Category: Contemporary fiction

A Caryn Review: Alpha Barman (J.T.’s Bar #1) by Sue Brown

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

f1ba3-final_suebrown_alphabarman_ebookSue Brown is one of those authors who, for me, sometimes knocks it out of the park, and sometimes her books are just meh.  This book was definitely one of those meh ones.

Jake Tyler was a member of a special operations team who left after he found his brother-in-law Riley – who was also his best friend and member of his team – standing over his sister’s dead body with a bloody knife.  He worked to make sure Riley was convicted, and then abruptly quit and moved to Wyoming, leaving his long time lover Mitch behind.  He opened a bar in a tiny town in Wyoming, and started over, trying to leave everything about his past life behind.  He told no one on his team where he was going, and never even said goodbye to Mitch.

When the remainder of his old team shows up in his bar, Jake is angry and conflicted.  They came because Riley has escaped from prison, and everyone is convinced that he will head straight for Jake, to exact revenge, or to try again to make Jake believe he is innocent.  The team is there to protect Jake, but he doesn’t feel he needs protection, and most of all doesn’t want to be reminded of everything that happened before, and all he walked away from.  Especially Mitch.

At first, I believed the entire set up.  All the guys are tough as nails, intelligent and resourceful, physically imposing, and share that bond that comes from facing danger and saving each other’s lives.  Or that is what they are supposed to be.  But they kept falling short of the set up.  Or the background wasn’t supported at all by their actions.  Riley was supposedly Jake’s best friend for most of his life, married his sister, and they were as close as brothers.  But Jake never even considered listening to Riley’s version of events until Riley tracked him down in Wyoming.  Jake is supposed to be able to predict Riley’s moves because he was the one who trained him, but he never does.  The team is supposed to be the best of the best, and yet their plans to capture or neutralize Riley are pretty amateurish.  And the author spent way longer describing the two days before Riley’s arrival than was necessary, and I got tired of Jake angsting over Mitch, over Howie, over how Simon will treat Howie, over whether anyone will be able to eat Moose’s sloppy joes….  Nope, doesn’t make Jake sound all that tough, and certainly not decisive.  Then there was Riley’s progress to the bar, which actually started to get funny:  he escaped!  He must be hitchhiking!  He must be stealing a car!  He has contacts all over, and of course he’s gotten a gun!  How will he be able to get a gun?  He has a Hummer, he could just crash right into the bar!  He got rid of the Hummer, because the team would know he had it!   We’ll never see him coming!  Let’s put the retired Marines outside to reconnoiter!  Lets get those retired Marines inside before they get themselves killed!  Jake, get in the basement!  No, I won’t!  OK, I will!  I must be the one to confront Riley, I will not be in the basement!  I don’t know who edited this, but I’m not impressed.

And it didn’t even end there.  I got the impression that the Ms. Brown thought it would be great (or at least profitable) to write a story consisting entirely of stereotypical alpha males, because they are hot, and therefore six of them will be six times hotter.  Of course the most manly occupation possible is special forces, so that’s what they are.  Although I never saw exactly what organization they were part of – military?  NSA?  CIA?  Who knows, who cares, these guys are oozing testosterone through their hard bodies, and being hot will make up for their inconsistent and frankly stupid actions.  And rambling plot with huge holes.  Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy the occasional dual alpha male story that involves them beating the shit out of each other, or the bad guys, as a form of foreplay (i.e., Ty and Zane in Abigail Roux’s Cut and Run series do that trope excellently), but the author just kind of missed the mark here.  By a mile.

Cover art by Garrett Leigh works perfectly.

Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Book Details:

Kindle Edition, 150 pages
Published November 24th 2016 by Sue Brown’s Stories
ASINB01N99W6N4
Edition LanguageEnglish
SeriesJ.T.’s Bar #1

A Lila Review: Nothing Special V (Nothing Special #5) by A.E. Via

Rating: 4.25 stars out of 5

nothing-special-v-by-ae-viaAtlanta’s notorious narcotics task force is at it again. They are stronger, bigger, and better than ever. Especially when a city councilman sends RECON Marine, Edwin Steele – who’s been blacklisted from his Oakland department – to join the team. God and Day weren’t recruiting. They have a lot on their plates, like the fact they’re supposed to be getting married soon. They don’t have the time or the patience to integrate a decorated war hero with a slight chip on his shoulder into their well-oiled machine.

A hothead that’s uncontrollable and terrible with authority… but wasn’t that their team motto?

Steele was ready to hang up his shield. He was done fighting with bigoted bastards that couldn’t respect the job. He was good at fighting; he just needed the right team to fight with. When his uncle – City Councilman, Rasmus Steele – shows him a video of God’s team in action, he knows right away, it’s where his nephew belongs in order to restore his faith.

Steele pointed to the driver, a behemoth of a man wielding those massive firearms like a true beast… like a soldier. “And him. Who the hell is he?”

“That’s your new boss. Lieutenant Cashel Godfrey… they call him… God.”

Steele was skeptical about his new placement, but when he meets God’s technology specialist/computer genius, “Tech,” he’s willing to give it his all, and he definitely shows and proves.

Tech is stunning. His sweater vest and khakis, a stark contrast to the blue-jeaned roughnecks he works with. A beautiful sheep amongst the wolves. Steel thinks there’s no way the brilliant man would be interested in a hardhead like him, but Tech has a few badass hidden talents of his own and manages to fool him… fool all of them.

Nothing Special V is two books in one. We get Steele’s and Tech’s story. Plus, side stories from all the previous couples. It takes a moment to get used to all the POV changes, but the author did an excellent job keeping them organized and relevant. All the voices combined gives us the best look into the futures of God’s and Day’s men.

The first meeting between Tech and Steele set the pace for the story. It shows the reader how well-equipped they are to deal with each other and how good they fit in the team. Reading both of their thoughts and feelings also clue us into the path they need to follow to be together. They needed to grow stronger individually to be a couple.

The combination between meaningful smexy scenes and the action-packed plot lines create the perfect balance of enjoyment. These men are more than their batches, they’re a family that works like a well-oiled machine. But under everything else, they are strong because of the men at their side. Each couple and their love make them more than lethal.

If you are a fan of these men, you’re going to love the extra scenes with them as a group and the individual couples. The whole thing works together and sets the stage for even more couples to come.

And the bonus story at the end of the book is a perfect five. I love the little short story about the youngest couple in their bunch.

The cover by Jay Aheer is a compilation of the covers from the other books in the series, together with the new additions—Steele & Tech.

Sale Links: Amazon | Smashwords | Nook

Book Details: 

ebook, 360 pages
Published: December 19, 2016, by Via Star Wings Publishing
ASIN: B01N0G9507
Edition Language: English

Series: Nothing Special
Book #1: Nothing Special
Book #2: Embracing His Syn
Book #3: Here Comes Trouble
Book#4: Don’t Judge 
Book#5: Nothing Special V

 

An Alisa Review: Under the Mistletoe (Happy Hollowdays) by Shawn Bailey

 

Rating:  3 stars out of 5

 

under-the-mistletoe-by-shawn-baileyBest friends Henry and Alan Grayling and Triston Lee decide to play a trick on Henry’s uptight younger brother Morgan, by having Triston kiss Morgan under the mistletoe at the yearly Christmas party. But the joke is on them when Morgan demands that Triston marry him and make an honest man out of him.

 

Triston has always been in love with Morgan, but Triston never wanted to ruin the friendship he had with Henry by putting the moves on the man’s brother. Triston never blinked when Morgan went away to college for four years, but now that he was back, all Triston wanted to do was get to know him better. Yet, he still hadn’t been prepared for Morgan to lay a heavy guilt trip on him just because he gave him a friendly peck on the lips.

 

So what if a couple of other drunken employees saw them kiss? Triston didn’t think any of them would remember the next day, and it certainly was a stupid reason for them to get married!

 

This was a nice short story, but I felt at times that I was missing something.  Triston is in love with his best friend’s brother, but has never told anyone and Morgan has always been attracted to Triston, but kept his secret also.  Both of them fight each other in their own ways, but it takes some time for them to see how they could work out.

 

I got confused by the characters actions in this story, one minute they were compassionate and then snippy and then acting spoiled.  It isn’t until the very end of the story that I could see them finally giving way to the other and not holding something back.  I had trouble connecting with these characters as it always felt like they were holding something back or there we other things going on in the background that I didn’t know about.

 

The cover art is nice, setting the Christmas setting with the decorations.

 

Sales Links: Dark Hollows Press | Amazon 

 

Book Details:

ebook, 41 pages

Published: December 3, 2016 by Dark Hollows Press

Edition Language: English

A Stella Review: Idlewild by Jude Sierra

RATING 4,25 out of 5 stars

idlewildIn a last ditch effort to bring the downtown Detroit gastro pub he started with his late husband back to life, Asher Schenck fires everyone and hires a completely new staff. Among them is Tyler Heyward, a 23-year-old recent college graduate in need of funds to pay for med school. As their relationship shifts from business to friendship, Tyler falls for Asher and finds himself caught between the things he thought he wanted and the things he hasn’t allowed himself to dream about. Working together, they get to know each other’s dreams. Set in the backdrop of Detroit’s revival, Idlewild is a story about love and healing.

Asher is reopening Idlewild, the restaurant he neglected during the last difficult years, years where after losing his husband, he let himself be swallowed by the grief and overlooked his business. Asher is hiring new people, Tyler is one of waiters. He has decided to take a break from med school and work doing something he actually like. What both of them aren’t expecting is  the strong friendship that born between them.

Idlewild by Jude Sierra is a very good story, it packs a lot of feelings, real ones, the emotions come out through the pages so clearly. I liked how it is paced and I adored how I was able to see the love Tyler and Asher had for each other even before they realized it.

This is a book relation focused, there are some second characters, well defined too, but they don’t play huge roles in the plot, the focus remained spotted on the MCs and their initial friendship and it follows them in the discovery of a new unexpected love later. We see them deal with life, with their fears and the happiness found in each other arms.

I liked how John and Malik were presented and often mentioned, as it could have been in real life; because ex boyfriends and dead husbands can’t be forgotten in the span of a moment like  too often happens in books, while in RL you hurt, suffer and recover with time and the help of your beloved ones. And I saw exactly this in Idlewild, although maybe Asher isn’t really ready yet to go on, but he’s there, and Tyler is just waiting for him.

The only little negative note I want to make and the reason why I didn’t give the novel the five full stars, is the use of the present tense as verbal form, I’m usually not a fan of it but in this particular case it bothered me quite a lot because it seems it clashed with the writing. I can assure you the book is very well written but to me it wasn’t perfect just for the verbal form.

I feel to recommend Idlewild, especially if you are looking for a real story, with real characters and a real setting. I quite enjoyed it and I’m now interested in reading more by Jude Sierra.

The cover art by CB Messer caught my eyes at first sight, it’s well done and fits the story.

Sales Links

Interlude Press

65a2f-waxcreative-amazon-kindle

BOOK DETAILS

Published December 1st 2016 by Interlude Press

Kindle Edition, 250 pages

ASIN B01MAXJFMU

Edition Language English