Tag: All Romance eBooks

Guest Review: All Bite, No Growl by Jenika Snow

Posted July 15, 2015 by Tracy in Reviews | 0 Comments

Guest Review: All Bite, No Growl by Jenika SnowReviewer: Tracy
All Bite, No Growl by Jenika Snow
Series: Out for You
Also in this series: The Changing Years
Publisher: All Romance eBooks
Publication Date: June 1, 2015
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
two-half-stars
Series Rating: three-stars

Forget the foreplay. For the truly committed, it’s all bite.

Willow has loved Devon and Case for as long as she can remember, but as lion shifters they will eventually find their mates. When she allows herself to be with her two lions after a drunken party, she fears she’s ruined a lifelong friendship and flees before morning.

Devon and Case have been inseparable since they could walk, but they can’t tell anyone that they are mates. The pride of shifters they belong to won’t accept a same-sex mating. There’s no way they’ll accept their love for Willow?

When a shocking revelation brings Willow’s world crashing down, she has no choice but to tell Devon and Case how she feels. Will they be able to accept what fate has thrown at them? Do they want to?

Tracy’s review of All Bite, No Growl (Out for You series) by Jenika Snow

Case, Devon and Willow have all been best friends since they were five years old. Now they’re 18 and life is changing. They are all lion shifters and can recognize their mate as early as age 16. With Case and Devon they found out really early but never told anyone. They act like best friends in public but never share their real feelings for each other.

One night after Willow had had too much alcohol at a party she spends the night at Case’s house (his parents are out of town) and wakes up in the middle of the night to get a drink. When she hears grunts and groans she investigates and finds Case and Devon making love. She knows it’s an invasion of their privacy but she’s so turned on by the two men she can’t pull herself away. The men, of course, know she’s there and soon invite her to join them. She’s been in love with the two men for years and as much as she wants to be in bed with them she knows it will change their friendship. She finally agrees and much sexin ensues. Case and Devon love her and want to be with her as well but after that night Willow feels like she’s intruding.

Willow’s family issues and Case and Devon’s decision to come out to their lion council take them away from each other. When they reunite they find that not only do they want to be together, fate wants them together as well.

This was a cute story but one that unfortunately I did have some issues with. The story itself was interesting and showed a lovely bond between the three main characters. Unfortunately, as the story was so short, we didn’t get to learn too much about any of them. With Case and Devon it was all about their being together (before Willow came into the picture) and coming out. With Willow we got to know her family a little bit but not much else. I wish we could have gotten just a touch more info on all of them.

There were also quite a few editing problems in this one and it threw me out of the story every time – especially when Case was, at one point, referred to as Sam. Crazy.

Overall a cute yet sexy short story.

Rating: 2.5/3 out of 5

This title is available from ARe. You can buy it here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

two-half-stars

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Guest Review: The Changing Years by Amber Kell

Posted July 10, 2015 by Tracy in Reviews | 0 Comments

Guest Review: The Changing Years by Amber KellReviewer: Tracy
The Changing Years by Amber Kell
Series: Out for You
Also in this series: All Bite, No Growl
Publisher: All Romance eBooks
Publication Date: June 1, 2015
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
four-stars
Series Rating: three-stars

The most important show of strength is to embrace one’s true nature.

The death of his ex-wife grants Shaun McKellan custody of his only child, and the chance to know his son after years of separation. Now a full-time father, Shaun thinks his life is finally complete…then he meets the Alpha running the town where his son attends school.

Grant Thornlin has always resisted the temptation of other men. As the Alpha, he must be strong and give his pack the impression he has invincible power. Falling for a blond, blue-eyed artist with a half-shifter son has bad idea written all over it.

How can Shaun show Grant that loving another man doesn’t have to affect his position as Alpha?

Tracy’s review of The Changing Years (Out for You) by Amber Kell

Shaun McKellan was once married to a shifter but while his wife was pregnant with their son she met her mate. According to shifter law mate trumps marriage so they divorced and his ex-wife and her new husband raised their son, Kerry. Shaun longed for his son every day but his ex-wife didn’t want him to imprint on the child so he stayed away, receiving emails and picture updates of Kerry on a regular basis. Now Kerry is 15 and going to be living with Shaun for the first time. His mother died in a car accident and the step-father can’t handle the boys half shifter aggression.

Shaun and Kerry are so happy to be with one another. They get along perfectly and Shaun is extremely happy. He goes to the local shifter high school to try to get him enrolled and meets Grant, the local Alpha. Shaun, who is bi-sexual, is immediately attracted to the man but tries to focus on Kerry during the meeting.

Grant is not gay. At least that’s what he keeps telling himself because his inner wolf is trying to get out to attack Shaun and make him his. Grant and Shaun finally act on their attraction but Grant isn’t willing to put his place as Alpha in jeopardy by coming out to his pack and Shaun isn’t willing to go back in the closet for anyone, even Grant.

Of the Out For You books that I’ve read so far this is definitely my favorite. It had a wonderful flow to it and kept me turning pages.

Shaun was a great guy and a great father. I felt so bad that he hadn’t been able to be with his son for his whole life and wanted to slap his ex-wife (but, ya know, she was already dead so…) for keeping them apart. I guess I understood the imprinting thing when he was little but as he grew that was just an excuse. I loved how he was with Kerry and frankly wanted a bit more page time between the two of them but of course it’s a romance so I got why that didn’t happen.

Kerry was a good kid. He was smart and seemed to have a good sense of humor. I couldn’t tell from the story if he was aware of his dad’s sexuality before he moved in or not but he didn’t have a problem with it at all and that was a point in his favor.

Grant was a interesting character. I was a little peeved that he knew that Shaun was his true mate after they had slept together but didn’t bother to tell Shaun. Instead he avoided him even though he wanted nothing more than to be with him. I was happy that he finally decided to come out and that his pack would either accept the coupling or not and if not they could leave town.

In the end a really good story that I enjoyed reading. I have no idea if the author will give us more from these guys/family in the future but if she does I’d love to read about them.

Rating: 3.75/4 out of 5

This title is available from ARe. You can buy it here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

four-stars

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What I Read Last Week

Posted December 3, 2012 by Tracy in Features | 4 Comments

So what do you do when you get a call from the High School your daughter attends telling you that she’s in trouble and oh, yeah, gonna be suspended. Yikes. That’s how my week went – from bad to worse. Apparently some boy called her a bitch but instead of blowing it off my daughter the bruiser took him by the backpack straps, picked him up and when she put him down he fell and hurt himself. She was suspended for use of force. Oy. She knows better than to touch another kid in anger or any other way but apparently the bitch comment sent her over the edge. My daughter was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder when she was younger but in her case it’s usually being incredibly argumentative…about everything. This kid obviously hit her switch and my kid got a day spent in the school office and a day at home. sigh My hubby and I sat and talked with her but it’s “I know, Mom!” If you KNOW why did you DO?  So, any wise words that have worked for you with your kids (if you have them) or worked on you (when you were a kid)??

That was the excitement for my week…on to what I read…

First off was A Dragon’s Seduction by Tamelia Tumlin. This story was about a dragon shifter who is from a, I think, alternate universe, and he’s a gatekeeper. He is after an evil dragon who shouldn’t be on Earth at all. His path leads him to sorceress who is smack dab in the middle of it all but only on the side of good. This was an ok story. Pretty predictable and not to intricate of a world, but cute. 2 out of 5

The Red Hot Holiday anthology by KA Mitchell, Leah Braemel and Anne Calhoun was next. This had Christmas stories that were all very different. I’ll post my review on Wednesday.

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton was next. This was a darned cute story about a woman who moves into an apartment and her next door neighbor is having sex almost constantly with 3 different women. She thinks he’s just a sleaze but when they eventually become friends she sees that he’s not at all. The friend and love story was great and it kept me laughing, that’s for sure. Yes, there were some thing that annoyed me – like when the heroine was more worried about her missing “O” than the hero while having sex…and other things but overall I really liked it. 4 out of 5

Tempting the Bride by Sherry Thomas was next. I had very mixed feelings about this book. I liked the characters very much when they were getting along but they were only getting along because the heroine had amnesia. Normally she hated the hero so much she could barely be in the same room with him. He, of course, has been in love with her since he was 14. The thing is that over the years the hero felt that he’d rather rile the heroine and send out nasty verbal barbs and have her get pissed off rather than have her ignore her completely. I just didn’t see the logic in this. I mean, I did, but what he did only made her hate him more. So while the writing was good as is usual with a Thomas novel, the story had me on the fence. 3 out of 5

My Tracy’s TBR Challenge read for the week was the novella Just One Bite Vol. 1 anthology which includes: The Unlikely Vampire by Scarlet Blackwell, Sacrifice by J.L. Merrow, One Last Wish by Josephine Myles, Mayan Time by Erik Orrantia, Fire Can Make It Rain by Nix Winter, The Hunter & the Hunted by Stevie Woods. These was vampire related short stories with some odd, some ok, some great – they were all pretty much very hot and I liked this volume a lot. 4 out of 5

Another book I’ve had in my TBR pile for a while was The Virgin Proxy by Georgia Fox. This was a medieval erotic romance and it was really good. The story is about a woman who has lived most of her life in a convent during the Norman invasion. She is asked by fellow convent dweller to be her virgin proxy. Deorwynn will take Sybilia’s place on the wedding night, behind a heavy veil, because Sybilia’s not a virgin and she doesn’t want the marriage to go bad because of it. But Guy the groom is quite a bit smarter than the women think AND he’s got the hots for Deorwynn rather than Sybilia. I liked the characters the writing, the setting – almost everything. The cover is a bit misleading as looking at it you would think that the woman ends up with two men but while there are multiple partners at one point it’s just a h/h romance. This is book 2 in the Conquerors series so I’ll definitely have to go back and read book 1 and then on to the others. 4 out of 5

Next up was Courting Carolina by Janet Chapman. This is book 3 in the Spellbound Falls series. The story is about Alec who is out in the wilderness blazing a trail, literally, for his friends resort. He ends up harboring a woman who he found escaping from kidnappers. She, however, is the daughter to Titus and is a mythological princess from Atlantis and her father wants her to marry a warrior of his choosing. She’s run but there’s someone after her. While with Alec they fall in love but Alec plans on never getting married so that puts a kink in things. While I found this book cute and at times fun and funny it didn’t move fast at all. The second half of the book had Alec and Jane (Carolina) apart almost completely until the end and that just didn’t work for me all that well. 3 out of 5

Last was a free short I got from Amazon called Rent-A-Groom by Jennifer Blake. The story was about a woman who was using her honeymoon suite even though her wedding had been called off. A man shows up at her door claiming to be from Rent-A-Gent and is there to escort her so that her fiancé will think she’s over him. We could tell the man, Race, was up to something but we didn’t know what but it was sweet watching Gina and Race get to know each other. It was a short but the couple did fall in love in 2 days. That being said they did state that they would take it slow and get to know each other so that saved the insta-love a bit. 2 out of 5

My Book Binge reviews that have posted since last week:
When the Duke Found Love by Isabella Bradford
The Bridegroom Wore Plaid by Grace Burrowes

Happy Reading!

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Mini Review: Past Pleasures by Charlotte Stein

Posted January 5, 2011 by Tracy in Reviews | 5 Comments

This was one of the free books that All Romance eBooks was giving out this year during their 12 days of Christmas. I thought it looked interesting and last night when I had a bit of free time (cuz the kids were gone – woohoo *ahem*) I put it on the old EZreader and read away. 
When Kate agrees to a mad experiment with something as insane as time travel, she expects exactly what Professor Waites had suggested: dystopian nightmares and possible barbarians.

So when she finds herself in a future where women no longer exist and the men have no idea what they’ve been missing, she can’t seem to catch her breath.

Especially when the men in question—the darkly handsome Tem, and his starkly beautiful companion Aley, are so curious and so ready to learn everything she has to teach—including all the past pleasures they never knew existed
The story is about Kate who is basically a guinea pig for a man who has created a time machine. He decides to send her to the year 3033 (from 2010) not knowing what to expect but it will be her job to report back on what’s going on in the future. He’s expecting humans to be small misshapen trolls – not sure where he got that thought but it’s a bit scary for her.
She ends up in a room with a gorgeous man, Aley, who is shocked when he finds out she’s a woman – women have been instinct for more than 600 years! As Kate keeps getting sent back again and again she meets Aley’s roommate, Tem, and starts to having feelings for these two incredible and terribly innocent men.
I’ve got to say that I was definitely pleasantly surprised by this book. It was a sci-fi/time travel erotic read (which I’m not usually a fan of) but it had just the right blend of the unusual, the innocent, the humorous and the erotic to really appeal to me. On Goodreads I saw that this book is listed as Desire Through Time #1 so I’m hoping that there will be more about Kate, Tem and Aley in the future. I’d love to see what ramifications Kate’s time travel has on the future.

Rating 4.25 out of 5

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What I’ve Been Reading This Week

Posted November 2, 2009 by Tracy in Features | 18 Comments

Happy Sunday!

I hope you all had a good week this past week. What did you all do for Halloween, if anything? Did you have fun? My girls dressed up and went to trick or treat. This year my hubby got to walk with them and I stayed home and read while waiting for kiddies to come to the door. We live on a hill so we don’t normally get that many kids but this year was the slowest year since we’ve lived here (6.5 years). I think we have about 15 kids. Yikes! lol We don’t normally buy a lot of candy but I couldn’t even get rid of what little we had! lol

Here are the kids in their costumes. It was a really pleasant night so they didn’t have to worry about jackets this year which was nice. I had a lovely indian squaw and a 70’s chick. 🙂 The picture of my youngest is blurry but it was the best view of her costume, so, sorry.

So there’s a couple of cool things going one this month – actually I’m sure that there’s more than a couple but these are the 2 at the top of my list:

1) The very cool offer from Blind Eye Books when you buy Josh Lanyon’s new spec fiction book Strange Fortune between Nov. 5 and 20. You can read the offer here on DIK.
2) All Romance ebooks is celebrating it’s birthday all during the month of November. For every day that you buy a book you’ll go in a drawing. If you are chosen then they will purchase all of the books for you that are on your ARe wishlist (up to $100.00). Sounds like a great deal to me and I have a lot of books on my wishlist.

Well I finished the October reading month with a bang. It was a fun week. I read quite a few yaoi manga’s that I got from Kris’s yaoi swap and a couple that I bought for myself and added to the sway. So it may seem like I read a lot this week but those manga’s go super fast and I can gobble em up in no time.

First for the week was Atlantis Unleashed by Alyssa Day. This is book 5 in the Warriors of Poseidon series and the book that made me start the whole friggin series. lol So…when my review posts for The Book Binge I’ll let you know.

Next was Totally Captivated volume 1 by Hajin Yoo. I read Sarah’s interview with Rowan McBride and he mentioned that this was his favorite yaoi manga (actually manhwa which is the Korean counterpart). I looked it up, it sounded interesting, so I bought it. It’s the story of a guy who is kind of harassed/blackmailed into working for a crime boss who is of course gorgeous and totally young. There’s definitely some sexual tension going on between the two but we didn’t get past more than a couple of kisses in this volume. It was good, but not great – some confusing parts where I wasn’t sure who was talking to whom and why. I hate when the characters get shrunk down in some of the frames in manga. The really good looking guys all of a sudden look like their 10 and it’s kinda creepy, I must say. Anyway, I think there are 9 volumes to the story so far – dammit! So yes, I’ll probably have to get those too, eventually, cuz I need to see what happens! 3 out of 5

After that was anoth yaoi manga called Maid in Heaven by Hisami Shimada. This one is about a boy who takes his grandmother’s place as a maid when his grandmother falls ill and the “master” and the maid fall for each other. Kinda funny that they kept trying to have sex and kept getting interrupted. Again, the shrinking of the characters – especially during sex? Just. Not. Right. The overall story was cute though. 3 out of 5

Next I read U Don’t Know Me by Rakun (yaoi manga). This one I bought at the same time as Totally Captivated and I really liked this one a lot. Fab graphics, pretty, pretty men and a decent story line. There were a couple of times at the end when I was wondering whey they even included certain aspects of the story but can only assume that future volumes will complete the tale. The sad thing is? Currently there are no further volumes so I just have to wait. 4 out of 5


The Dark Highlander by Karen Marie Moning was my book for my monthly Re-read Challenge. You can read my review here.

More manga with Barefoot Waltz by Romuco Miike. There were a couple of cute stories in this one that I liked. I can’t tell you about all of the stories because it would take forever. The graphics were ok – not great. 3 out of 5


I think I got a little yaoi’d out of this one. lol Last manga of the week was I Want To Be Naughty by Mei Sakuraga. This was pretty cute as well. Stories of a trouble maker and a student council president finding each other. 3 out of 5

My Tracy’s TBR Challenge read for the week was Suzanne Brockmann’s Kiss and Tell. This is book 1 in the Sunrise Key trilogy. It was cute. A very quick and easy read. A woman who was raised on the island of Sunrise Key goes back for a vacation and falls for her brother’s best friend. They had always been fighting previously so it was kind of a revelation to her that she found him attractive. There were some issues I had with the heroine’s personality that made this just an ok read for me but I may read the next books in the series. 3 out of 5


Next up was Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs. The second book in the Mercy Thompson series and I loved it. It was so damned good and I can’t wait to read more. At first I was afraid that I wasn’t going to like it. You know…I think I’ll have write a review cuz I can’t fit it all in a little blurb. lol So look for that. 🙂

Home for the Holiday by Wendy Stone was a book I bought this past week. I was looking for Halloween and Holiday stories and bought it on a whim. It was a contemporary story about best friends falling in love when they head to the heroine’s parents’ house for Christmas. I almost felt like this was 2 different stories about the same characters put together in one 120 page book. The first story should have ended after about page 50. Overall it was kind of convoluted – sisters taking boyfriends away, cheating, horrid future mother-in-laws, date rape drugs and pregnancy – and that doesn’t name everything. lol 2.5 out of 5

Last up was One Summer by Karen Robards. KristieJ posted on DIK on Thursday and she was talking about bad boys. She mentioned Johnny Harris from One Summer and the blurb caught my eye. My local library had the book in stock so I picked it up. Johnny is definitely a bad, bad boy. But he’s also extremely intelligent and I loved that about him. He was accused of murder and sent to prison for 11 years and he’s gotten out with the help of straight-laced Rachel Grant, his ex-English teacher and a woman he’s had the hots for since high school. This was a good riomantic suspense read. I didn’t figure out whodunit til the middle of the book and then really couldn’t figure out why the culprit was doing it til the end. Rachel got on my nerves a bit because she loved Johnny no matter what but seemed like she was always trying to change him. I did like her though most of the time because she was a strong character and truly believed in Johnny’s innocence. Gotta love that. 4 out of 5

So have a great week. I’ve posted the entire month’s reading here if you want to see it in all of its glory.
Happy Reading!

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