksio, Mira, and Viktor’s first person point of view.

Read an Except: HERE

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Annika Martin is a NYT bestselling author who enjoys writing dirty stories about dangerous criminals! She loves helping animals and kicking snow clumps off the bottom of cars around the streets of Minneapolis, and in her spare time she writes as the RITA award-winning author Carolyn Crane.

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BLOG TOUR: Trashy by Penny Lam

Release Date: June 24, 2016

~Blurb~

Vickie
Turning eighteen was supposed to mean escaping the trailer park and the shadow of her mom’s job-- the world’s oldest profession. But then her mother gives Vickie an ultimatum: work on her back or live on the streets. Suddenly, Vickie is out of options.

Buck
Beers and babes. The two b’s are all Buck needs to be happy. That is, until he and his roommate save the prettiest little thing in the park, inviting her into their trailer and their beds. Now Buck’s wondering if the two things he needs to be happy are the people he could lose all too easily.

Shep
In a park with nosy neighbors and a long memory, Shep can’t outrun his reputation. Bitter and jaded, he relies on Buck’s friendship, hoping soon he'll get the hell out of Dodge. That is, until little Vickie and Buck show him that there’s love in even the trashiest corners of the earth. His reputation, though, threatens to unravel everything. 

Just as they start to build their family, a murder in the park turns everything upside-down. Vickie's troubles, Buck's faith, and Shep's dark past collide -- testing their love and their trio. Can their unconventional relationship help them survive the fallout in a town where unearthed secrets can get you killed?

Warning: This standalone M/F/M novel is the trashy romance you’ve been waiting for.

GOODREADS

~Book Review~

4.25 Stars

Buck Jackson and Gil “Shep” Shepherd have been friends since childhood, both having endured bad parents and been raised by Shep’s grandmother in a trailer park in a lower class mining town.

Vickie Sampson’s mother makes her living on her back in that same trailer park, and she has plans for Vickie to follow in her footsteps. But Vickie’s eighteenth birthday doesn’t go as planned and instead she ends up in the arms of the two men across the way instead of in the clutches of the paying John.

As you can probably guess from the title and the blurb, this one has a big smut factor, a small creepy factor, and “trashy” people and setting. But it’s surprisingly also packed with emotions; a side story and background story of mystery; and plenty of character development, taking the main characters from stereotypical “trailer trash” into three young individuals struggling to live their dreams and embrace their sexuality.

“Just because something ain’t popular doesn’t mean it’s wrong.” –Vickie

Shep and Buck share a close friendship but till Vickie enters the picture neither of them, especially Shep, are ready to explore what might be something more. Roughly a decade younger than them, Vickie’s innocence awakens a love in both of the guys and a desire to have more than their bachelor style, trailer life. She becomes their catalyst to explore new avenues in the bedroom and accept a new version of family.

“He wraps a hand on top of mine. Then he spanks our girl’s ass with my hand, like he’s teaching me a damned golf swing.” –Shep

Getting the 1^st person point of view from all three characters really helped take this story from simply an erotic ménage adventure into a story about pushing boundaries, living outside the norms in a place and culture where open-mindedness can be rare, and finding love amidst the daily struggles of life.

“In an old, beat up trailer, in the middle of a small coal mining town in podunk America, we come together and make the skies burn.” –Buck

This is a pretty engaging story, definitely not short on tantalizing and tawdry love scenes solely for the threesome who remain committed to what they have blooming, or even some suspenseful adventure.  It was warming to see how Shep and Buck took care of Vickie and treated her like she was special, though sometimes they were also a little too low class crass with her for my tastes. None the less, it was a refreshing change of pace to read about two working class, rough around the edges (certainly far from saints) heroes in the sea of big city manwhores, cocky stepbrothers, and privileged billionaires and sports stars heroes that are so prevalent in the current romance market. Variety is the spice of life, and this story shows how one size doesn’t fit all in the game of life and love. 

AMAZON

Playlist for “Trashy”

1. “Let’s Get Drunk & Get it On” Old 97’s
2. “Two,” Ryan Adams
3. “Only for You,” Heartless Bastards
4. “Dustbowl,” Horsefeathers
5. “Strong Enough to be My Man,” Sheryl Crow
6. “Head Full of Doubt/ Road Full of Promise” The Avett Brothers
7. “The Man I’m Supposed to Be,” American Aquarium
8. “I Want You,” Tom Waits
9. “Question” Old 97’s
10. “If Only,” The Lightning Seeds

Penny Lam was raised in North Carolina but never mastered the accent. She's decisive about food and wine and indecisive about what kinds of books to write. She like rough-around-the-edges heroes and plots that push boundaries.

Find Penny here:

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