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Most Valuable Playboy
Most Valuable Playboy by Lauren Blakely is 99c! This is a sports romance with a fake relationship element. Readers say this has a great blend of humor and sexiness. However, others felt annoyed with the heroine’s constant pining for the hero.
Hands down, my favorite thing in the world is to score. Touchdowns.
Don’t let the fact that I’m the leading pick in the Most Valuable Playboy charity auction fool you. These days, I’m only a player on the field. I’ve kept my pants zipped all season long — and it has been long — because nothing’s more important than leading my team to victory every week. Except maybe escaping from the team owner’s recently-widowed and handsy-as-hell sister who’s dead set on winning more than a date with me.
Enter Violet and a well-placed Hail Mary.
She’s my best friend’s sister with a smile as sweet as cherry pie and a mind that runs quicker than the 40-yard-dash. After Violet saves the day with the highest bid, I don’t even give her a two-minute warning before I kiss her in front of the whole crowd and then announce that she’s my girlfriend. Which would be fine except my agent tells me we have to keep up the act while he’s negotiating my contract.
Violet takes one for the team and pretends to be mine, but our boyfriend-girlfriend scrimmage quickly turns into a full contact sport, and I want it to go into overtime. The problem is — I’ve been riding the bench for years.
How can a guy like me, who finally has a chance to prove his worth on the field, convince the girl she’s most valuable to his heart?
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Stray
Stray by Rachel Vincent is $2.99! It’s the first in the Shifters urban fantasy series. According to Goodreads, I read this one seven years ago (whoa) and gave it 3 out of 5 stars. The heroine grated on me at times. This book was also the answer to a HaBO submitted by author Darynda Jones.
I look like an all-American grad student. But I am a werecat, a shape-shifter, and I live in two worlds.
Despite reservations from my family and my Pride, I escaped the pressure to continue my species and carved out a normal life for myself. Until the night a Stray attacked.
I’d been warned about Strays–werecats without a Pride–constantly on the lookout for someone like me: attractive, female and fertile. I fought him off, but then learned two of my fellow tabbies had disappeared.
This brush with danger was all my Pride needed to summon me back…for my own protection. Yeah, right. But I’m no meek kitty. I’ll take on whatever–and whoever–I have to in order to find my friends. Watch out, Strays–’cause I got claws, and I’m not afraid to use them…
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Shattered King
Shattered King by Sherilee Gray is $1.99! This is a dark contemporary romance with a secret baby element and a hero out for revenge. If you’re on the fence about this one and its content, I highly suggest reading the Goodreads reviews to find out more. The next book in the series is also on sale.
What if the man you love hated you more with every breath he took?
SHATTERED KING is an intense, ultra-sexy standalone novel set in the world of the Lawless Kings. Sherilee Gray’s raw, hard, beautiful, deeply-emotional voice will leave readers breathless.
He’s out to get revenge for a crime he didn’t commit…
Hunter King just got out of prison. Incarcerated for three years though an innocent man, his rage against the people who put him there knows no bounds. First up on his list for vengeance: the woman who betrayed him years ago. The woman he loved fiercely, the one bright light in his otherwise hard, ruthless life. She has information he needs. And he’s going to kidnap her, hold her hostage, in order to get it. But one look into Lulu’s eyes unleashes the true beast within. Hunter’s never hated anyone this deeply, or wanted any woman this badly.
Lulu had no choice: Either help send Hunter to prison, or see him destroyed. She couldn’t do that to the man she loved. Couldn’t do it to the father of her child. But Hunter was locked away before he had a chance to learn about his son—and a hard layer of despair has formed around his heart that she’s desperate to crack. And if Hunter is to give himself and Lulu a second chance at love, he needs to find a way past his darkest demons.
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Normal
RECOMMENDED: Normal by Graeme Cameron is $2.99! Elyse mentioned this in a previous post on Women in Psychological Thrillers and said:
Normal by Graeme Cameron is delightfully weird fun. Told from the perspective of a serial killer who is keeping a woman captive in his basement, we see her through his eyes only. This sounds like it would 1000% squicky and DNW, but Cameron makes his unnamed protagonist, if not likable or emphatic, engaging enough that it’s easy to keep reading.
This is a love story. No, really.
He lives in your community, in a nice house with a well-tended garden. He shops in your grocery store, bumping shoulders with you as you pass him and apologizing with a smile. He drives beside you on the highway, politely waving to let you into the lane ahead of him.
What you don’t know is that he has an elaborate cage built into a secret basement under his garage. And the food that he’s carefully shopping for is to feed a young woman he’s holding there against her will–one in a string of many, unaware of the fate that awaits her.
This is how it’s been for a long time. It’s normal…and it works. Perfectly.
Then he meets the checkout girl from the 24-hour grocery. And now the plan, the hunts, the room…the others. He doesn’t need any of them anymore. He needs only her. One small problem–he still has someone trapped in his garage.
Discovering his humanity couldn’t have come at a worse time.
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Normal sounds fun. (I enjoy twisty tales.) Aaand it’s available at my library & I just borrowed it, so hey, I know what I’m reading this weekend.
I really liked Most Valuable Playboy. Here was my review: Lovely romantic and sexy sports romance. Lost half a star for Locker Room talk with Female Employees, but romance was sigh-worthy and reminded me why Blakely is one of my favourite authors. 4.5 Stars
I’m sort of… unduly bothered that “prides” are so central to a werecat who is not a werelion? Only lions live in prides! Cats are not social animals! There are some feral cat colonies, but they don’t function like a lion pride or a dog pack does. Cats are (generally) shy and territorial, so for the most part, they find other cats very stressful. They’re not as solitary as bears but even so.
MILD SPOILERS HERE
Just FYI, there’s a vein of uncomfortable misogyny (at least, to me) running through the Shifters series. Apparently werecat females are few and far between, and so the plot of every book is focused to some extent on some male werecat fixating on Faythe, or teenage Kaci, or some other unfortunate lady werecat. There was an extremely icky scene in a later book where one of those fixated males deliberately scars up the face of a female character with a knife, while his friend complains “Hey man, I’m going to have to have multiple kids with her for the sake of the species, don’t make her UGLY.” It really bothered me; it might trigger some readers.
SHATTERED KING is very dark—and not just for the unjustly imprisoned/seeking vengeance element, the heroine has really been through a lot too. I like dark & angsty, and I like Sherilee Gray, so I enjoyed the book, but it will definitely not be everyone’s catnip.
@Lara, thank you. And, oh, HELL NO.
I’m reading “Most Valuable Playboy” right now. (Well, not right this minute – I’m at work, & while popping over to a website while I take a few sips of coffee is fine, digging into my current book is not.) It’s good – not my favorite Blakeley novel, that’s still “Part Time Lover” because naked man doing handstands = a helluva hook! A note, though: MVP is a football romance, set in San Francisco, with a made-up team name, which may put off some fans.
@Lara: Thanks, this just confirms why the blurb has always made me uneasy and I have avoided the series altogether.
“Normal” will also be a hard pass for me. I really don’t need to read about a (male) serial killer who needs to get rid of his latest-in-a-long-line (female) victim because he discovered his feelings (or thinks he did).
This may come across as hostile, but what is it with these, let me call them women-unfriendly, recommendations here on SBTB lately – squinting hard at Grace Draven’s Phoenix Unbound (remember the raping and burning of women?), and Shattered King, where the “hero” physically assaults and kidnaps the heroine? I admit I don’t read every review or rec, so maybe I’m just unlucky to encounter these? Am I reading too much into it? Am I too sensitive?
I certainly don’t want you to feel unsafe or threatened, Brigit. I’m genuinely sorry if you do. We try to feature books that match with many different tastes and reading interests, as there are so many different plots and tropes that readers enjoy and ask about. In the case of the most recent Draven book, Amanda’s review was unfavorable toward those very plot elements, and given how much we’ve adored her other books, it was important to highlight that aspect as a warning to those who might be negatively affected by reading it.
Thank you Sarah! I do not feel unsafe, not here, and I appreciate the diversity you all from SBTB keep bringing to us, your followers/readers.
I hardly ever regret reading books that were recommended here, and if I do, it’s because I can’t get into the author’s writing style, not because I’ve been misled in a review. And i
f I’m uncertain about a novel, I can always go check out other sources (mainly Goodreads reviews – 3 cheers for spoilerish and totally open reviews).
I’ve been thinking about it all and it was probably just a weird coincidence, and I’ve been reading too much into it. I don’t HAVE to read anything outside my comfort zone, after all…
Oh, and I forgot to add that I come here for the comments as well as the reviews, they are just as entertaining and informative!