by Julia Sykes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2018
An absorbing and alluring love story.
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In Sykes’ (Stealing Beauty, 2019, etc.) erotic romance, a writer becomes entangled with an FBI agent and his BDSM lifestyle.
Journalist Chloe Martin leaves her four-year marriage after her controlling husband, Neil Hollins, rapes her. Three years later, she’s in New York City, shadowing FBI agent Sharon Silverman for a story on the Latin Kings gang. However, when her friend Carina, an investigative journalist, invites her to local BDSM club Decadence, she accepts. Although she doesn’t regularly partake in that lifestyle, she knows enough about it to maintain a second career as an author of BDSM romances. Apparently, many New York City–based feds are into BDSM, and one, Agent Dexter Scott, shows Chloe around the club. The two play out a scene—for “research”—in which she submits to Dex, who’s a dom. Dex’s boss later assigns him to escort Chloe as she pursues her Latin Kings story. The fed and the writer initially butt heads because the assertive Chloe isn’t at all submissive outside the club. But they’re eventually drawn to each other, and Dex brings Chloe into BDSM with his “subtle dominance.” Chloe’s been celibate ever since Neil’s assault, and she doesn’t desire the intimacy of sex aside from oral pleasure. Dex will have to earn her trust if they hope to sustain their relationship. This book is part of a series, and many of its characters have appeared in Sykes’ earlier tales. However, the author’s concise descriptions of her characters and their backstories make it work well as a briskly paced stand-alone. Sykes alternates sensual, edifying BDSM scenes with others of Dex and Chloe connecting in other ways, such as binge-watching episodes of the TV show Supernatural. The two face numerous hurdles, such as the arrival of Neil, who tracks down his ex-wife, and Dex’s struggle to get over a previous dom-sub relationship. As a result, Chloe’s journalistic endeavors only occasionally crop up in the story, often leading to scenes of brawny Dex protecting her from gangsters. But the main romance plot is thoroughly engaging, and Sykes respectfully and enticingly highlights a lifestyle with which some readers may not be familiar.
An absorbing and alluring love story.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72755-754-1
Page Count: 280
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by Julia Sykes
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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