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TOP TO BOTTOM

A racy story of love, honesty, and the willingness to lose control.

Personal trainer Amie (or Mistress Amie, as she is known by the people in her town’s kink community) has her life all figured out, until her ex Dru shows up and throws everything out of whack.

Amie believes very much in control. As a physical trainer and gym instructor, she lives a very organized life. As a domme, she maintains control in any encounters she may have in the kink community. She trusts very few people in either aspect of her life. An uncomfortable reunion, however, sends Amie whirling into feelings she hasn’t acknowledged in more than a decade. Dru, her first everything—sexual partner, BDSM partner, true love—has returned from Seattle and just opened a new kink club in town. She's good at the front-of-house stuff but needs Amie’s expertise in some of the business aspects. Amie, feeling a sexual attraction she probably hasn’t felt since the last time she and Dru were together, agrees to help...but proposes the pair meet for a scene, to get it all out of their systems. The sparks fly, just in time for someone to sabotage the club and its reputation. Author Dryden (The Unicorn, 2016, etc.) writes a well-considered, sex-positive story of two real women with real issues. Dru’s grief over a lost loved one and Amie’s budding understanding of her own sexuality create the necessary undertones to make this particular novel more than bare-bones erotica. While some of the writing can be a bit flat, the overall tone is both sexy and heartwarming.

A racy story of love, honesty, and the willingness to lose control.

Pub Date: July 18, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-62649-415-2

Page Count: 162

Publisher: Riptide

Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016

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MAGIC HOUR

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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