A well-written piece of erotic fiction, starring a desperate heroine, for alpha-male fans.
In this novel, debts force a young woman to auction off her virginity to the highest bidder.
Avery James, 19, the beautiful daughter of a rich and powerful man, was slated for success: she was attending Smith College and would probably have married Justin, headed for a political career. But when her father is convicted of fraud, heavily fined, and badly beaten up, she’s desperate for money. She turns to the Den, ostensibly a gentlemen’s club but in fact a meeting place for Tanglewood’s most powerful and dangerous men. She has no collateral, though—except for her virginity. Loan shark Damon Scott proposes auctioning Avery for a month’s use, which is bad enough, but worse is Gabriel Miller’s enjoyment of her predicament. He’s her father’s enemy, the one who turned him in, and perhaps the most dangerous man in the Den as well as being amber-eyed, broad-shouldered, and disturbingly masculine. Gabriel wins Avery with a million-dollar bid and, though he warns her not to trust him, she can’t help responding to his confident skills and overwhelming sexuality. Meanwhile, she learns more about Gabriel and what drives him, but despite moments when he seems to care, he’s determined to treat her like a pawn in his game—at least until the next planned volume in this series. Warren (To the Ends of the Earth, 2016, etc.), a prolific writer of alpha-male romances, uses some standard tropes here, but lifts her story with good writing. Avery’s relationship with her dad intriguingly complicates the plot, for example, and Gabriel also has father issues that help make sense of his character. The erotic scenes are well described, and Warren makes full use of her settings (for example, a storage room during a play’s intermission) to highlight Gabriel’s control and Avery’s helpless response: “He doesn’t even have to hold me down. It’s only his fingers on my clit that keep me pinned to that sofa….he’s patient, endlessly patient, while my body winds tighter and tighter.”
A well-written piece of erotic fiction, starring a desperate heroine, for alpha-male fans.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 190
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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