A fairly boilerplate but action-oriented erotic novella.
Sykes’ (Stolen Innocence, 2019, etc.) erotic BDSM thriller tells the story of a Colombian woman kidnapped by her childhood sweetheart.
Twenty-six-year-old Valentina Sánchez never expected to see former love Adrián Rodríguez again. However, he’s returned to Bogotá to attend the wedding of his father, Vicente, the head of a Colombian drug cartel. Valentina is married to the abusive Hugo, Vicente’s second-in-command, so she has no choice but to attend—just as she had no choice in whether to marry Hugo when she was 16. She’s alarmed that Adrián is now such a “hard, frightening” man; when Hugo attempts to force himself on Valentina at the reception, Adrián beats Hugo senseless. Then Adrián hoists her over his shoulder and kidnaps her. With the help of his friend Mateo, he plans to escape with her to Panama and ultimately to California, where he thinks they’ll be beyond Vicente and Hugo’s grasp. Valentina, however, doesn’t want to be Adrián’s prisoner; she’s afraid of his attraction to power and violence. As time passes, though, she wonders whether she finds something pleasurable about being in the thrall of a man. The narration alternates between Valentina’s and Adrián’s perspectives, allowing readers to observe both her defiant fear (“I was done being a pawn. Done being an object to be traded and stolen in power exchanges between cruel men”) and his roiling, jealous desire: “Years of impotent fury had only slightly been siphoned off by breaking [Hugo’s] doughy face. But carrying his wife off…provided me with a deeper, darker pleasure.” The overall plot is formulaic for the genre, however, and offers few surprises. However, fans of Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels will likely enjoy this offering, which adds an action element—car chases, gunfights, and an instance in which Valentina is abducted and Adrián must save her. These scenes are generally well-paced, as is the rest of the novel, although some moments can be quite violent: “I let my own gun slip from my fingers, grasping the handle of my machete with both hands. I swung it down with a roar, decapitating one of the men.”
A fairly boilerplate but action-oriented erotic novella.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79411-657-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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