Simsala`s Abracadabra

DNF 52 %
Meticulously planned role play in established D/s relationships = 100 % lack of spontaneity. I find role-playing funny at best, why did I try to read this...

Wait! What!!
That was it? Where are the next twenty chapters?

I want more Aiden! What an adorable character...
Not to forget the book club, the wonderful Ms. Simmons, the Homer reciting Luka - the story is not finished, no way!
One star less for letting me down...so there!

What do you get when a romance writer who usually writes schmoop (her words, not mine...), tries her hands at a thriller? Well, yes...a schmoopy thriller.
I really, really tried to bury disbelief but those darn question marks didn`t budge...
Where was the father`s single redeeming quality that made Chance come back to him again and again? The story implies that the love of a child for a parent somehow is genetically imprinted - a feeling one can`t escape from, but that`s simply not true. So what kept the son - a trained soldier and sniper - at his father`s side all those years, why didn`t he simply leave this monster of a man to forget past abuse and live his own life? Either Chance was an extremely weak and contradictive character or the father held some secret power over him that was never explained. The implausible characterisation was a huge flaw IMO. I missed the shades of gray in this story - everything and everyone was either black or white/good or evil.
The romance was sweet - very sweet - too good to be true.
I snickered my way through this insta-love story. For two men on the run for their lifes they took their time to be sweet, caring and oh-so-lovey-dovey with each other. Astonishing how they found the time to care for blisters, knife cuts, clean clothes and most importantly - personal hygiene. (Good thing it rained as Drew had to pee out there in the wilderness...so he could wash his hands...*snort*)
I guess they had to take their sweet time so they could get caught - and Chance got the chance to finally stand up to his father.
Everything was so neatly solved, wrapped up and HEA-ish in the end that even with the best intentions - I couldn`t take it seriously.
A thriller without suspense, a teeth-achingly sweet romance...not my book.

DNF 20%

I don`t know what pinched me in the butt to even give this self-published German m/m/m story a try (the author`s pen-name should have been warning enough), AND making it to 20%...miracles happen.
Five 5-star reviews on Amazon...I mean, people, seriously?
I should create a new shelf for books like this: "Worst-bullshit-I`ve-ever-read"
On top of that hundreds of errors in grammar, punctuation, phrasing and spelling - unreadable!
According to a review this is a masterpiece and the best the German m/m genre has to offer...poor Germany!

3,5 stars

Someone can write and knows his way around Hollywood and its celebreties.
The question is if this is supposed to be taken seriously or if the author makes fun of the big sister Fifty Shades Of Grey.
I guess it`s the latter because - especially in the second part of the story - characterizations and the BDSM part veered into the realms of ridiculousness.
A starstruck 24 year old gay virgin who doesn`t even know what BDSM is and a spoiled, famous actor as the most shallow-brained Dom ever.
The book was fun in a jaw-dropping/eye-rolling way but I will be forever grateful that I didn`t read the sister...

The blushing daisy/teddy bear romance was at odds with the dark theme.
Gang wars, flying bullets, murder and betrayal, dialogue in nineteen-thirties New York gangsta-slang, great sense of time and place - could have been great but the overly sweet, slow burning romance absulutely didn`t fit.
Nino as a carbon copy of Al Capone called his thirty year old lover Stanley "kid" - I lost interest halfway through - not for me.

DNF 20 %

I`m picturing Dolph Lundgren herding a pack of eager puppies and submitting to Sylvester Stallone.
Kind of funny but....no!

If I would follow the GR rating system this would be a one star - I didn`t like it.
I`ll be damned if I know what I did just read. There was a Poenix-shifter, burning skin and flames, a gorilla called Ben, little kids with ouchies, a men-hating mother, a meddling bestie with baby, explosions, sex, irritating leaps in time, Ra, Egypt, rebirth....something like this.
A story like an eel. Everytime it started to grab my attention it slipped away again = boring.

Note: The story has 112 pages, not the 219 pages stated by the publisher.

4,5 stars

Let`s start at the end and why I didn`t give the full five stars.
As much as I liked Vincent`s - the hot-blooded, underage rookie-assassin - voice as first person POV, as much as I laughed and cried with him, fell in love with Frank - the cold-blooded super-assassin - right with him; the HEA was kind of a let down. This is a romance and they are supposed to live happy ever after but did they deserve a HEA in retirement without any reprimands? Um....no!
For once I would have prefered a bad ending to an unusual and highly entertaining romance. Going down in a hail of bullets - in a blaze of glory, Bonnie and Claude-style - would have made this cotton candy for depraved minds-story a truly outstanding read, IMO!
Might be just me - forget it...;-)

I found the character-developments of Vincent and Frank - through Vincent`s eyes - fascinating. Slowly revealing the why`s and how`s throughout the story in bits and pieces - kept me glued to the pages.
A violent and passionate love affair coming from imperturbable, well placed trust at first sight.
I don`t want to think about what would have happened to Vincent if he didn`t meet Frank. On the other side it would have saved many peoples lives. The corpses pile high on our two lovebirds roadtrip of death and destruction.

Great secondary characters - sleazy Charlie, Frank`s handler who saved Vincent from the streets and later his worst enemy, Frank`s chosen `family` - his little brother Casey and some really scary women...
Very well written story without a single boring page, a lovestory without angst or unnecessary conflicts (as funny as that may sound) - loved it.

If you want to know if this is a book for you just take a closer look at the cover...the bleeding heart isn`t meant figuratively...

Warmly recommended!

Short non-con/dub-con fix. Doesn`t make much sense without the sequel...

3,5 stars

Sequel to Bound By The Enemy.
In spite of the silly subtitle a surprisingly entertaining non-con/dub-con shorty including missing story bits from part one.
The two shorts together, more background information and better fleshed out characters and this could have been a great novel...

To be fair - 1000 m/m stories earlier I would have enjoyed it much more.
Surprisingly conflict free story about a gay pro-golfer - not a single golf ball played by the way - and a wannabe reporter striving for success.
This could have been a great story if Rafe - the reporter - had pulled his job through. Of course he didn`t - wrong profession, my dear - because he fell in love with his target.
Calling this a story of betrayal and forgiveness is a bit of a stretch - a job is a job - just unnecessary drama as a wobbly story-frame around erotic content with characters heavily leaning to m/f stereotypes.
Might work as an erotic romance-only if one likes the sex-scenes but that`s a taste thing and it wasn`t mine.
The story was a disappointment.

Spot on review from Camille

Great story.
I had some minor niggles - see Camille - but overall it was an entertaining book with mature characters and a real-life feeling that I liked very much.

It took me by surprise how much I disliked this book.
I absolutely couldn`t relate, not to the story, not to the characters.
I felt sorry for Dylan - unable to stand on his own two feet he got handed over by an overbearing Miss Dolphinia from an overbearing mother (there had to be a reason why he became submissive, right?) to an overbearing Dom instead of simply walking away. He sure as Hell loved to wallow in misery. And there it was again - the combination weak sub/controlling Dom who came to the rescue with a whip attached to his hip.
The older brother as over-the-top villain was as unbelievable as the sister. Again the question - what kept her glued to this family? I didn`t get it. The perils of Hotel Mama....

I struggled through this book with lots of skipping and eye-rolling. I guess the one-thousand-and-one blushes from Dylan in numerous shades of red kinda fascinated me.

A rentboy commercial part two - or - how to sell the same idea twice.
It`s time to add some carbohydrates to all that protein and hopefully the sex scenes in the upcoming novella won`t be as repetitive.

4,75 stars

A mountain of pet-peeves!
I have no idea why it worked for me anyway, but it did.
Must be my lifelong crush on Judas.

I saw an interview with Julie Lynn Hayes on a blog and was stunned.
We both have the same "Judas-history" - starting with the musical Jesus Christ Superstar - with the difference that Julie is an author and I`m not.
And now she wrote the story I always dreamed up.
When does something like this happen...

I fell in love with the story from page one on. I had almost no time to read at that time - a special kind of torture!

Truth to be told I didn`t understand myself.
First person POV from several characters - switching from chapter to chapter, rhetorical questions - I HATE that! Adressing the reader directly...am I supposed to answer and how do I do that?
Internal, repetitive musings galore. Terms of endearment that would usually make my skin crawl - "My sweet baby Judas" - and what did I do? I just smiled - totally smitten....
The characters were exactly portrayed like I always pictured them. The snarky, grumbly diva Judas and Jesus with his almost childlike innocence and never ceasing fatalism - but just to the point where he acknowledged his love for Judas - no more willing to follow the predetermined script. Love is the most powerful force of all - I loved that message, it never fit so well as it did in this story!

Revelations is a very sweet(!) and funny romance - about time someone wrote the truth - with a sad undertone that made me teary eyed then and there. When did I turn into a sap?
A slow burner if there ever was one. Judas and Jesus had 2000 years to come to terms with their feelings and as they finally did they really hit it off. (Sex scenes fade to black - thank you dear author I wouldn`t have survived more smut between these two, I was blushing hard enough as it was....too funny!)
They were so incredibly sweet together it made my teeth hurt.
Did I throw the book against the wall? Nope - I hugged my reader.

I won`t go into the story. It`s common knowledge with a twist and interested readers should experience it for themselves.

To avoid tomatoes.
If you are just generally interested in a romance and not especially in the re-written history of Judas and Jesus you might possibly fall asleep of boredom...just saying.
If you want to know what really happened...go for it!

I didn`t give the book the full five stars because there was a chapter missing, IMO. The final POV of Luci(fer) grudgingly admitting defeat but already plotting revenge - that would have been it!

Very warmly recommended!

ETA:
I would love to see some bigoted self-proclaimed "Christian" accidentally stumbling over this book and getting a heart attack! Hah!!