Series Saturday Audiobook Review: The Master by Kresley Cole

The Master
by Kresley Cole
Series:  The Game Maker #2
Pub. Date:  Feb. 17, 2015
Publisher:  Simon & Schuster Audio
Narrator:  Kimberly Alexis
Length:  11 hrs 14 min
Format:  Audiobook
Source:  Audible


My Rating:  
Sultry Scale:

A need colder than Siberian winter meets an attitude hotter than the Florida sun in #1 New York Times bestselling author Kresley Cole’s sultry new Game Maker novel.

Everyone fears the Master...

Rich, irresistible politician/Mafya boss Maksimilian Sevastyan prefers tall, obedient blondes to fulfill his... complicated desires. That is, until the icy Russian encounters a disobedient brunette whose exquisite little body threatens his legendary restraint.

Except her.

Catarina Marín was a well-off young wife until her world fell apart. Now she’s hiding out, forced to start working as an escort in Miami. Her very first client is beyond gorgeous, but when he tells her what he plans to do to her, Cat almost walks out of the door.

If pleasure is a game, play to win.

After their mind-blowing encounter burns out of control, the lovers crave more. If they escape the deadly threats surrounding them, can Maksim overcome his past—to offer Cat his future? Only then will she tempt him with what he really wants: her, all tied up with a bow.

I have been meaning to continue w/ this series for quite some time as I absolutely loved The Professional and Aleksei. It's been so long that I didn't remember quite how steamy the first book was!

Cat Marin is on the run from her con man husband, Edward. Hiding out in Miami and cleaning houses for money, she is convinced to give the escort business a try when her friend Ivana has a bad reaction to botox and needs a stand in. This brings Cat to the penthouse of The Master.

Maksimilian Sevastyan is a billionaire politician bratva boss. He is also a hobbyist - a hobby which includes ordering up thin/blonde/Russian escorts for some impersonal BDSM play. When he ordered Ivana, he definitely was not expecting a 5'2 curvy Cuban mamasita.

At this point, the story pretty much devolves into sex over substance and remains that way for about 2/3 of the book. The plot conflicts during this part were mainly spats between Maksim and Cat... though some of the arguments and behavior did elicit some chuckles from me. Arguments aside, this part of the book was very VERY H.O.T.

Then the last part of the book speeds back up with the suspense involving Cat's husband. This part of the action and suspense was excellent and kept me listening quite late in the night. I was quite emotionally invested in Cat's character... which surprised me because I usually don't care for escorts as heroines.

I give the audio performance 3 stars. The accents were off for me at times, particularly during intimate scenes when Cat's voice devolved into a caricature of a high-pitched hispanic timbre. I think this book would have been performed better with dual narrators... particularly Iggy Toma, who does a wonderful Russian accent.

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The Game Maker

Teaser Tuesday: All of Me by Lisa Renee Jones

Welcome to Teaser Tuesday!  Lots of blogs post all the new releases each week, so I want to do something a little different.  Instead of posting all the new releases, I am going to feature the one new release that I am most excited about!  

This week, I am most excited about All of Me by Lisa Renee Jones.  

Get your copy at Amazon!

WHY am I so excited about this book you ask?  Well, because I read the first book in the series (If I Were You ), and I loved it so much that I knew I could not stand to wait each time a new book came out.  So I have been buying and hoarding these books - just waiting for the series to be finished.  Now I can finally re-read the first book and finish the series!!!  And let me tell you, all these months I have not been able to get Chris Merit out of my mind.  I am not saying much about the female lead, Sara... because I hate her.  It should be ME ME ME in her place. 

My bookclub (Chicklits of Nola) will be reading All of Me for our February meeting.  I know they will be hooked as fast as I was.  

The Inside Out series has also been optioned for a cable television show!  Who would you cast as Chris? I would lean toward Chris Hemsworth or Charlie Hunnam myself.

Make sure to read the series in the correct order, which Lisa has supplied for us on her website.

A short excerpt from the book:

His mouth closes down on mine, and the torment in his kiss devours me, sliding deep into my soul where it burrows like everything that is this man. So much so that when he pulls his mouth from mine and whispers, “I love you,” I can barely breathe.

Get your copy today, and stay tuned for my review of the full series!

Review: Beta

Beta by Jasinda Wilder

My Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Sultry Scale: 3 of 5 flames

Warning:  This review may contain spoilers!

Roth and I are on an open-ended tour of the world. Roth being Roth, this means missionary in Morocco, reverse cowgirl in Calcutta, bent over the bow of a houseboat in Hanoi, slow and sleepy on St. John. Anywhere and everywhere, in every conceivable position, and some I didn't know were possible.

Life was pretty incredible.

Until I woke up in his chateau in France, alone. On the bed next to me was a note. There were only four words:

He belongs to me.

If you read my Last Review, you know that I wasn't overly crazy about the first book in this series, Alpha. The overly long intimate scenes hindered the plot development, which prevented me from connecting with the characters. I wasn't gung ho to continue reading the series, until I peeked at the blurb for Beta. And man, what a blurb! I tried to go on to another book - but I kept thinking about the Beta blurb. It sucked me in and I ended up starting the book this morning. I am SOOOOO glad I did. This book is leaps and bounds better than the first one. Everything I did not like about Alpha, was resolved in Beta, then some. Beta is a solid 4 star read, and I will discuss later why I couldn't give it that extra star.

First, for the characters. This book is told in an alternating POV, going back and forth from Kyrie and Valentine and at one part, Vitaly. I really enjoyed the story being told this way, because it allowed us to get to know Valentine more, which is what I was missing from the first book.

Kyrie: I felt like Kyrie regressed a little here. She doubted herself alot, even though she ended up kicking a$$ when it counted. I just didn't like the initial cowering from Gina. However, once she lost her hair, the only person I could see her as is Amber Rose. Think of looks only, and not Amber Rose's attitude. Kyrie is blonde with boobs, butt and curves, and looks good bald. So this is what stuck in my head. Don't judge me.


Valentine: Yay, we finally get to know him in this story, and learn all about his back story and dark dealings as he was trying to make his way in life. I totally fell in lust with Valentine in Beta, and my heart bled for everything that he went through at the hands of the evil witch, Gina. It was an interesting dynamic to see violation from a male point of view, though I didn't think him becoming somewhat catatonic jived with his character. When I first started Alpha, I envisioned Roth as Jason Lewis. He was compared to Alexander Skarsgard later in the book, so I tried to alter my perception, but I just couldn't. He went back to being Jason Lewis for me.


Gina: Holy shitballs batman - Gina is an evil bitch from hell. She took sadistic psychopath to a whole new level. I mean, waterboarding, really?


So I mentioned how the blurb is so fantastic - it pretty much summarizes the first chapter again. And then we are right off into the action. I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that Kyrie and Roth are going to be separated for a time, you can tell that from the blurb. I liked this as it allowed the characters to develop separately, and we got to see a lot more of Harris. The book was chock full of suspense and kept me turning the page. And again, the author got me with some unfamiliar terms that I embarrassingly had to google again. Obviously, I am not quite as enlightened as Ms. Wilder (though pegging and fetching wouldn't float my boat anyway, so I don't mind that I didn't know what the heck they were).

Overall, I highly recommend this book. Why didn't I give it 5 stars? Once our characters are reunited, the sex scenes started to get a little long again. I would have preferred if the author would have ended them sooner, or at the end of a chapter, rather than keeping them going. I found myself skimming to the end to get back to the story faster. So that took off a half a star for me. What happened to the other half star? The story is left unfinished, and I simply could not believe it. We see a chapter from Vitaly's POV and learn that he is planning vengeance. But then the book ends, and the author says she doesn't know if she is going to write another one in the series. WHAT?!?!?!? Don't leave me hanging like that - PLEASE! Lucky for us, it looks like Ms. Wilder is going to write that next book, we just don't know when. Omega







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Review: Alpha

Alpha by Jasinda Wilder

Overall Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Sultry Scale:  4 of 5 flames






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The first time it happened, it seemed like an impossible miracle. Bills were piling up, adding up to more money than I could ever make. Mom's hospital bills. My baby brother's tuition. My tuition. Rent. Electricity. All of it on my shoulders. And I had just lost my job. There was no hope, no money in my account, no work to be found. And then, just when I thought all hope was lost, I found an envelope in the mail. No return address. My name on the front, my address. Inside was a check, made out to me, in the amount of ten thousand dollars. Enough to pay the bills and leave me some left over to live on until I found a job. Enough to let me focus on classes. There was no name on the check, just "VRI Inc.," and a post office box address for somewhere in the city. No hint of identity or reason for the check or anything. No mention of repayment, interest, nothing…except a single word, on the notes line: "You." Just those three letters.

If you receive a mysterious check, for enough money to erase all your worries, would you cash it? I did.  The next month, I received another check, again from VRI Incorporated. It too contained a single word: "belong."  A third check, the next month. This time, two words. Four letters. "To me."  The checks kept coming. The notes stopped. Ten thousand dollars, every month. A girl gets used to that, real quick. It let me pay the bills without going into debt. Let me keep my baby brother in school and Mom's hospice care paid for. How do you turn down what seems like free money, when you're desperate? You don't. I didn't.  And then, after a year, there was a knock on my door. A sleek black limousine sat on the curb in front of my house. A driver stood in front of me, and he spoke six words: "It's time to pay your debt."

Would you have gotten in?  I did.  It turns out $120,000 doesn't come free.

The blurb (above) offers a good teaser of what this book will be about.  It pretty much summarizes the first chapter.  The story is told from the POV of our female lead, Kyrie, a bit of a tortured soul, who has been having a rough go-of-it for the last 7 years.  At a low point, the mysterious checks start coming in the mail.  The synopsis poses a good question - would you cash the check?  I have to say that I probably would - but I would probably obsess over it for a while, do as much research as I could, then let the money sit in the bank until I was absolutely desperate. Now, in real life, would the checks lead to a knight in shining armor riding in to save the day on his white steed?  Not in my life, my benefactor is more likely to be a fucktard in tinfoil on a donkey.  But - that's my lot in life and probably the driving force behind my reading habit.

Anyhoo, Kyrie finally meets her patron, Valentine Roth, only to learn that he has a huge secret that will change their relationship.  The foreshadowing here pretty much gives away the plot (what little there was).  

As far as the characters go, I did not identify much with Kyrie and I never got a clear picture of her in my head. I know that she must have amazing hair because it apparently looked great no matter whether she had been swimming in the ocean, or went to sleep with it soaking wet.  As a curly girl with a head full of spirals - I had to automatically hate her for that.  If I go to sleep with my hair wet, I wake up with something resembling a giant bird's nest.  Hair aside, I did like that she was outspoken and seemed to put her thoughts out there (when compared to a character like Anastasia Steele who was more apt to have an inner monologue than communicate with Christian Grey).  

I liked Valentine Roth as a character, and at first cast him in my head as a Jason Lewis... but later in the book he is compared to Alexander Skarsgard, so my perception altered a bit.  Although I liked Roth, I didn't feel like we ever got to know him.  

In fact, once Kyrie and Roth actually met, they couldn't stay out of bed long enough to let the plot develop.  There were numerous sexcapades, all very detailed and lengthy.  The author really got descriptive here, but wasn't  overly vulgar or raunchy.  <Kudos for sneaking the word "pudendum" in... and getting me to google it.  Yikes!>  So the steam factor was good - there was just a bit too much of it (gasp).  It seems like the lengthy sex scenes hindered the plot development.  I would have liked to see the relationship develop more between Kyrie and Valentine.  

All-in-all, the book was okay - but it didn't leave me satisfied.  I would compare it to Fifty Shades with less story and character development.  Fortunately, the second book in the series is already out, and it sounds like Beta will be a much more interesting book.