Vivian’s List, by Haleigh Lovell

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A NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY Bestseller.

A New Adult Romance packed with Heat and Heart.

Her brother’s best friend. A list. A love story.

After ending a horrible, scarring relationship, Vivian embraces her freedom by making a sexual bucket list. When her brother’s best friend, Liam, finds it, sparks fly and hearts open.

Can Vivian heal one steamy encounter at a time?

** This is book 1 in a two-part series
** New Adult Romance recommended for readers aged 18+ due to language and strong sexual content
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DNF @ 68%

“I want you to know what it should feel like to have a man make love to you.”

I’m kind of disappointed here because I was actually looking forward to this book. The cover kind of sold me as well as the blurb. Then the plot seemed promising and Liam seemed like the kind of hero I might like. And everything was going fine with the book until Vivian and Liam started going at it and check the items on Vivian’s list.

“We had the sort of sex where I just wanted to crawl into his skin and become one person.”

It didn’t feel like that for me to be honest. The sex scenes left me highly skeptical. It’s hard to describe but basically, some of Vivian’s body reactions during sex were troubling, at least, to me they were. I don’t know about you but I, personally, have never heard of a woman’s sex organ tearing apart her underwear because of how aroused she is. I know Vivian’s character is supposed to be under the impression that she is frigid, but even then I’d be worried to have this type of reaction to attraction and arousal. Now, maybe I’m no expert with the human body, but this seemed far fetched to me. It reached the point where I enjoyed the book more when Liam and Vivian were flirting and bantering than the actual sex scenes they were involved in.

“I wanted to make her feel special and let her know she was wanted, needed and desired in so many different ways. I wanted to make her feel loved. I wanted her in a way that surpassed sexual need. I wanted…I wanted her.”

And then, Vivian’s voice started boring me. Same thing, I can’t really tell what made it boring for me at some point to read her POV, but it did.
I liked Liam’s character though. It’s probably because of him and the whole friends falling in love plot that I kept reading this book until the 68% mark.

I really tried to keep going. I don’t particularly enjoy not finishing a book. I feel like I give up on them or something. But I really couldn’t stand Vivian’s voice anymore and the fact that I was spending more time skipping her inner monologues and the sex scenes than actually read the book was a bit depressing, so I thought “what’s the point?” and gave up eventually.

Some people will probably really like this book and read the other one coming up, but I’ll stop here. This book really wasn’t for me after all even though it looked like it could be right up my alley. Better luck next time I guess.

Rush, by Nyrae Dawn

 

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This new adult, male/male romance will capture the audience who fell in love with Nyrae Dawn’s Games Trilogy.

For the love of the game.

Brandon Chase has always defined himself by one thing: football. Tough and athletic, he is a great college player who enjoys the hard hits and the sweaty grind of the gridiron. But when Brandon is injured, only one person can help him get back on track-a forbidden love he’s desperately tried to put behind him. 

Alec Andrews has never quite forgiven Brandon for walking away when their friendship turned into something more. But he can’t deny help to one of his closest friends. As the two spend the long, hot summer working together, their old attraction comes flooding back.

Now as Alec thinks about coming out to his conservative family and Brandon considers revealing he’s a gay football player, the two men must be strong to fight for a love that could be the greatest rush of their lives.

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So I know, this basically goes against the principle of this blog but I didn’t finish this book. I did try though. I read until the cursor on my Kindle indicated 59%, and then I gave up.

Rush isn’t my first M/M romance and once in a while, I do enjoy some boy on boy action in my books. But here I got bored. I went into this book because I knew the author and like what I read from her before and I though this one was promising. But in the end I found it to be very repetitive and I often found myself thinking about anything else but the story I was reading. Or rolling my eyes.

After a certain number of chapters, I felt like the characters were always saying the same things over and over again. I get that there is one or two main issues here for our characters but all you hear how they want to be with each other but know they can’t, and such. So when you read the same argument time and time again, at some point you just want them to, you know move on or something. So that was one thing that didn’t work for me.

The second was that the steamy bit weren’t that steamy after all. There is plenty of sexual tension and eye fucking going on but actual fucking left me thinking “was that it?” . To be honest, I didn’t even read until they actually did the deed because I got frustrated with their fooling around phase.

Basically, this book didn’t do it for me. I felt like, even though the characters were different, they still felt like they were the same. Their voices were very similar to me. And then there was the redondance that just kept happening.

Now I didn’t like this book but it seems like a certain number of people do like it, so you should probably look for more reviews if you want to try and read this one. Sorry there’s no quotes for this one, but I really wasn’t inspired.

Leo (Sign of Love), by Mia Sheridan

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Evie and Leo met in foster care as children and formed a bond of friendship. As they grew, their bond turned to love, and they vowed to make a life together when they turned 18 and were no longer a part of the system.

When Leo unexpectedly gets adopted as a teen and he moves to another city, he promises Evie that he will contact her as soon as he gets there and come back for her in a few short years. She never hears from him again.

Now eight years later, in spite of the odds, Evie has made a life for herself. She has a job. She has friends. She’s content. Then a man shows up out of the blue, claiming that her long lost love, Leo, sent him to check up on her. The attraction between them is undeniable. But, should she trust this sexy stranger? Or is he keeping a secret about what his connection to Leo is really all about and why Leo disappeared all those years ago?

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I got bored.

This book seemed very interesting, from the cover that I loved at first sight, to the blurb and I went into this book with some expectations and ended up…bored.

And to be honest, Evie got on my nerves a bit. I couldn’t say why exactly, but I caught myself rolling my eyes at some of the stuff she said, did and thought. She was a very annoying heroine to me

While reading I felt like I had in front of me a play by play of Evie’s day from waking up to getting to bed. I don’t mind some descriptions of someone’s daily routine but really, don’t push it. It was to the point where I skipped whole chunks of text to get to the juicy parts…that weren’t that juicy after all.

“He rips his mouth from mine as he growls, “Mine. Only mine. Only. Ever. Mine,” still slamming into me, pounding me against the wall.” 

I mean, when you read quotes like that, you are bound to think there is going to be some interesting action between the two characters. I mean, this is the stuff of hot alpha male right?

Jake seemed very sexy and hot and very nice too, but he also felt fake to me. It was mostly like he said what was expected or things that you expect this kind of character to say to the female character.

So to make things short and simple, I didn’t quite believe in the story. It didn’t touch me and even after trying (a lot) I didn’t connect to the characters and the story.

Now, that being said, I’ve read a number of good reviews on the book and the serie, so maybe it’s just me. Some of those reviews were the reason I tried multiple times to get back in the book. But nothing did it for me. I suggest you make your own opinion of this book. If you are tempted to give it a try, do. For me it was just one of those books that didn’t work.