Category: Book Corner

A secret duo of romance authors team up under the pseudonym Max Monroe to bring you a sexy, laugh-out-loud new series. Are you ready to meet the Billionaire Bad Boys?

Blind dates? Online dating profiles? Been there, done that.

Georgia Cummings has zero luck with dating, and the era of the internet is not her friend.

No matter how fast she runs, how many corners she turns, she can’t find her way out of this weird, alternate universe where men think dick pics are a replacement for small talk and getting to know a girl. One more crotch selfie and she might write men off for good…

But why can’t she stop fantasizing about him?

Kline Brooks is the quintessential billionaire bad boy—dark, styled, short hair, muscles for days, and a panty-dropping smile.

Except—he isn’t.

As his employee, he won’t touch her with a ten foot pole.

But she won’t touch him either.

Too bad their hormones missed the memo.

Disclaimer:
If you’re the type of woman who prefers crotch selfies to small talk, this book isn’t for you.

If you enjoy random men you’ve never met filling up your inbox with dirty words and porn—for reasons focused more towards diddling your donut than laughing at the absurdity—this book isn’t for you.

If you HATE laughing, this book isn’t for you.

If you want your male leads to grunt, thrust like jack rabbits, and have one-track minds that prefer a nice pair of tits to brains every hour of every day for the rest of forever, well, then, this book still isn’t for you.

But.

If you enjoy a good swoon, a hearty laugh, witty banter, and some hot as f*@% f*@%ing, then consider Georgia Cummings your Girl Friday and Kline Brooks your next irresistible book boyfriend

So ………………..

The disclaimer annoys me.

Actually, the whole blurb annoys me and does not, at all, represent the book. I think I would have liked the story better if it had mirrored the blurb.

I mean, I guess I know what they’re going for here – if you like a more serious story, then you may not appreciate the humor in this story.

And there is humor. I personally respond to stories of relationships that have a solid sense of humor interlaced throughout, but I sort of feel like this story DOES contain lots of grunts, growls and other choice sex terms throughout.

In fact, almost TOO much.

I felt like the story spent the majority of time on the sex part of their relationship. And that DOES NOT do it for me.

Let me back up a minute …

This story takes place between a high-ranking person within the company and the owner/boss of the company. Nothing new here. It’s a common fantasy of many women to have a sexual relationship with a powerful man, someone who can make or break your career. There is an element of danger in the relationship, makes it exciting on some level.

But the authors are trying to sell me on the idea that these two, very hot, very attractive, very smart individuals have worked closely together for two years before they really notice each other?

I mean, I get noticing each other, maybe a fantasy or two, but the transition between these two work colleagues to so much more happens at warp speed and that ruins the story for me. It’s like, “Excuse me.” To “Oh HI! Let’s have sex!” I like some build up, some teasing, some friction before going right into the nasty.

Not sexy, at least to me.

And the male character is just too perfect. He’s a gentleman. He’s super hot. He’s super rich. He’s super respectful of her feelings and taking her V card.

I mean, that’s great, too bad more men AREN’T like this, but it doesn’t make for a very good story.

It’s sort of boring.

I wanted to see more intellectual interaction between the two. We get it, THEY ARE ATTRACTED TO EACH OTHER AND CAN’T KEEP THEIR HANDS OFF EACH OTHER, but to me, there is so much more to a rich relationship than just sex.

I felt like the characters had potential, I just feel like the authors didn’t take the time to fully flesh them out. Instead, it was all about the sex. Which they wrote in detail, A LOT.

Ho hum.

There are only so many ways one can write about the physical side of a relationship before it becomes … boring.

And the event that temporarily broke them up…..

Come on. Really??? It was so WEAK!

These are two intelligent professionals who both act like children over an event that literally would have taken one phone call and five minutes to explain. Instead, the authors put their characters through some torturous days before clearing the air. It was just trivial and felt contrived. If these two lovebirds, who clearly love each other, have professed their love for one another and crave to be together allow one little text message to tear them apart, are they really meant to be together? What sort of reaction would they have if something really big happened?

I nearly put this story down several times. But then the authors would throw in something funny, or cute, and I would think, “Okay. Here we go. It’s getting better.”

No. Not really.

It’s like the authors know the formula for a cute little romance, threw two characters together, came up with a haphazard back story, a frail, and quite frankly, lame, “deal breaker” into the story and called it a book.

There. Done. Meant our deadline. Whew.

There are two more books in this series so far. I already know who the story in book two will be about based on the epilogue of this book and I already don’t care much for the characters. So I’ll pass, thanks.

I mean, if you haven’t been reading romance for very long, then you’ll likely enjoy this. But if you’re like me, who has been reading romance for years and expects more conflict, more depth, to the story, I wouldn’t recommend it.

It’s all fluff and very little substance.

 

Detective Angie Pallorino took down a serial killer permanently and, according to her superiors, with excessive force. Benched on a desk assignment for twelve months, Angie struggles to maintain her sense of identity—if she’s not a detective, who is she? Then a decades-old cold case washes ashore, pulling her into an investigation she recognizes as deeply personal.

Angie’s lover and partner, James Maddocks, sees it, too. But spearheading an ongoing probe into a sex-trafficking ring while keeping Angie’s increasing obsession with her case in check is taking its toll. As startling connections between the parallel investigations emerge, Maddocks realizes he has even more than Angie’s emotional state to worry about.

Driven and desperate to solve her case, Angie goes rogue, risking her relationship, career, and very life in pursuit of answers. She’ll learn that some truths are too painful to bear, and some sacrifices include collateral damage.

But Angie Pallorino won’t let it go. She can’t. It’s not in her blood.

 

This is the second Angie Pallorino book in the series. I like this character, a lot. She’s strong, independent, not afraid of getting hurt, either physically or emotionally, all in the name of doing what is right.

She’s damaged. And she has demons to work through, but don’t we all, on some level?

I REALLY like how the first book’s case led directly into the second book. You can read this book as a standalone, but the reading The Drowned Girls would make The Lullaby Girl make a bit more sense.

I didn’t give it five stars because I felt like it dragged a bit, but not so much that it  yanked me out of the story. I also really like how Ms. White weaves a story around two different cases at once. At first, it’s a little confusing and a bit disorienting, but she soon makes it clear that the cases are tied together somehow and it works.

There were a few editorial mistakes. Missing words that momentarily made me stumble, but they were minor and not a deal breaker.

The story itself was disturbing but believable. Unfortunately, I’m sure there are sex-trafficking rings moving to this day and I’m sure they won’t be going anywhere any time soon. That sort of evil goes hand-in-hand with our fallen world today.

The love story between Angie and James is a bit hard to swallow. They seem too mismatched and the majority of this book they didn’t interact much at all. I don’t doubt their feelings for one another but I do wonder at the motivation for their feelings for one another. I understand where they are coming from but given the personalities I’ve read thus far it almost makes them a couple feel … off. I think the ending, between these two, was too rushed and felt contrived. I would have liked to see them interact more and maybe put off the ending for another book, or two. I feel like these two need more relationship building opportunities, outside of solving cases together.

Though I understand Angie’s anger and confusion, she needs to get herself sorted out first, and allow the reader to see this growth, before she jumps into anything long term with any character. Though to be fair, nothing concrete was resolved in this book between the two, just implied.

I didn’t really see the bad guy coming till near the end of the book, which was a nice surprise. I like how Angie’s parent’s relationship was complicated and a by product of their unfortunate circumstances. It’s hard to write anything more about that situation as I feel like that was a central part of the book’s premise and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but suffice it to say, it was believable, on a more disturbing, realistic level.

I am definitely looking forward to reading book three in Angie Pallorino’s series.

A secret government unit, a group of renegade paranormal investigators… and a murder no one else can crack.

Though haunted by the recent deaths of two teammates, Jackson Crow knows that the living commit the most heinous crimes.

A police officer utilizing her paranormal intuition, Angela Hawkins already has her hands full of mystery and bloodshed.

But one assignment calls to them too strongly to resist. In a historic mansion in New Orleans’s French Quarter, a senator’s wife falls to her death. Most think she jumped; some say she was pushed. And yet others believe she was beckoned by the ghostly spirits inhabiting the house — once the site of a serial killer’s grisly work.

In this seemingly unsolvable case, only one thing is certain: whether supernatural or all too human, crimes of passion will cast Jackson and Angela into danger of losing their lives… and their immortal souls.

 

 

So, I finished this book at about 11:30 last night. (Hence the reason I was a zombie at work today), so that should tell you something. I was interested enough to continue reading well past the time I knew I should be reading.

I haven’t read anything from Ms. Graham, though I’ve seen her name everywhere and have been meaning to. So when I saw her name on Kindle Unlimited, I thought “why not?”

I’m not typically into “horror” books or like any stories dealing with the supernatural – it just spooks me. Not the content itself but because I believe in demon spirits and the possibility of these spirits manifesting  and making its presence known in my life.

No thank you.

But my curiosity got the better of me and I read it.

The writing itself is not bad. It flowed easily and I wasn’t jerked out of the story by awkward phrasing or stilted conversation on the characters’ part. Though I was personally not bothered by the sheer number of “main characters,” the author did a good job keeping them straight, I can see that being confusing for a lot of readers.

There are a lot of characters and there is a lot going on at a given time.

But again, Ms. Graham does a good job keeping Jackson in our sights and the character himself divvies out responsibilities/tasks to the characters so the reader knows who is doing what, where.

The book opens with the prologue, which in essence, is the crime. The rest of the book works on solving “who dun it.”

A group of misfit characters are assigned to the job by one FBI agent who appears at the beginning of the book but then just becomes a character in the background. All of these characters who form the team have some “special” talent. Though it’s not entirely clear yet who can do what, Ms. Graham does a good job of giving us hints so we have a general idea of what roles these characters play in this task force.

The crime itself is … interesting. It’s an interesting premise, I will give her that. And the way the characters go about investigating is organized and makes sense.

However, the premise behind the story, of ghosts that can be seen, and sometimes even physically felt, just felt contrived to me.

Again, I tend to roll my eyes at paranormal stories. On one hand, they are creepy as shit, and on the other hand, they are almost ridiculous, which I would think would be a writer’s challenge for this type of genre, the sheer challenge of “selling” this premise to the reader without making it look over-the-top or just plain silly.

Most of the characters in the group can see dead people.

It’s hard to write that sentence without smirking. I feel like there was an idea for this story and then the author just decided to throw in some supernatural element to make it more interesting. It was definitely more interesting but for me, it just didn’t work.

Not to mention, Jackson and his love interest, Angela. The amount of time that these two started a physical relationship really turned me off. They knew each for what, TWO DAYS before it started getting steamy. And the fact that the rest of the team, again, all strangers and all just meeting, were perfectly fine with it did not appeal to me.

String me along!

I think, for me, if Ms. Graham is going to make this team a series, and it looks like she does, then let’s slow things down a bit. Let’s see the relationship grow, let’s see the characters tease each other and get to know each other before doing the nasty.

That completely turned me off.

In addition, the brainwashing church cult aspect of this story stuck out like a sore thumb, too.

I felt like the author took some story ideas, threw them against the wall and kept the ones that stuck. It felt hodge-podged and disjointed. Not to mention the “bad guy’s” reason for bringing the team in in the first place was sort of a weird, thin reason, in my opinion.

Overall, I’m still on the fence if I want to read any more in this series. Granted, the paranormal story lines are not my thing but I don’t think I’m ready to completely write this series off yet. I downloaded books two and three from Kindle Unlimited – let’s see if I like them enough to continue reading the series.