Puck Drop (Dusk Bay Demons, #1) by Maggie Alabaster and Jo Bradley Review

This is a spoiler-free review!

Guys... my kindle privileges need to be revoked. I cannot believe Stuff Your Kindle Day has lead me down this path. Hockey romance plus crime plus why choose... none of these words have ever been uttered in the same sentence before, and yet here we are. Why do I continue to put myself through this? I do not even know what I was thinking when I downloaded it, but it was free and I love to see what random books have in store for me. I was, however, utterly confused when this hockey team seemed to be full of murdering gang members?? Can someone explain this to me? I feel like I came out of this book with a concussion.

The author literally throws you into the strangest predicament known to man and expects readers to simply accept the fact that the leading lady and, for some reason, the majority of this hockey team are involved in some form of gang that are straight up killing people. Because apparently that is a normal thing for hockey players to be involved in, but I digress. Elenna is constantly in the pick-me girl scenario and finds herself being a mediator instead of a wife - Aidan is controlling when it comes to their outside relationships, but it makes sense as he is her husband. As for the other ones, they become oddly possessive after being involved for approximately two seconds and think they are just as important as Aidan.

Elenna was annoying - I have no idea why basically the entire hockey team thought she was the greatest gift to be brought to Earth, but good grief every single time we switched to her perspective a part of me died inside. I wanted her to be likable so bad, but I could just not warm up to her. Finley and Orion had such different personalities than Aidan, but they cared about Elenna just as much as he did. However, I still think their characterization and the way they immediately felt that they had just as much say in the relationship was presumptuous considering they were new.

The spice was wild and whacky but nothing that I had not seen before. A lot of the scenes felt as though they were thrown into the story at random, and we were going back and forth between smut and randomly killing people with no clear transition. This book put me in such a spin that I started to think I got hit in the head with a hockey puck halfway through. The overall tone of this book was so random and the goal was clearly to try to add some action into Elenna, Aidan, Orion, and Finley's lives, but it fell flat to the lack of consistency and ability to smoothly transition between perspectives and plot points. In my opinion, this would have worked much better if the author made this series only focus on this group, instead of making it interconnected stand alones where each book focuses on a different group.

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Summer's Kiss (The Boys of Ocean Beach, #1) by Angel Lawson Review

This is a spoiler-free review!

I downloaded this from a Stuff Your Kindle day a long time ago, and now that the weather has decided to lighten up, I figured I needed to make a dent in my summer romance TBR. I do not read too much reverse haram or why choose romance books, but this one definitely took me by surprise. I thought that Summer would be drawn to one boy and the rest would become somewhat of background characters, but that is certainly not the case for this new adult romance. To be honest, I did not even realize it was a reveres harem - I thought she would pick one boy after multiple books and a five-way love triangle (love pentagon?). Personally, if I found out a group of described beach bums only hooked up with girls in the summer and had a pact, I would be running for the hills.

The boys - Justin, Whit, Pete, and Nick - are a little... forgettable. There was never a moment where I found myself more drawn to one of them and they were all pretty subpar in my eyes. You could easily tell that this book must have originally been written for Summer to end up with one single romantic interest, given the amount of page time one of the boys receives compared to the others. Lawson definitely should have done some more revisions with her editor since you almost start rooting for the other boys to just disappear and let Summer and who I imagine the original love interest was to go off into the sunset together.

Summer's relationship with all of the boys is mostly on an individual basis - they are not really a "group" so to speak. She basically has four boyfriends but the boyfriends aren't boyfriends with each other, if that makes sense. I wish the author either stuck with the reverse harem trope or abandoned it, as it feels half-finished and not enough time was dedicated to develop their relationship as a full group. Outside of just being around one another, the boys really do not have a ton of interaction on page, and readers are basically only shown each boy having their little moments with Summer alone.

I think this would have worked a lot better if this was not a new adult/high school romance but rather a college romance - they all seem very immature, and considering Summer's most recent relationship, it definitely would have benefited from some maturity. The side plot with her author mother was interesting, but for a romance book, it took up a lot of page space when the author could have been deepening the relationship between Summer, Whit, Pete, Justin, and Nick. I will probably finish this series if I need something quick to read, but if you are looking for a fast read with lots of PG-13 moments, this could be the series for you. Much like the Summer Unplugged series by Amy Sparling, this romance book plays it safe when it comes to the actual romance portion of the plot.

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Satan's Affair by H.D. Carlton Review

This review contains spoilers for Satan's Affair. Please read reviews or go to the author's website for more details on trigger warnings. It is recommended that you read the prequel novella, Satan's Affair, prior to reading the Cat and Mouse Duet, but is not required. You can read my review of Haunting Adeline on my blog, here.

I genuinely did not know what to expect or had an idea about what I would think of this book since I was not jumping up and down after reading Haunting Adeline, but I wanted to go back and read the prequel just in case it gave more a little background before I go diving into Hunting Adeline. Compared to Haunting Adeline, I would say that Satan's Affair definitely prioritizes gore and violence in the first half of the book, while the smut takes a secondary priority.

Through the use of her own haunted house and a handful of very attentive henchmen, Sibby is able to take down the demons she finds one at a time in a very particular way. You can tell that while she does let her emotions come through from time to time, she is typically very particular about how she goes about these killings. She certainly is creative, and with the haunted house on her side, she is able to basically do whatever she wants and have her henchmen clean up the pieces.

When Sibby was doing her thing to Gary, I was literally so surprised that he was still conscious and aware of what was happening -- if someone was getting their limbs cut off and bones broken, you would think the pain would have taken them out pretty quickly. She really has a bone to pick with him, especially after overhearing what he did to his girlfriend, Jennifer. There is definitely an up on the gore and violence factor in this prequel, and while I did not find it unbearable, some may find the content a touch too disturbing.

This novella will definitely prepare readers for what is to come in the Cat and Mouse Duet when it comes to both smut scenes and graphic depictions of violence and assault. While the content in Satan's Affair certainly heads towards a blurry line, I would say that it is just getting readers ready for what is to come.

I love that we got to see Sibby watching Zade follow Adeline and Daya through the haunted house -- not really a spoiler for Haunting Adeline, but just one scene that we see in the book that I actually appreciated really after reading Haunting Adeline. To be quite honest, the scenes between Sibby and Zade from her perspective somehow made me like Zade more, and made me even more excited to continue the duology. Looking back, I do wish I read this novella before starting the duology, and I would recommend reading Satan's Affair first just to get a touch of background information on Sibby, but it is entirely up to the reader's preference.

It was such an interesting choice to see that the henchmen were not actually real -- I knew people always referenced a twist with Sibby at the end, but I did not expect it to apply by extension to the henchmen. There were some definite negative connotations made towards Sibby's mental struggles, especially towards the end of the novella when she is in the institution.

Overall, this is a decent introduction to the Cat and Mouse Duet, and provides a quick and interesting read for those looking to get into the taboo genre while still being a little cautious of where exactly they may draw the line when it comes to dark romance.

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Dangerous Little Secrets (Saint View High, #2) by Elle Thorpe Review

 

Dangerous Little Secrets (Saint View High, #2) Review

This review contains major plot spoilers from Books 1 and 2 from the Saint View High series. Sections containing spoilers will be marked with a page break indication. Please be advised that this book contains: attempted sexual assault, violence, assault, and sexual encounters. Check trigger warnings before reading.

The Saint View High series is back with another installment about our main character on the hunt for who carried her out of the burning school, and who is responsible foe her uncle's death - her only clue: a school football shirt belonging to one of the wildest high schools I have ever read about.

WARNING: Spoilers and discussion of sexual assault and violence ahead

Dangerous Little Secrets picks up immediately where we left off in Devious Little Liars (Saint View High, #1), with our female lead Lacey basically left for fending for herself on the beach with one of the many boys who have yet to grasp the basic understanding of consent. Owen basically beat Lacey to the point of unconsciousness on the beach and because there are about six main guys in this book, three of which are currently on Lacey's bad side, I found myself having to write down a list of who was currently moderately redeemable in our eyes. Despite it being only about a month since I read the first installment in this series, I have managed to forget every name of the boys Lacey has come in contact with, as well as if they are redeemable or not. I can chalk that up to reading a few books in between the first and second book, but I had to go back and remind myself which boys were somewhat respectable and which boys are straight up sex offenders.

Banjo -- I still can't believe that is his name -- is experiencing some type of teenage-life crisis because of course Lacey told him that she loves him, yet he filmed a sex tape of her with Rafe and Banjo without her consent. Shocking that he is confused on why she does not want to talk to him! But of course we learn that Banjo had no knowledge of a camera hidden in his room, yet Rafe was able to find it approximately two minutes into tearing through Banjo's room. But boy was I shocked when we find out that it was Banjo's brother who put the camera in his room.

Owen is running around town because his father is the police chief and he thinks that somehow will protect him when he is literally assaulting anything with a pulse because he is bored and has zero hobbies.

A big shoutout to Lacey for actually standing her ground towards Rafe when he told her that he wasn't behind the sex tape - even though she believes he wasn't the one who planted the camera, she still needs time to process what happened. Lacey is definitely an admirable character in the sense that she holds true to her beliefs and will always be honest and hold her ground.

We suddenly are at what appears to be an underground fight ring with Colt and Lacey which lasts approximately half of a chapter and Lacey manages to be into him for this chapter - let's see how long that will last. Especially when she's spent the last four chapters complaining about Colt and how much she does not want to interact with him outside of learning how to fight. And to no surprise to anyone, Colt is just absolutely drawn to Lacey now that she's showing interest in him, despite not defending her when Gillian was was screaming at her after Lacey was beaten half to death. All of a sudden Colt is talking about how Lacey's uncle isn't who he said he was (of course this is in his mind during his chapters) and Colt is simply being the most annoying boy on the planet. But I digress.

Banjo is in Love with Lacey. Rafe is in love with Banjo and Lacey. Colt is horny for Lacey. Lacey says she was in love with Banjo but she won't even talk to him. This is surprisingly easy to keep track of despite the fact that all of these boys collectively have three brain cells.

The most un-surprising part of this book was the fact that Lacey's uncle Lawson potentially has or had a mistress. The man was murdered and someone left notes that said "Liar. Cheat. Rapist." on Lacey's locker - I think we all knew where this was going.

For some reason Colt's only personality trait is trying to have public sex with Lacey and then not letting her finish. It's all he talks about (and thinks about in his chapters) for a majority of the time, and always starts out with him and Lacey screaming at each other or confronting one another at yet another party.

I certainly did not expect Augie to basically be trying to pimp out Banjo to a random woman, but hey, this book has everything else, so I should not be surprised. As the book goes on, I definitely think the reader is supposed to feel more for Banjo, and see a softer side to him compared to what we saw in Book 1. However, his aloofness towards the fact that Augie was the one to record the sex tape of him, Rafe, and Lacey is not lost on me -- yes, he told Lacey it wasn't him (Banjo), but he hasn't made a case on why exactly everyone should be blaming Augie. It definitely would be helping win Lacey back if he, I don't know, told her what happened himself. Instead, she had to find out through such a long and convoluted process that I myself cannot trace back what exactly happened.

For someone so concerned about finding out who murdered her uncle, Lacey seems to spend a lot of time... not doing that.

I am desperately trying to understand why everyone and their mother thinks that Colt killed Lawson... do I think he did it? Maybe. Have I yet to see any proof? Not a drop. His dad though... surely he has his fingers in pots where they do not belong.

One chapter later and we had proof. Whoops, spoke too soon. I still think that he was only at the fire, not the one doing the murdering. Also I'm sorry, but Rafe walking up to his dad during the school dance and decking him across the face as he accuses him of murder is so on brand, I had to laugh.

My jaw was literally on the floor. Her mother??? Miss Thorpe has done it again with a fantastic cliff-hanger in this series. I truly was not expecting that to be how Book 2 came to an end. I am very much looking forward to finishing this series, and hopefully we will finally know who killed Lawson.

The complete Saint View High trilogy is available now to read and add on Goodreads. You can add Dangerous Little Secrets and the rest of the Saint View High series on Goodreads, and follow the author for more updates.

You can catch up with me and my current reads by friending me on Goodreads and following this blog in order to stay up-to-date with any reviews, blog tours, and more!