REVIEW~WATCH ME by Stacey Kennedy

 

Watch Me by Stacey Kennedy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

RATING: 2.5 STARS (No book hangover and no extra caffeine needed the next morning)



Things started out fantastic. The blurb was good. The cover was great. It was a no brainer that I chose this read out of a billion others on Net Galley. I thought I had the perfect book to read. I thought I would finish this in just a few hours. But, oh...

Okay, okay, so there’s a host of four and five star reviews on this book. Everyone has their own opinions, and I respect this. For me, I just couldn’t connect with the characters. Although I have great sympathy for victims of physical assault, I had no sympathy for Zoey because of her actions after the attack. I can handle instalove, but no matter how hard I tried, I was not able to fall into the suspension of disbelief. This is why:

1. The actions don’t line up! Zoey was a virgin. Most virgins are too scared/shy to even let a man watch them undress, but Zoey hacks her way into an exclusive BDSM/voyeur club and gets it on with a total stranger IN FRONT OF HER ATTACKERS just to prove she’s still a virgin. Uh….wha????


2. After one session at the club where Zoey loses her innocence to a total stranger, she instantly becomes a dog in heat and is totally comfortable being intimate in front of a bunch of strangers over and over again. Oh no, no, no.



There were a few things I did appreciate:

The author did not use raunchy and graphic descriptions to describe love scenes. Love scenes didn’t drag on and on forever.

The book was the perfect length. A short, quick read even thought I pushed myself to finish.


***I would like to thank the publisher for providing a copy of this book on Net Galley. This review was voluntary. Best of luck to this author.

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Review ~ J. Kenner's My Fallen Saint

My Fallen Saint by J. Kenner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Although I had seen J. Kenner’s name on blogs all over the place, this was my first read by this author. I cannot say that I’m disappointed, but I wasn’t overly impressed. Kenner’s strengths are plotting and storytelling. I can see this author writing a great mystery or thriller without romantic elements.

This review will be divided into two parts: Great Story Elements and Not-So Great.

Great Story Elements:

Plotting. As I stated above, the plotting was excellent. We were not given too much information too soon. (Will elaborate more about the timeline in the Not-So-Great section).

Writing quality. Excellent. And it should be. This author is well known with a large and established repeat reader base. Thankfully, this wasn’t an issue because I have purchased books by other well-known authors that were just plain junk.

Dialogue. It was great. Natural and flowed well.

Not-So-Great Elements:

The heroine, Ellie. Most authors think a strong female character with a cop’s background should be written as a superhero, but I find that strategy super annoying. I do appreciate the fact that Kenner did not create Ellie to leap tall buildings in a single bound or make bombs our of mascara wands. However, Ellie was not a stimulating character either. (Well, if you don’t consider that she was basically a dog in heat from all the one-night stands with bar pickups).

Timeline. Another not-so-great point is the time in which this story unfolded. Sure, Ellie returned to California to write a story and investigate her uncle's death but pining away for a guy for ten years is unrealistic and just plain silly. When Ellie first met Alex, they were incredibly young…she was under the age of 18. So, if Ellie was 17 when she first met Alex, this would put her current age at 27. Most women have LONG moved on and forgotten about their teenage hook ups. (At least I know I would have). To the author's mild defense, I do think Kenner’s goal was to create/keep a pre-made connection between Alex and Ellie. Otherwise, the two characters would have to meet and develop a relationship. And this would be a LOT of work for Kenner.

Ellie the instigator/slut. I’ve read a ton of romance novels and I can’t remember a single story where the heroine pursued the hero. When Ellie and Alex arrived in Las Vegas, she turned into a desperate, pushy slut. Yuck. Maybe some readers are okay with it, but it didn’t work for me at all.

Minor Editing Issue. In one of the last love scenes, Alex blindfolds Ellie. But a few lines later, Ellie notes that Alex twitches his mouth. How would Ellie know if she cannot see him?

The Ending: I hate cliffhangers…I hate serials. (sigh). But this is exactly what we got with this story. Although we were not left hanging with a character trapped inside a burning car, we were left with Ellie receiving a mysterious text.

According to the ARC I received, the next installment is not released until 2021. The characters and plot will have LONG become a distant memory by then.

RATING: THREE STARTS
Extra Cup of Regular
Was willing to read on to see what happened next.

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