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28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An exercise in frustration, March 5, 2009
This review is from: Sweet Surrender (Mass Market Paperback)
I really wanted to love this book. It had all the elements I enjoy: strong alpha hero, an intelligent and strong heroine who has a submissive streak sexually, and a suspense plot to keep things interesting.
There were parts of this book I really enjoyed. I liked the hero and heroine a lot. Both characters were engaging and well-drawn, and on paper were ideal for each other. The problem is in the execution.
In what I'm guessing was an attempt to build sexual tension, the author kept the hero and heroine dancing around a mild flirtation for about the first 1/3 of the book. Now, I love sexual tension in erotic romances when its done well. One of my pet peeves is authors who have the h/h jump into bed right away without giving the reader a chance to want them there. Frankly, we don't see enough sexual tension in erotic romance, in my opinion. Unfortunately it wasn't done well in this book. The hero kept the heroine at arms length to the point of acting like a beta male, nowhere near the take-charge alpha the heroine (and I) was looking for. Worse, conversations and scenes between them became boring after awhile. There was no real tension, just a sense of marking time.
There was also the fact that for a submissive, the heroine spent an awful lot of time trying to control the relationship and force the hero to take charge (I can't say that I blame her. He was annoyingly passive sexually for the first half of the book). To be fair, the author addressed the heroine's attempts to control things; the hero points it out in what becomes a turning point for them. Unfortunately that still means that for more than half the book you have a supposedly submissive heroine acting anything but submissive sexually and a supposedly dominant hero who has to be knocked upside the head before he will begin taking charge.
Toss in a disappointingly thin suspense subplot and the whole book became an exercise in frustration for me. I would also have liked to have known ahead of time that the book includes a menage scene. It's not a deal-breaker for me; they're fine in pure erotica, but I avoid them when I'm reading for romance.
I do think this author has a lot of potential. The erotic scenes (once we finally got them) were very, very hot. Unfortunately they came so late in the book that we never really got a chance to watch these two work out their d/s relationship. They talked a lot about what they were looking for but we never really get to see it play out.
I was excited about this book based on the reviews and the blurb, but I'll be cautious about trying this author again.
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30 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sweet Surrender, April 18, 2008
This review is from: Sweet Surrender (Mass Market Paperback)
Gray Montgomery is working on the biggest case of his life. His best friend and partner Alex was murdered, and he cannot rest until the perpetrator is brought to justice. The Dallas police department has been working on it without any forward progress, and Gray decides to follow the lead Alex's father uncovered. He takes a leave of absence from the police department, and goes undercover in Houston to find out what Faith Malone knows because their suspect was last seen in the company of her mother.
After just spending a few moments with Faith, Gray instinctively knows that she had nothing to do with the hit on Alex, but stays in hopes of finding a lead on her mother. Gray finds himself incredibly attracted to Faith, but fights his feelings because of her involvement in his investigation, and he is afraid she couldn't handle his darker sexual tastes. Little does Gray know that Faith craves a strong dominant man. She finds herself thinking about him constantly hoping he is the man she has been looking for. When Gray and Faith finally give into their desires, and it is explosive.
Maya Banks became a must buy for me after Colters' Woman, and her subsequent books never fail to hit the mark. I am always excited to see what she has coming out next. This book was sexy, erotic, and thrilling. I am hoping to maybe see this developed into a series. It sure was set up to. Superb read!
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A disappointment, November 28, 2009
This review is from: Sweet Surrender (Mass Market Paperback)
I am glad I won this book in a contest. Had I paid a trade paperback price for this, I would have been out of my mind with disappointment.
Gray Montgomery is a Dallas cop working undercover, and off the record, to avenge his partner's death on the job. Faith Malone is the office manager at Gray's new job, and her mother is the suspected killer's accomplice. Gray takes this job to get close to Faith to see if she's in cahoots with her mother.
While tapping her phones and invading her privacy illegally (how romantic) the two begin a flirtation. You see, Faith is looking for a dominant man to call all the shots in and out of bed and Gray is looking to do some shot calling. Slam dunk, right? Of course not. Naturally he has to fight his attraction. Why? I don't know. We're never really given a reason. So Faith goes after him. Wicked submissive of her, amirite?
To be fair, Gray does call Faith on her topping from the bottom, but the book gets no less silly. The mysteriously rich sex club owner Damon, on a short, professional acquaintance, offers his Galveston beach house for her solo use for a week (and sends her there via chauffeured Bentley) so she can think about her Gray dilemma. Uh-huh. Sure.
Right after she leaves, Gray's partner's father shows up in Houston all worked up about the suspected killer being nearby. Gray and the people her works with, aka the Cast of Future Heroes, hatch a plan to set a trap to catch the bad guy, who's after Faith to try to kidnap and ransom her. Gray is then sent to Galveston to "protect" Faith with the command from her father to not tell her about all this trouble (foreshadowing should be subtle, this screams INCOMING BIG MISUNDERSTANDING, no?)
What follows is some light D/s play, some backdoor action, a borderline creepy threesome with her friend Micah and enough showering to drain the Great Lakes. Banks' falls into the trap of telling rather than showing when she writes sex. There's a lot of play-by-play where she tells us what body parts are doing to other body parts, but a paucity of emotion and reaction. Gems include, "He continued to thrust against her until finally he stopped....Then he eased out of her body with a gentle pop." So. Not. Hot.
The conclusion to the suspense has gaping holes like a porn actress after a gang bang. What the hell was Mick on about by leading the bad guy to Galveston? Why was he so mean to Faith? Did the bad guy actually kill Gray's partner? Why was Gray unarmed? Why did bad guy leave Faith where she could escape? Why would Faith believe an armed madman's word over Gray's and who the hell asks questions of an armed madman? Surely her relationship drama could've waited.
All told, this book was a chore to read. The secondary characters were woefully underdeveloped, the D/s rather vanilla, the sex tepid and the prose dry. It was a disappointment, as I enjoyed the Samhain books of hers that I read. I doubt I'll read book two, unless I win a copy of that as well.
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