Tag: New Adult (Page 25 of 47)

Synopsis:

I don’t care what my cousin says; I am not the queen of impossible relationships. I mean, just because my last boyfriend tried to kill me and left a bit of a scar on my neck, then forced me to move across the country and legally change my name to Reese Randall to escape him, does not mean—

Oh, who am I kidding? For a freshman in college, I have to have the worst dating track record ever.

It’s no wonder love is the last thing on my mind when Mason Lowe enters my life. But the chemistry between us is like bam! Our connection defies logic. And he’s just so freaking hot. Being around him makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt before. I even like bickering with him. He could be my soul mate...except for one teeny tiny glitch.

He's a gigolo.

Boy, do I know how to pick them.

Leaning down, he hugged me and buried his face in my neck. “It feels like a dream, like I’m going to wake up any second and you’ll be gone. I don’t want to wake up from this.”  

So…..this was unexpected. Lately I’ve been…off. So, naturally, my reading schedule has been disturbed. Don’t worry, I’ll save you the repetitive details. But, just know, this is definitely a new trend for me. At least, as of late. I’ve grown to hate these cheesy, overly worked smutty books, mostly because somewhere around the time I found GR, I realized just how badly I was trapped in these types of worlds. I didn’t know what I liked or how to find it. Sure, as a kid/middle-schooler, etc. etc., I was drawn toward paranormal, fantasy, peril type books-I just didn’t know it. I didn’t know there was a label for these types of stories. I just knew, when my mom took me to the bookstore, that when faced with a normal romance and a book with…edge…I was most certainly going to pick up the one with edge.

Shaking my head, I muttered, “You are so…”
He grinned. “Charming? Handsome? Intriguing?”
All three, not that I’d ever admit it to him. He appeared to have a big enough ego as it was. I scowled hard. “I was going to say confusing.”
“Ahh.” He nodded in an astute manner. “We’ll slot that under intriguing.”
“Actually, I think it really deserves its own classification.”
“Fine. Whatever you like.” Shrugging as if it made no difference to him, he sent me a look full of smug, glittering eyes.  

But another thing I never realized was that there was a constant there-did you guess it?? Well, let me make it simple for you because I’m a complicated soul-Romance. I didn’t realize it, but as I read my books, the thing that made me all happy and tingly inside (naïve fool that I was) was the romantic aspect (shh, aside from the peril…self-discovery can be a beautiful thing). But, again, I didn’t realize that was the common thread. Fast forward to pre-GR and pre iPad/ereader-I realized I wanted romance, sex appeal, adult contemporary….but I was in a slump. All the books tended to be sexy and…not much else. Sure, it seemed there were nice build ups and even some cool action scenes and I even found two favorites out of the pile of crap, but something essential was missing, like a piece of my soul was absent.

I rolled my eyes and let out a big sigh. When I realized he was still just standing there, watching me, I lifted an eyebrow. “So, are you going to sit down or not?”
His smile fell flat. “You don’t mind?”  

I was losing all hope that adult romance was anything different. I was like…this is what adults have always read? My mom was addicted to this? I couldn’t believe it. Fast-forward like…a year and a half? I don’t know-it was a painfully dry reading time. My friend makes me get GR and…all of a sudden I start getting emails, alerts, ‘your books are similar to’, etc. Then I made friends one by one, found books one by one….and genres started expanding and…you get the picture-My world exploded in a rainbow of Technicolor. So, back to my original point: I grew to resent smutty books. I resented how cheesy they were. I resented how I had been stuck for years in a slump with those disasters. And, hell, I even grew to resent how popular they were among my friends.    

He lifted a finger to hush me. “We’re not talking about me. We’re taking about you. And you are…you’re…” He paused to shake his head.
“I’m…?” I prompted, not sure if I wanted to know where this was going, but my curiosity was too intrigued not to push for more.
“You’re quirky…and yet conventional. Innocent but worldly. Reserved yet outgoing. Candid yet guarded. Trendy but also practical. And childlike while still managing to be mature. It’s like….you’re the perfect contradiction.”    

So, I concocted a list. A list of…don’ts, if you will. I follow my list with rigid precision, rarely faltering in the fear that I’ll get stuck reading another eye-roll worthy bow-chicka-wowow romance. And, I admit, the list isn’t foolproof-I still find stinkers now and then. But it’s so rare that I’m beginning to become spoiled with such a high success rate. But then there come dark times in a person’s life, and it turns out that those can really drain you, exhaust you, make you want to throw in the towel and give up trying so hard because you just don’t have time to read as much anymore and it effects the fun of it all.    

“Okay, okay.” I lifted my hands to stop her rambling. “Just…keep calm and think of Chris and Liam.”
“Okay,” Eva repeated. “Okay.” She panted a few times as if she was already View Spoiler »prepared to go into labor. « Hide Spoiler When an expression of shock lit her face, she straightened and gaped at me. “Hey. That actually worked.”
With a grin, I tossed my hair. “I know, right.”
No hetero female on the planet could panic with a mental image of the Hemsworth brother combo running through her head.    

Enter my forbidden little weakness. As it turns out….I do have a soft spot for tortured boys. Just so happens? They’re my favorite. The bad part about that?? Forbidden boys are oh-so-hard to find in the sci-fi and dystopian sections-at least, harder to find than in, say, the NA section. The section I studiously avoid. The section that, while alluring, is so fucking corny that it sets your teeth on edge…*starts in whiney voice and stomps foot* but I. Don’t. Care. I am tired, busy, and I just want my GD tortured male lead and I want to put in minimal work for it. So, here I am. On that side of the realm I hate. That side I swore I’d stay away from. That side that, until a week ago, I had forgotten existed until I searched my iPad and found Forbidden Men #2 from years ago sitting unread and looking oh-so-easy and ready for the taking. And take I did. And far did I fall….And never did reading something so cliché ever feel so good.

So, yeah, I fucking went there.
Dumb, you say? Nah. Just not what I normally read.
Cliché, you say? Hmm…..maybe.
Cheesy, you say? Oh, undoubtedly, yes.
Sexy? Addicting? Unputdownable…You ask?
Well..obviously.
It caught my attention, didn’t it?    

After he accepted praise from them, he turned to Sarah and bent down to hug her. “You’re…my…hero…too,” she told him in her halting voice.
He looked like he might start bawling. Cupping her cheek, he grinned at her and murmured, “For you. Always.”    

Rule #1 : Cheesiness. I hate it. I hate it hate it hate it hate it. Yet…sometimes, if the story is just good enough, alluring enough, I don’t care. Yeah, I mean, I do care. It’s just…sometimes the story just works for me, you know? Like, it takes all the stupid out of the inner thoughts that make me roll my eyes and just makes me…laugh. Makes me shrug and giggle and say, C’est la vie! And, hey, this book did it for me. Normally I’d be ashamed, but, why should I be? This boy, this story, no matter how stupid it was, because it was just plain moronic, really, did it for me. And you know what? I’m so happy. That’s all that matters.

Rule #2: The blurb and it’s sexual content ‘warning’. Gag. Really. These make me run away, but…eh. Whatever. My bitchdar is lowered…for now.

Rule #3: Genre. Tried and failed too many times, my friends. It begins to get tedious, you know? And so many more rules, really, but I proved my point: Rule book? Meet window. And Mason? Come to Mama. Just a word about him, ‘kay?? Just a widdle quick word, teeny-tiny:

SEXY TORTURED GIGOLO TORMENTED OSTRACISED LONELY MISTREATED USED HURT SEXY (OOPS DID I MENTION SEXY ALREADY) INTELLIGENT BROKEN BRAVE LOYAL—-
I lied. Suck it.

And I even loved Reese. Though, hey, those inner monologues? Psst-she’s the culprit. I went from wanting to strangle her in chapter one to loving her to thinking ‘is this chick real?’ to ‘okay she’s cute’ to…whatever. I like the girl…even if her thoughts are out of this world odd…and a lot like mine. Whoops.

What I didn’t like:
–Idiotic, bitchy cousin: Go to hell, asshole
–Twirling her lady mustache-like villain: Yeah, this is soooooo realistic, bahahah not
–How the little sister was introduced: It wasn’t bad….but it certainly wasn’t good. It felt….wrong. But, then, I don’t know how it should have been handled.
–The back and forthness
–The writing: Damn the writing!
-Probably a ton more I’ll think of after posting but ugh-so fucking tired sooo….    

Mrs. Garrison had actually kind of disappointed me. She’d let me go without a fight. Humph. Chicken. I’d been all keyed up to kick some cougar ass, too.
Oh, well, such was life. C’est la vie. Maybe I could beat up the next woman who tried to hurt my man.    

All in all, this was exactly what I needed. Sexy and fun and light without being too light, I fell under this book’s spell…even though it was so unbelievable. Like…so soooo unbelievable. But…eh. The inner dialogue, the quirky humor, the way they became friends on campus and his vulnerability and willingness to do so was just…perfection. I’ll never forget those moments in this book. There was a lot wrong but, sometimes wrong is right, ya know? I fell in love, despite its many flaws, and that’s really all I could ask for. Mood=lifted. Just…sigh. Shut up, Pea.

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Synopsis:

Three things in my life were fact.
I needed Sarah to survive.
I needed sex to remain sane.
And I could never mix sex with Sarah.

I just knew—deep in my marrow—that if I did, I’d somehow lose her. All my deepest darkest secrets would crack open, bleed out, and ruin everything between us. I wouldn’t unleash the shit inside me on my worst enemy, let alone her. So she stayed strictly in the friend zone.

People probably thought I never went there with her because of her cerebral palsy, but f*ck them. She knew she was the most important person in my world, and I wasn’t about to risk hurting our relationship just to make my c*ck happy.

Until the moment she begged me to take her virginity.
Now it’s all about to hit the fan, because how the hell do you resist the one person forbidden to you when she says please?

--Brandt Gamble

“This right here-every single piece of you-is very precious cargo to me. If anyone mistreated it, I’d lose my shit. You’re not just my best friend, you’re my sanity. You’re priceless, Sarah.”

Let’s make this short and sweet, shall we?? I discovered the Forbidden Men on a whim last year when I couldn’t find anything that suited my mood. I had To Professor, with Love on my iPad from years ago and saw it sitting at the veeeeery bottom of my kindle app ripe for the picking. I thought…fuck it. I don’t know what else to read, so why not??? And what I found was something that has stuck with me since November. Yes, they are cheesy as fuck-some more than others (they are rated accordingly, you can tell which I couldn’t tolerate as much, cheese wise). Yes, they are less than perfect. Yes, they are cliche, ridiculous, unbelievably crazy…but there is just something so amazingly addicting about them. And what you get in return for tolerating some of that…it’s so worth it.

“Oh my god, you’re such a pain in the ass.” Why, oh why, couldn’t he have just dropped it? “If you want to see me that bad, then come over and see me already. Jesus Christ.”
“Fine,” he said. “Be there in ten.”
I snorted. “Why not make it five, you clingy son of a bitch.”
“In that case, I’m already outside your window. Open up.”
I glanced out my window, only to gasp. “Oh my God.”

Strong friendships and laughter. Deep-rooted connections and passionate love. Unforgettable sibling bonds and group gatherings that make you tear up every time they are together. These books make your heart soar and your soul rejoice. They warm you up from the inside out and they make you smile like a loon. They give you butterflies no matter how hard you try and resist-These books own a very large chunk of my very being…and a large part of that goes to the boys. Doesn’t it always come back to a boy, in the end?

Except I totally would have, because she wasn’t a normal, average woman. She was the most precious thing in my life. I knew it was unnatural how much I relied on her to be there for me when I needed a friend, but I didn’t care. Sarah was priceless to me. I couldn’t help but be overprotective of her and snarl at any threat that came near her.

From the moment I met the macho, womanizing Noel, my heart was claimed. I mean….Yeah, the cheese was almost unbearable (Didn’t rate this one a five, but I decided after a month with it at a three that I thought about it way too much for it to be any less than four) and I remember rolling my eyes a lot…but after I finished I just remember not being able to move on. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. And what’s worse, he made me curious about a genre I’d long since written off. I mean, he cried and fell hard for this woman he cherished, for fuck’s sake.

Pain wound so tight through my chest I could barely breathe. The one thing I could never handle was her tears. She rarely cried, so when she finally allowed them to fall, it was that much more devastating to me. Helpless frustration roared through me until I wanted to pound my fist against my truck.

So this curiosity ebbed and grew, making me want to meet more tortured men in this cheesy genre…but no matter how many series, books, stories I tried, none compared. So what did my wonderful Bestie Pea suggest?? READ MASON. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT. So, begrudgingly, I did. I picked up Price of a Kiss and met this gigolo (bahhaa really?!), Mason.

I.
Was.
A.
Goner.

Mason. Was. EVERYTHING. I still, to this day, can’t not think about him. I even used one of his quotes to put on my wall at home. Yeah, he is bae. <<<< I’ve never said this, but I don’t care. I adore him. So, yeah. That’s the thing. Mason and Noel really are the only two forbidden men who TRULY hold my heart. They were my first, maybe that’s why. I was so excited to read the rest, but after you’ve had Mason and Noel…there’s hardly anything anyone could do to top them. I almost feel bad for the rest lol. And the other epic thing about this author: No fucking around once they have admitted their love for one another. On breaks there are no whoopies or oops or needs for explanations because these boys are loyal AS FUCK. So yeah. Had to throw that in there

“Hey,” I murmured. Since she looked as if she were on the verge of tears, I caught her chin and stared her straight in the eye. “If someone can’t look past a little shaking and see what kind of amazing person you are, then they’re a fucking idiot, and you don’t need to befriend someone that stupid, anyway.”
A single tear tracked down her cheek. I wiped it away. “You just being yourself is what made you my favorite person, so just keep being you, okay?”

So naturally, here we are on book 8, and guess who the love interests are? THAT’S RIGHT. My two boys’ siblings. I. Couldn’t. Even. When I saw this plot I literally almost peed my pants I was jumping up and down so much from excitement. And that’s the thing: I hate cheese and I hate fake drama…but this series has made me a shameless fangirl…and I’m not the least bit sorry.

Resting my cheek against her hair, I closed my eyes and tightened my grip on her, holding her closer. I hated it when she cried. When she hurt, I hurt. Feeling her tremors of sorrow ripped me to shreds.

If you can remember, Sarah is Mason’s sister, the one he would do anything to protect. He is her hero, and now we get to see protective Mason when little sis is all grown up. It’s not as hard for Noel, seeing as he only has little brothers left and it’s more natural to accept a brother dating than a younger sister (COUGH when Caroline fell for Ten COUGH). So we’ve been through the ringer with all these boys…but this might be my next favorite after Mason, Noel, and Ten’s stories. After all….Mason or Noel were in every chapter along with the very sexy Brandt ;). I mean, what is there to lose?

Sarah messaged Brandt by FB on a whim and they became fast friends. No one can talk about Sarah and he would do anything for her. They are immediate best friends….but they both are secretly in love with the other. They would drop anyone and anything to help each other out, and everyone around them knows they will end up together. Of course, like most books, Sarah and Brandt don’t see that for themselves. Brandt is tainted (ummm more on this later…..) and Sarah is precious to him-the most important thing to him in life, so he won’t risk his relationship with her for a single thing. Sarah doesn’t give up so easily, though.

“If you’re like disfigured-you know, down there-it wouldn’t bother me. I mean, heck, I probably wouldn’t even know the difference since I’ve never seen one before.”
I laughed, pretty sure that was her intent the entire time, to lighten the mood. “Shut up, smart-ass. I’m not disfigured.”
“Oh.” I swear, she actually sounded disappointed about that. “Well…whatever. I’m just saying, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

I absolutely adored this story and everything about it. I may have become a bit detached in certain moments (Which had nothing to do with book because I loved it) because I had a really bad weekend, emotionally wise. This, perhaps, was a bit denser story than I should have been reading, but I wanted my forbidden men, GD, and I got them. No regrets. At all. Though…that beginning. What. The. FUCK. I adore Linda Kage (her books have gotten me through a lot of shit, she deserves praise for that) but damn was that a weirder intro than usual. I just….*shivers* Eew.

He only sniffed and glanced away. “Hey, if the guy can’t take a little heat, he should stay out of the kitchen.”
With a growl, I jabbed my finger in his direction. “Except this is the only time anyone’s ever wandered anywhere near my kitchen. Don’t fuck it up for me, please.”
His eyes flared. “Did you just compare a kitchen to your…” When his gaze wandered down to my lap, his expression filled with dismay as if I’d just traumatized him for life.

I may not have talked about the two main people very much, but I wanted to get across how wonderful this series is as a whole. It’s not so much about each new character’s story, but about the group as a whole and where they are now. I know, I know, each person deserves their own spotlight, but I just feel it’s even stronger with EVERYONE involved…and that’s why I continue to love every installment, cheesy as they are. If it wasn’t for the main guys, these problems, friends, characters, stories wouldn’t exist…so it’s necessary to recognize that while I ADORED BRANDT-he was so protective, loyal, fierce-I adored the whole story more. So…..take with that what you will. My quotes will do the rest of the work.

************

Soooo yeah…..THIS happened. My boys (Noel and Mason) were in this THE WHOLE TIME. I almost feel bad for Brandt and Sarah…almost. Because as much as my heart adored him-and oh f’in boy did it-when my two favorite forbidden men even got MENTIONED I was a heaping pile of goo.

Noel’s brother, Brandt, meets Sarah, Mason’s sister, through one single moment where Sarah, in an act of courage (based on her personality), sent Brandt a friend request on Facebook-From then on they were BFF’s forever.

This book, this story, this network of characters, these men…they have completely stolen my heart. And it’s more than that-whenever I’m sad or upset, I simply turn to these guys. They are literally PERFECTION. And the thing is this: These are the only cheesy books that I can stand. It’s like…Linda Kage has a way of making these cliche, ridiculous, out-of-this-world dramas bearable and completely tolerable.

It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Yeah, they have issues. No, they aren’t perfect….but they are perfect for me. And what else could I possibly ask for? Nothing.

Review to come. I do so love reviewing about my boys.

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I WOULD SELL MY NONEXISTENT FIRST BORN CHILD FOR THIS. My two favorite Forbidden Men: Mason and Noel….connected in the same book-in each POV-in some way??? Their siblings IN LOVE????? GIVE ME THIS BOOK NOW!!!! I NEEDS IT.

I NEEDS IT NOW.

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