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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
