B
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Erotica/Erotic Romance, Romance
Theme: Friends with Benefits/No Strings Attached
Archetype: Billionaire
Oh how I enjoyed Seven Nights to Surrender by Jeanette Grey. It’s a lovely travel romance with incredibly hot, empowering sex scenes. It plays on some of the New Adult tropes I typically hate–Hero With Tragic Past Who Cannot Love, for example–but it does them well.
I was so prepared to give this book an A complete with confetti cannon… and then…and then….
CLIFFHANGER.
I mean, I’m trying to be fair here. I even consulted the Bitchery on how to review a book with a cliffie ending when you really, really liked the book. Fortunately, the sequel, Eight Ways to Ecstasy, is already out which means you don’t have to wait a year for closure.
Also fortunately, e-readers make it possible to download the sequel immediately even if it’s 1 a.m. Remember when you actually had to leave your house to get the next book in the series? Remember when you had to put on pants? Maybe even a bra? That sucked. I remember many mad dashes into Barnes and Noble five minutes before they closed while wearing my PJs and hoping desperately I didn’t run into anyone I worked with.
Anyway, enough about PJs. Like I said, I really, really liked this book. It opens with artist Kate Reid at a café in Paris, struggling to remember how to order coffee. Kate is an American and recent college grad. She’s spending her savings on a week in Paris, hoping to figure out what to do next with her life: accept a job at an advertising firm or get her MA in Fine Arts.
Just as she’s paying, her purse is snatched. Luckily American ex-pat and all around hunk, Rylan Bellamy is there to bail her out and pay for her coffee–he knows a lady needs her caffeine. Aw, yeah. I once woke up to a hangover with a giant iced Starbucks coffee on my bedside table and it was one of the sexiest things my husband has ever done for me. Granted it may have been a little about self-preservation, but still.
Rylan is a super rich dude with tragic past–a trope that normally has me rolling my eyes–but I thought that Seven Nights to Surrender offered an interesting twist that didn’t involve abuse (which seems to be in every NA I’ve tried):
Rylan is living off his trust fund and trying to figure out a new direction in life. Initially he just wants to pick up Kate, show her around Paris, and have some hot sex, but Kate’s all, “Yeah thanks for the coffee, I’ve got art shit to do.” One thing that I loved about this book is that Kate is reserved, even stand-offish. She doesn’t immediately fall all over Rylan. In fact she makes him really work to prove he deserves her time and attention. She is not impressed with his black American Express, self-professed peen skills, or general foxiness. She’s got drawing and shit to do.
I love Kate.
Naturally this throws Rylan for a loop and he spends a lot of time wondering what about this girl makes his want more than just a one night stand.
Kate has some hang ups about sex. Again, no history of abuse, just that it’s never been particularly good for her. She’s able to take care of her own needs, but thus far her partners have been disappointing. I was a little afraid we were going to get the magic-peen trope with Rylan and while he is confident about his sexual prowess to the point of absurdity sometimes, he really makes an effort to get Kate comfortable and explore her needs. There’s very little of Rylan getting off in this book, and a lot of Kate being fulfilled sexually while also exploring her hang ups. Rylan helps her feel comfortable communicating to her partner what she needs to feel good, and I think that’s something that’s missing in a lot of romance. Rylan is also a dirty talker which totally works for me. Like I said, this book has some of the hottest sex scenes I’ve read in a long time, and most don’t even involve p-in-v penetration.
A lot of the plot hinges on both Kate and Rylan feeling directionless, which isn’t unrealistic given their ages. They start off as strangers spending seven nights together in Paris, but of course they both discover that they want more. They also help each other work through their respective issues. Rylan inadvertently helps Kate achieve a major breakthrough in her art, for example.
So I’m reading this and noticing the number of pages till the end of the book getting smaller and smaller, and I’m having panicky thoughts like, “There’s not enough pages for them to resolve all their issues!” Which, obviously, they don’t because like I said this ends on a FUCKING CLIFFHANGER. I was so mad.
SO MAD.
Maybe that’s not fair of me, but the thing I like about romance novels is that in one book, you get resolution. Maybe there’s a series, but it’s interconnected stories about different couples. I hate it when I’m super emotionally invested in a book and realize that I’m not going to get the closure that I find so satisfying. That’s why I read romance. The sequel is out, which saved me from a total freakout, but I’m still not super thrilled.
I felt like a lot of the self-exploration themes (hurr that was totally a masturbation joke) could have been shortened in order to get them to a happily ever after in a single book. I get that both Kate and Rylan are having existential crises. Some of it just felt too drawn out, maybe to justify the second book.
I really liked Seven Nights to Surrender. I’m going to read Eight Ways to Ecstasy but I’m going to be salty about it. I’m invested in Kate and Rylan’s story, and I loved a lot of things about the book, but I like my romance in single serving sizes, please.
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Standoffish heroine who is all about business? Take my money right now! $6.99 for an ebook/$12.99 for a paperback that ends on a cliffhanger? Nevermind
$6.99 for an ebook with a cliffhanger. No no no. And it had me so ready to hit the clicky link.
It was on sale last night for $2.49 so I decided give it a try.
I was similarly aggravated by the unexpected cliffhanger but too invested in the story to let it stop me from buying the sequel ten minutes after finishing Seven Nights. Generally I will wait MONTHS for titles to go on sale, so a $6.99 one click is unheard of for me. I was not disappointed, and I am eagerly anticipating Nine Kinds of Naughty!
Nine Kinds of Naughty is a great title!!
Wait, does that mean that the story isn’t resolved in book 2 either, @Katey?
I tend to feel like cliffhanger endings in romance are a cash grab. I avoid them for that reason. Thanks for the warning.
I recently read an M. O’Keefe book that ended in a cliffhanger, and… that gif. It me.
Wait, but how do you know that the sequel won’t ALSO be a cliffhanger? Trust issues!
If you call it a romance, I expect that at the ending they are together and also alive (Nicholas Sparks I’m pointing at you). I feel like we’ve had this discussion here before and some thought romance should have the HEA otherwise maybe call it a love story (which makes double sense re not alive at the end).
Would you have given it an A if it was billed as a love story?
I’m with Teev, if both halves of a couple are not alive at the end of the book I disqualify it as “romance” and chuck it in the “women’s fiction” black hole.
Joining the No Cliffhangers Brigade.
I don’t read erotica as a rule, but I’ve noticed there seems to be a multi-book thing going with a lot of it, so maybe this should be called NA erotica.
Also hate cliffhangers and feel they’re mostly a way to get more money from readers. I don’t buy books with a cliffhanger and even when they’re free, if they end in a cliffhanger, I don’t pick them up. I similarly hate Nicholas Sparks’ books being referred to as “romances” because I want all the protagonists to be alive and together at the end. I also hate that these books are being called “series” when they are “serials!” I am happy that authors are starting to note the existence of a cliffhanger in the blurb on Amazon or someone will mention it in a review (about the only reason I read reviews). But I still look at the next book in the list to see if the same hero and heroine are the protagonists and their story hasn’t been resolved in the first “book.”
I get a lot of author’s newsletters (due to signing up for multi-author giveaways and getting subscribed automatically) and there seems to be a trend with what appear to be younger authors and readers who adore cliffhangers. I think they think it’s exciting or something. But it just frustrates the h–l out of me!
I am 100% on board with the No Cliffhangers Brigade.
Life is hard enough. I need closure and a happy ending at the end of a book.
I feel a real sense of fear and betrayal at cliffies. The only one I have EVER been moderately okay with was How Not to Fall by Emily Foster, which (thanks to this site) I went into knowing it was a cliffhanger situation. This did not stop me from having a mental breakdown via text at one in the morning to my bestie in books. She was actually concerned for me.