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Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Review: Steel Love by P.J. Rider

Steel Love 
by P.J. Rider
Pub. Date:  Sept. 9, 2015
Publisher:  Self-Pub
Pages:  199
Format:  eARC
Source:  Author


My Rating:  
Sultry Scale:


An Alpha BBW Motorcycle Romance

All Maggie wants is a normal life, free from her abusive husband Reef. Unfortunately life isn't that easy. When she's finally getting on her feet she realizes a sexy stranger on a motorcycle is following her. It's almost enough to distract her from celebrating that the constant calls from her husband have stopped. 

How can she rebuild her life when she can't get her mind off the motorcycle man? Is it possible that Reef's calls have stopped because he finally tracked her down? 

In the end Maggie will be battling for her life, and her heart. 


I have been on a biker kick lately with my reading, so this debut novel from P.J. Rider fell into my schedule at the perfect time. We start the story off with our heroine, Maggie, in a horribly abusive relationship. The author did a good job of hooking you into the story with a strong emotional connection to Maggie right away. I felt so bad for her and her situation made me teary. Her husband, Reef, was a major douche canoe who learned to apply his heavy hand from his father, who taught him that it was imperative to keep his wife in line. As the story progresses, we come to see that Reef is a nutjob.

Once Maggie was able to flee the abusive situation, she ends up back at her childhood home where her father has passed away from cancer. Unbeknownst to Maggie, he asked the local MC Club to keep an eye on her. This leads to our hero, Ash, following Maggie around town at the orders of the club president, Jack. Up until this point in his life, Ash has never been into a woman more than the short time it takes him to get off. While I liked his character and demeanor with Maggie, I would have liked to have more of a back story for him. There is a bit of insta-love between our characters in that alpha male way where he decides that she is "mine" and that's that. Unfortunately the strong emotional connection that I achieved with Maggie in the beginning started to fall apart for me with her interactions with Ash. I'm not sure why, but the dynamic seemed a little forced at times. That being said, I can't deny the chemistry between our main characters and the sexytime was well-written and sufficiently steamy.

One thing that was a bit odd to me were some of the character names. By all accounts, Reef and his sister, Dove, were from a white bread All-American (abusive) family. But their names seemed more "biker" than our actual bikers, Jack, Ash and Prentice. So that threw me off a bit. However I think my favorite character of the series will be the big biker Prentice, and I hope his book is next because I definitely want to delve into his story.

There were also some editing issues with this book. Nothing that was too onerous, more like using aloud vs. allowed or heal vs. heal, and there was a little bit of character confusion (using the wrong character's name in places). I cannot remember if I received a pre-published copy of this book, so these issues may have been fixed in the final version.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

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