Unraveled
RECOMMENDED: Unraveled by Courtney Milan is 99c! We’re big fans of Milan’s writing here at SBTB HQ, so of course we have a review of this book. Redheadedgirl wound up giving it an A:
Both characters had traits that I really admired, and avoided tropes that get tiresome. There’s no build up of unnecessary drama because she won’t tell him things. Which leaves plenty of room for all the necessary drama. YAY!
The stunning conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Turner series…
Smite Turner is renowned for his single-minded devotion to his duty as a magistrate. But behind his relentless focus lies not only a determination to do what is right, but the haunting secrets of his past–secrets that he is determined to hide, even if it means keeping everyone else at arm’s length. Until the day an irresistible woman shows up as a witness in his courtroom…
Miranda Darling isn’t in trouble…yet. But she’s close enough that when Turner threatens her with imprisonment if she puts one foot wrong, she knows she should run in the other direction. Yet no matter how forbidding the man seems on the outside, she can’t bring herself to leave. Instead, when he tries to push her away, she pushes right back–straight through his famous self-control and into the heart of the passion that he has long hidden away…
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The Hook Up by Kristen Callihan is 99c! This was a nominee in this year’s DABWAHA tournament, and made it to the third round before being knocked out by Sweet, Filthy Boy. It’s a new adult romance with a one night stand/friends with benefits trope and a football-playing hero. Lots of readers on Goodreads gushed about the chemistry between the hero and heroine, though a few complained about the last quarter of the book being a little too melodramatic. Have you read this one?
The rules: no kissing on the mouth, no staying the night, no telling anyone, and above all… No falling in love
Anna Jones just wants to finish college and figure out her life. Falling for star quarterback Drew Baylor is certainly not on her to do list. Confident and charming, he lives in the limelight and is way too gorgeous for his own good. If only she could ignore his heated stares and stop thinking about doing hot and dirty things with him. Easy right?
Too bad he’s committed to making her break every rule…
Football has been good to Drew. It’s given him recognition, two National Championships, and the Heisman. But what he really craves is sexy yet prickly Anna Jones. Her cutting humor and blatant disregard for his fame turns him on like nothing else. But there’s one problem: she’s shut him down. Completely.
That is until a chance encounter leads to the hottest sex of their lives, along with the possibility of something great. Unfortunately, Anna wants it to remain a hook up. Now it’s up to Drew to tempt her with more: more sex, more satisfaction, more time with him. Until she’s truly hooked. It’s a good thing Drew knows all about winning.Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
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Wicked After Dark is 99c! This is a paranormal romance anthology with proceeds of the book going toward The Epilepsy Foundation. There are twenty stories with all sorts of characters – vampires, werewolves, demons, etc! The page count is a little over 4000, which averages to about 200 pages per story. Not too shabby for less than a dollar!
20 Hot-As-Hell stories from your favorite USA Today best selling and award-winning authors just in time for Halloween! All proceeds to benefit The Epilepsy Foundation!
Mina Carter – The Reaper and the Cop
Death’s big business. For Laney Larson, it’s a full time job.Julia Mills – Her Dragon to Slay
Men that change into dragons and dead men wielding knives was NOT the weekend Kyndel had planned.Stephanie Rowe – Darkness Unleashed
Passion heats up between a dangerous rogue and the angel he was meant to save…or destroy.PM Briede – Spark
Who knew an actual soul existed beneath the skin of this monster I let myself become.Jami Brumfield – Remote Paranoia
Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep, that is when the assassins come out to play.Claudy Conn – Dark Love
Chazma wants revenge against the dark sorcerer who slaughtered her parents–but will Jethro McBain get in her way?Eden Elsworth – Frippe House
Having inherited the estate of her Great-Aunt Alice, Becky soon finds the mysterious Frippe House is hiding some dark secrets.Nicole Garcia – A Love for Somnus
Can Somnus and Lailani’s hearts be mended? Or will it be too late to heal the wounds that have scarred them both?Lane Hart – Let Him Reign
Born a prince of the underworld, Eric can’t escape his legacy after his father is murdered and all hell breaks loose around him.Tracey Jane Jackson – Bound by Fire
Pepper’s world is set on its axis when she discovers she’s fated to be with Connall, her very own immortal Viking.Melanie James – Conjuring Darkness
Sparks fly as Lexi and Ryan race against time to save the world from long forgotten demons.Gena D. Lutz – Chasing Magic
Anika finds herself battling a volatile spell, where all bets are off, and magic will fly.Michelle Mankin – Strange Magic Part I, II
A rock star, a mysterious woman and a little bit of strange magic.Marie Mason – You Lucky Witch
The last thing bounty hunter Roark needed was a spell-challenged witch helping him find an escaped demon.A K Michaels – The Witch, The Wolf and The Vampire
Sparks fly when runaway Witch, Peri, falls into the arms of ancient Vampire, Josef, and his friend, Gabe, a cheeky Wolf.Angela Snyder – Vampire Next Door
After a mysterious man moves next door, Jane begins to wonder if he is really a stranger or the key to unlocking her past.Candice Stauffer – Exquisite Breath of Darkness
Being immortal, Joseph had never paid attention to time, but now it consumes his every thought because he’s running out of it.Melissa Stevens – Change
Nickie’s entire world changes when she learns that not only do shifters exist, but she is one.Izzy Szyn – Bite Thy Neighbor
He wants more than a cup of sugar?C.A. Tibbitts – Shifter In Training
Forrest got more than he bargained for when he joined the DEA Shifter Division.Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
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Game Play by Lynda Aicher is 99c at Amazon! Everywhere else, it’s $1.99, but hopefully we’ll get some price matching today! I read this book over the summer and gave it a C:
The book started off wonderfully. I immediately took a shining to Sam, our heroine. Samantha Yates is the only child to a hockey-loving family. She’s played for most of her life – childhood, college, even for the women’s team at the Olympics. The woman has a damn silver medal, and makes me feel totally guilty for eating Haagen Das for dinner. Used to operating in a boy’s club sport, Sam is a tomboy, and I found it refreshing.
What follows next is a series of circumstances (injuries, training sessions, etc.) that all lead back to the same argument. Sam doesn’t want anything serious because of the above reasons, but Dylan can’t ignore their chemistry.
Over and over and over again. For me, it really bogged the book down. They’d play house while Dylan is healing and they’d have this argument. They’d go out on a date and they’d have this argument. They’d have sex, then have this argument.
One night, one time, nothing more. That’s all it was supposed to be. They’d agreed their first night together would be their only night together—and Minnesota Glaciers defenseman Dylan Rylie was fine with that. Giant hickeys and claw marks on his ass had never been his style, even if the very memory of Samantha Yates’s merciless sexual energy gets him hard within seconds. He needs to focus on getting a better contract, not mind-blowing orgasms.
One night, one time, nothing more. Fresh off representing the US at the Games and with nowhere else to play, Samantha gave in to one night of frantic passion with the Glaciers’ brawny hotshot. She couldn’t get hurt—not if she controlled the outcome. And she planned to leave Minnesota soon, anyway. She didn’t expect to be recruited to coach Dylan after they’d gotten down and dirty.
When brutal on-ice workouts lead to kinky locker room sessions and “one night” falls by the wayside, Samantha insists on keeping things casual, despite Dylan’s quiet hope for more. But when Dylan goes down—hard—and his career is in jeopardy, Samantha is the first one by his side. What will it take to keep her there after he’s healed?
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My love affair with The Hook Up simply cannot be overstated. I gifted SEVEN copies of this book to friends. I pimped it to everyone, everywhere. It was my favorite book last year. I re-read it regularly. I nag Kristen Callihan about when the next one comes out.
I seriously LOVED this book.
Ehem…or, you know, something less gushy.
I’m here to provide the dissenting opinion: I strongly disliked The Hookup. I should have known better, because romances in which the conflict comes down to “this is just casual, we can’t have a serious relationship” pretty much never work for me. One reason I read YA and NA is to avoid this kind of stuff. Added to that, I didn’t like the heroine, thought the hero had a personality transplant when the plot required conflict, and didn’t like how everything had a tidy psychological explanation with an appropriate trauma.
OTOH, the details seemed better than in most sports romances, and at 99c, people may as well decide for themselves if it’s good or not 😉
Everyone who hasn’t bought Unraveled yet should take advantage of this sale ASAP. The Turner series is IMO Milan’s best.
Nowhere But Here by Katie McGarry is also .99. I haven’t heard much about it but I loved her Pushing the Limits series.
Beneath this Mask by Meghan March is currently free on Amazon. I haven’t read it, but I did read Beneath This Ink, which was pretty good.
I liked Game Play much more than you did, and I think I’m a tough room. I dislike MOST THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE.
Yup, Sam does keep struggling with furthering her relationship with Dylan, but for me her reasons were nuanced and real, and her lack of insight into her own behavior made for good if maddening reading. (NOT REALLY SPOILER-Y UNLESS YOU WANNA KNOW NOTHING GOING IN WHICH IS COOL I’M JUST GONNA JUSTIFY WHY I THINK SAM IS A WELL-DRAWN CHARACTER BUT FEEL FREE TO MOVE ALONG: Sam’s semi-examined rage about her own playing career ending just as Dylan’s is taking off, her desire NOT to default to her dad’s career path, her ambivalence about her relationship with her dad in general, her anxiety about being perceived as a “bunny” in a world that doesn’t always value women — I thought her issues were complex and depicted well.
OK COME BACK ANXIOUS-ABOUT-SPOILER-PEOPLE
I can see how her stubbornness and lack of self-awareness (which were WHY they fought all the time!) could be maddening, but I felt a lot of sympathy for her and found her a nuanced character. I am a sedentary mofo so I hadn’t thought much about sexism and double-standards in Olympic sports that both men and women play, so for me the book was a bit of a feminist education. I also know very little about hockey, and Aicher seems to know the game. For me the real flaw was that Dylan was too perfect, but I read this as Sam’s story so it wasn’t a deal-breaker.
I woulda given it a B+.
Just bought Unraveled by Courtney Milan as it is also discounted at Amazon UK – yay!
I note that this is the third (and last?!?) in the series. Pls can someone who has read the series tell me if I should read 1 and 2 first? I would normally, but they are not reduced to the same extent. If you tell me I will get more out of no 3 / miss out if I don’t read the goodness that is 1 and 2 first, or something like that though, then I will take note.
This is always an issue for me when later books in a series are reduced. I think it can be even more of a cunning ploy than giving book number 1 away for free…
@Emma – Unraveled can be read as a standalone, but I think it’s better if you’re introduced to Smite and his brothers in the earlier books. IIRC, the regular editions of the first two books in the series were traditionally published, so Milan can only control the pricing of Unraveled. However, she published enhanced editions of all three books with Entangled last year, and those should be pretty inexpensive (the complete trilogy shows up as £6.47 for me on Amazon UK).
I think I’m done reading about “mind blowing orgasms”. Sounds like a stroke waiting to happen.
Ok, here’s another vote for Milan’s Unraveled- that is my favorite book from her by far. And I both like and have all of her other works, only I didn’t get mine on sale. Absolutely loved Smite & Miranda and I revisit them occasionally as this is a comfort read for me.
@Emma: The first two books in the series are good and I suggest you follow Rose’s suggestion and get the trilogy for >£6. It really does help with the nuances to read them in order, though it isn’t strictly required.
I tried to read Aicher’s Game Play but ultimately DNF’d it. I started the book, got so far into it (maybe 40 pages or so) and had to put it down. The problem was with picking it back up as I didn’t want to. I mean really didn’t want to. So the 5th time I found myself slogging through- I asked myself, why? My answer, which was “to finish it”, didn’t make much sense. There are far, far too many books to read, new authors to discover and favorites to reread to bother with forcing myself to complete something that simply doesn’t interest me.
Oh, meant to add that I did like Callihan’s The Hookup and liked it enough to buy it and get the sequel. Eagerly awaiting the 3rd.
I liked Game Play, but I have to say – Back in Play, Book 2 in the series – was probably one of the best romances I’ve ever read, and I’ve been reading them for something like 35 years now … and probably the most original romance, period. So get Game Play for 99c and get Back in Play right now and then you have both, that’s my thought.
Back in Play – no spoilers, this is in the blurb – the hero is the Captain of the hockey team and he’s addicted to painkillers for his knee injury. There was just so much done with that in the story. Coupled with the news about football players and repeated concussions, etc, it made me really think about what professional sports does to people, and why, and whether there is complicity from fans and spectators to cause this behavior – what’s our responsibility? I’m not sure the answer is “none, they’re grown ups making choices” – it doesn’t seem quite that easy, and I think Lynda’s series is bringing up some of those thoughts, at least for me.
And Marjorie – the differences b/w men’s and women’s sports at the major competitive levels was a big topic around the Women’s World Cup matches in Canada this year, b/c men get real grass fields and women just got turf for the world cup. And they are so NOT the same.
Hi, Anna! I bought Back in Play and Penalty Play (Books 2 and 3 in Aicher’s hockey series) when they were on sale, because I enjoyed Game Play so much. I really liked them both. I agree with you: Scott, the hero of Back in Play, the captain with the painkiller addiction, is SUCH a well-drawn character! (If I’d thought from Game Play that Aicher wasn’t as good at depicting men as women, I woulda been wrong: In Back in Play, Scott is the super-nuanced character and Rachel isn’t, IMHO, as fully developed.) Again, I learned stuff — this time about addiction. The book REALLY pulls no punches.
I should add that I loved the Courtney Milan. She’s an auto-buy for me.
I have to agree with everybody who likes Game Play–I think Lynda Aicher is a fabulous author and I have loved every single one of her books. Worth every penny.
I just bought Unraveled. I almost didn’t but I checked my kindle history and I bought the other two books sometime last year (I do love a sale). That was before I had even read my first Courtney Milan book (like I said, I do love a sale).
Just wanted to say “Thank you” to all those that responded. I am going to read books 1 and 2 before Unraveled.
BTW, “The Brothers Sinister: The Complete Boxed Set” is £3.71 on Amazon UK at the moment. So if you live in the UK and want to give Courtney Milan a go, then that seems quite a bargain! I think I have read some from the library, so now plan to re-read as nec. and catch up on the rest…