Archive for the ‘siren publishing’ Category

The Earl’s Intriguing Impostor

by Paige Cameron

Publisher: Siren-Bookstand, Inc.

Damien Aldermann, the Earl of Royston, is requested to visit Lord Norton, Damien’s deceased father’s best friend, and meet his daughter. Damien is concerned for Lord Norton’s mental health. He has been ill and never quit grieving the loss of his wife and small daughter at sea, fifteen years ago.

Damien is certain this woman is an imposter. But when they meet he is uncomfortably attracted to the black haired, violet eyed beauty. Forcing himself to ignore the strong physical desire, he seeks to uncover her deviousness.

Annabelle has fled her home in Spain to seek out a father she recently discovered existed. She hoped he’d protect her from the man she fears, but he is ill and Damien is determined to prove she’s a fraud. She doesn’t understand the immediate attraction she feels for Damien. Can she ever trust him enough to share her secret and ask for help?

The Earl’s Intriguing Impostor by Paige Cameron

Review by Pepper

4.2 Whips/5 Whips

The Earl’s Intriguing Imposter by Paige Cameron is a good, solid erotic historical romance. The plot isn’t a new one, but Cameron manages to make it interesting and enjoyable enough that she can be forgiven for using a tired storyline. After all, as one of my author friends said, unless you’re lucky enough to come up with something like Harry Potter, there are very few, if any, really new plots out there. So what’s a writer to do?

Cameron’s characters are decently well developed, and her portrayal of life in nineteenth century England feels quite authentic. Her sex scenes are hot and steamy, even if they are a tad intense for a Spanish virgin and an English lord in the 1800s. But I never once got the feeling that she put them in just to meet the requirements of the erotic genre. When Annabelle and Damien had sex, they did it at a natural time and place for the story, so it didn’t strike me as awkward. (Of course, there’s hardly ever an unnatural time and place for sex. After all, without hot, steamy sex, what’s the point of living? At least, that’s my opinion. And if I can’t find a convenient time and place to have some myself, reading about it is the next best thing. Sigh.) Anyway, the sex in The Earl’s Intriguing Imposter moved the plot forward smoothly and naturally. Just like it’s supposed to do.

The only gripe I had with The Earl’s Intriguing Impostor is that the sexual tension seemed a bit forced. Annabelle and Damien tried just a touch too hard, for too long, to fight it, making it appear unnatural. Or maybe I just got tired of having Cameron point it out. I’d rather she had “shown, not told” about it. But that’s a only minor flaw and didn’t really dim my enjoyment of the story all that much.

The Earl’s Intriguing Impostor is definitely worth reading. Cameron’s voice is fresh and appealing, the story well-written, and the characters charming. The world she creates is a great place to spend a little time. And have some vicarious hot, steamy sex. That works for me.

Hot Wired

by  Betty Womack

Publisher: Siren-Bookstand

Genre: Erotic Romance, Contemporary, Multiple Partners, Romantic Suspense

After a bad divorce, being on her own is exactly the life Carol Bell wants. She is careful to form no permanent relationships as she travels from place to place. She’s a sketch artist for several fashion magazines and cosmetic firms. Her love life is active. She likes sex, content to let that be all that comes from her affairs. Until the day two hunky electricians arrive at her apartment to repair her air conditioner.

Her apartment is warm, but she soon finds herself in a high voltage situation with Baron and Sham, professional bounty hunters posing as handy men. Her life changes instantly from solo to a trio.

Hot Wired by Betty Womack

Review by Pepper

2/5 Whips in the Backseat

After the really good books I’ve gotten from Siren-Bookstand, I have to say that I was very disappointed in Hot Wired by Betty Womack. The storyline is extremely thin and reminded me of a porn movie—all sex and no plot. The storyline is also very inconsistent, filled with the kind of mistakes I would not have expected from an author with at least seven other books to her name.

For example: Hot Wired starts out with Carol calling electricians because the air-condition is off and the ceiling fans aren’t working. That’s okay, as far as it goes. But it’s only after the first guy shows up, that we find out the power is out. Now come on! This is supposed to be an intelligent, independent woman, and she doesn’t even realize her power’s out until an electrician arrives so they can have hot, fast, down-and-dirty sex—and oh, by the way, have you got any fuses? Then a little later on, she is having sex with both Baron and Sham, the bounty hunters posing as electricians, and they’ve already asked her to move in with them and be a threesome. Yet here she is feeling foolish because she wants to be a threesome with them, and doesn’t know if they want that, too. Jesus, wasn’t she listening when they asked her? I was. So I found her concerns over being foolish, a little…well, foolish. And hard to swallow.

Now by page 53 Carol, a freelance artist, is moving in with her men. Again, nothing wrong with that. I can dig it. But before she leaves her house to go to theirs, she checks her art supplies—which are, in her own words, her most important possessions— HOWEVER, ten pages later, (pay attention now, there may be a quiz) Carol decides to work at the men’s house and discovers she has only two artist pens and nothing else to do her art work with. Excuse me? If this intelligent, independent woman checked her art supplies before she left—these are her most important possessions, don’t forget—then how the hell did the fact that she had only two artist pens to work with come as a complete surprise? Sorry, but I couldn’t buy it. The whole scene felt like just a device to get Carol out of the men’s house and back to her own, where the author needed her to be so she could discover her ex-husband had broken in.

I also can’t buy most of the dialogue in Hot Wired. Some of it was okay, but a lot just didn’t ring true. It felt unnatural and stilted. I mean does a man having sex with a woman really say, “Ride me, Carol, girl.” And if he does, should you repeat it, even in fiction. All right, maybe that’s a little harsh. But to me at least, most of the dialogue didn’t sound like natural conversation.

So is there anything to like about Hot Wired? Yeah, the sex is hot and there is plenty of it. So if you like your sex straight without a lot of plot to muck it up, this may be just the book for you.

 Terry Kate: I would like to welcome a lovely lady Missy Martine to the Backseat whose name has one of my favorite things – alliteration – now you tell me Missy – is that your real name?
 
Missy Martine: No, that’s a name my husband dreamed up when I started writing. It’s actually a take-off on my married and maiden names.

TK: Ah fun to get some input – it is a neat thing about being an author, you often get to pick your own name!

MM: Yes, it’s even better if you begin to write in different genre, because you’re free to pick several different names to go with your different artistic talents. It’s something I’m thinking of doing since I’m working on a thriller novel that probably won’t appeal to romance readers.

TK: So you write the Hot, Hot, Hot, stuff, was that your intention when you started writing, or did it just come out?

MM: It was pretty much my intention. I’d been reading really erotic romance novels for years. I’d always enjoyed the effect they had on me. My husband once told me that he could always tell when I read a new one because the romance in our life picked up, and I was always in a happier mood. I found that they helped feed my fantasy life which in turned, helped improve my romantic life. It was my hope, that my books would fuel other people’s fantasies and desires.

TK: So tell us a little about this tale?

MM: “Table for Three” is about a woman who spent twenty years married to an abusive man. She’d never had the courage to leave him. Then, something fateful happened which gave her the chance to escape and make a life for herself. She inherits a house and small inheritance from an uncle she never knew, and promptly heads off to Oregon to claim it. She figures it’s a chance for her to start her life over. What she doesn’t expect is another chance at love. She meets the twin brothers that own the local hardware store and can’t believe these two sexy men are staking a claim on her. At the same time, she is fighting to hold onto her inheritance, not realizing that her uncle’s lawyer is crooked, and wanting the inheritance himself. She has to decide if she’s willing to give her heart to the two men, no matter what society says about their relationship.

TK: Twins?

MM: Yes, sexy, hot, identical twin men….yum…at least it’s one of my fantasies!

TK: That is a little different from some of the other menages on the market.

MM: In some ways I think it’s considered even more taboo than just a menage. Don’t get me wrong, the twins don’t have anything to do with each other, their romantic focus is entirely on the heroine of the book. From the feedback I’ve received, a lot of people are turned on by the thought of the identical twins. Just imagine, having just a little bit of difficulty telling them apart, not sure who’s doing what at any given time. It just fuels the imagination to imagine being surrounded by all that testosterone!

TK: Is it hard for your heroine to come to grips with a situation so outside the “norm”?

MM: It’s very hard for her. She spent twenty years with a man who verbally, emotionally and physically abused her. She had never known what true love was. She knows that they make her feel things that she’s never felt before, but at the same time she’s getting the feeling that she will never be accepted in this small town if she does something so far out of the norm. True love can be a wonderful feeling, but few people could stand day to day life if they were constantly worried about what others around them were saying about their lifestyle. Cass not only has to accept their love, but she has to accept that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks in order for them to be happy together.

TK: So if they look alike does that mean they are as different as day and night?

MM: Yes, the men have very different personalities. One of them is very secure in what he thinks and what he wants, while the other is more cautious, more hesitant to bring a woman into a menage relationship. They’ve both been married and divorced, but had very different reasons for their marriages failing. One is very forceful in his lovemaking, while the other is more gentle and romantic. It’s like having the best of both worlds. Like a lot of identical twins, they’ve always had a type of psychic bond that allowed them to feel what the other was feeling. This bond is what drives them back together in an effort to find one woman who will love them both. Once she starts falling for them, Cass has no problems telling them apart.

TK: Woowoo!  I must say that sounds like something that would raise any ladies temperature!

MM: That was what I was hoping for

TK: When can we get our hands on it!

MM: You can get your hands on it today at Siren/Bookstrand. You can go to my website, www.missymartine.com and there’s a link that will take you right to it.

TK: Thanks so much for hopping into the Backseat even if you did not bring any hunky twin eye candy.

MM: Well thanks for having me Terry. I’ve enjoyed talking with you, and telling you all about my new release.

Missy Martine can be found at: