The cover for Scandal Never Sleeps by Shayla Black and Lexi Blake strongly suggests an erotic contemporary, which it is, but what surprised me is that it’s also very much a romantic suspense. It’s hard to classify this book–fans of hot contemporary romances featuring larger than life heroes will appreciate it, but so will fans of mystery-driven romantic suspense.

The series centers around a group of successful, rich, sexy men who all call themselves The Perfect Gentlemen and who all went to boarding school together. One of those Gentlemen is the President of the United States and you have no idea how excited I am for that book. (Josh and Donna will always be my OTP.)

Anyway, the heroes in the series are gathered together to mourn the passing of their friend Maddox who died in a small plane crash. Gabriel Bond, CEO of Bond Aeronautics, is especially distraught because his sister, Sara, is pregnant with Maddox’s baby. Before he died, Maddox had broken things off with Sara in a really shitty way. Gabriel thinks Maddox must have been with the other woman he threw Sara over for.

Enter Everly Parker. She was Maddox’s head of cyber security. She’s at a bar, feeling pretty low about her job prospects after her boss’s death when she runs into Gabriel. They don’t know each other but immediately their genitals call out to each other. They have a dirty, first-name-only weekend only to find out that Oops, Gabriel is now Everly’s boss. If you like the “Whoops I fucked my boss” trope, here is your catnip.

To add some additional angst, Gabriel suspects Maddox threw Sara to the side for Everly because he believes that 1. Maddox was incapable of not smexing a beautiful woman and that 2. Everly would be unable to resist him. Normally I find this kind of conflict logic to be BS, but this series (and this style of contemporary) is based on the irresistible larger than life hero. The appeal is the billionaire CEO/spy/POTUS is there to bring the heroine to new heights of sexual ecstasy while working a surprisingly light schedule.

Everly is not happy that Gabriel thinks she’s a homewrecker which leads to some slap-slap-kiss-kiss.

Then because all of this wasn’t enough, we have the suspense angle. Turns out the plane crash wasn’t an accident and there’s video of Gabriel threatening Maddox before his death (because he was pissed about the Sara thing). Now Gabriel is a suspect, and also Everly is getting messages from a mysterious contact that claims to know who the real murderer is. She and Gabriel team up–with the help of the other Gentlemen–to figure out what Maddox was up to that got him killed.

There’s action! There’s danger! There’s sex!

Honestly, I expected the  sensuality level to be a little higher (it does heat up later on) given that this was a Black/Blake novel. Then I realized I shouldn’t complain because I got this line:

She gripped him as if she’d never let go before he slid back into her like a finger through melted chocolate.

 

I don’t know about you but my va-jay-jay isn’t particularly chocolatey. Also now I’m imagining a horrifying mishap at The Melting Pot. “Shannon, call 911. Some guy stuck his dick in the crunchy peanut butter chocolate swirl again.”

Melty chocolate vaginas aside, my only other issue with the book is that there is so. much. plot. A lot of it felt like set up for future books, at least in the beginning. Periodically the story dragged–not horribly, but the pacing was a little off.

If you require complete resolution you might want to wait for the entire series. The mystery of Maddox’s death is solved, but there’s a larger mystery arc that continues, at least into the next book.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by Scandal Never Sleeps. It was the hot contemporary I wanted but with a side of delicious mystery, and I’m looking forward to finding out what happens next in Seduction in Session. I just wish I didn’t have to wait.