Trope
The Lost Boys of Hell’s Kitchen, Book #3
Heat Factor: It’s got everything! I-think-you’re-a-hooker sex, hate sex, building-trust sex, AND love sex
Character Chemistry: Forced proximity and some sass turns mistrust to love
Plot: Natalia and Connor are forced to marry, plus a bunch of mafia shenanigans
Overall: I’m not gonna lie—I was apprehensive about reading this book, but I loved it
Heat Factor: No foreplay.
Character Chemistry: Sex so good you’ll forget all of your police training. (But they’re definitely gonna get divorced.)
Plot: Cop goes undercover to investigate her estranged family.
Overall: That’s a nope.
Heat Factor: Fighting is foreplay.
Character Chemistry: Sex so good you’ll forget the ethics of your very sensitive job.
Plot: Three brothers have to honor their father’s last wish by rearranging their lives and taking care of their newly adopted ten-year-old brother. And the social worker is really hot.
Overall: Rough seas ahead.
Heat Factor: It’s your standard old school fare—a couple of relatively descriptive scenes and then a bunch of interludes that fade to black.
Character Chemistry: Antagonism leads to love.
Plot: Georgie is dressed as a boy but James knows she’s a woman. So he’s seducing her. And then they’re forced to get married.
Overall: Slow. Then bonkers.
Heat Factor: There’s a lot of blue balls, and then it’s just balls to the wall.
Character Chemistry: It was “NO!” Then, “YES, let’s do it.” Then, “Let’s get married!”
Plot: Dominic steals Clare away from her mistress and shows her a life of freedom, but Clare can’t rest easy until her children have also been freed from slavery.
Overall: High stakes, low tension. Very historically juicy.
Birmingham, Book #1
Heat Factor: “His warmth and passion” is “led on to his nest.”
Character Chemistry: Is it abuse or is it love? Hard to tell.
Plot: Brandon rapes Heather. They are forced to get married. And then Brandon takes Heather to South Carolina, where shenanigans occur and also they somehow decide they’re in love.
Overall: It’s all totally yikes or totally infuriating and sometimes both!
Please note: This book includes rape, abuse, chattel slavery, and ableism (among other things), which we discuss in this review.
Continue reading “Back to Old School: The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss (1972)”
Heat Factor: The whole middle of the book is pretty much sex.
Character Chemistry: feelings are annoying
Plot: The new White House Press Secretary worked with the president once many years ago. This time he’s not about to let her get away.
Overall: I was put off by the way the president was initially represented (it’s single POV from Clover), and that kind of snowballed with other things as I continued to read
The Smut Report 