Review: The Unrequited by Saffron A. Kent

The Unrequited by Saffron A. Kent

Publication date: July 13th, 2017

Pages: 340

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

Layla Robinson is not crazy. She is suffering from unrequited love. But it's time to move on. No more stalking, no more obsessive calling. What she needs is a distraction.

The blue-eyed guy she keeps seeing around campus could be a great one--only he is the new poetry professor--the married poetry professor.

Thomas Abrams is a stereotypical artist--rude, arrogant, and broody--but his glares and taunts don't scare Layla. She might be bad at poetry, but she is good at reading between the lines. Beneath his prickly facade, Thomas is lonely, and Layla wants to know why. Obsessively.

Sometimes you do get what you want. Sometimes you end up in the storage room of a bar with your professor and you kiss him. Sometimes he kisses you back like the world is ending and he will never get to kiss you again. He kisses you until you forget the years of unrequited love; you forget all the rules, and you dare to reach for something that is not yours.

Note: This is a standalone romance with dark themes such as cheating and stalking. It features an obsessive girl who stalks her professor and an over possessive poetry professor who falls for his forbidden student.

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Review:

Layla insists that she is not crazy even if everything she does is certifiable. She is impulsive and makes choices that she knows is wrong but she can't seem to stop herself. Like when she sees a man inhabiting the bench that she often frequents to sleep, not because she is homeless, but because it is just a place she feels connected to. When she sees him she can see the war that is waged on his face. The tired and furious expression becomes an obsession to her. She wants to unlock all his secrets and find out how his puzzle pieces match up with hers. But he is there and gone in a flash. However, when she keeps seeing him she chooses to follow him. She wants to know who he is and why he calls to a part of her that she can't seem to escape. Turns out he is the new poetry professor and while she never had any interest in poetry, she suddenly wants to understand why he is. Layla throws herself into a class she doesn't understand and tries to impress the professor. The more she interacts with him the more the two press into each other like heat seeking missiles. The problem is Layla is still in love with her best friend that she forced to sleep with her and then abandoned her. And her professor, Thomas, has a wife who doesn't seem to want him to even breathe in her direction. The loneliness and longing to feel something other than it sends the two of them on a crash course into bad choices and a relationship doomed to fail. Can two broken and unloved souls find solace even for a moment in each other?

I have never really read a book that like this. Most romance books tend to turn away from cheating because of how taboo it is. People don't want to read about a couple who are likely doomed to fail because they are in love with other people. Especially not when one is married, even to an emotionally distance wife. I thought I would hate that subject matter out of sheer principle. However, I saw how lonely and hurt Thomas and Layla were and wanted them to find some sort of happiness. Throughout the book I was dreading the ending. I just had a feeling that in the end Thomas's wife would turn things around and he'd be fully invested in her again. Even Layla seemed resigned to this face. She was willing to sacrifice her own happiness to give Thomas what he needed in that moment and didn't care how things turned out for her. 

Layla was so chaotically unhinged that I worried for Thomas sometimes. I feel like if she wasn't willing to let him go at any point, she would hunt him down and there would be nothing he could do about it. But even being as crazy as she claims she isn't, she was still a character I found endearing all the same. 

I think Saffron Kent wrote a darkly poetic work of fiction that I gobbled up in a single night. I was lost in the way Thomas and Layla worked through their feelings and everything that was intertwined. 

Book Blitz with Excerpt + Giveaway: The Magical Tea Shop by Aimee O'Brian @aimeeobrian @XpressoTours

The Magical Tea Shop by Aimee O'Brian

Series: Charmed Love #1

Publication date: January 7th, 2025

Published by: Tule Publishing

Synopsis:

In the small town of Hazard, finding your soulmate might require magical intervention.

Ivy Wayland has a bet with her sister who says you can't have it all--success in business and love, but not both. Since opening her tea shop, Ivy knows where her priorities should be, but she has her heart set on her landlord. All her life, she's heard the family lore about how their antique cookie press infuses homemade cookies with so much love that the recipient will fall head over heels for the giver. Ivy decides to take the chance.

Jaxon Langford is ready to move on. The only thing stopping him from selling up is concern about how some of his small business owners would fare with a greedier landlord. When one of his enthusiastic tenants brings him a tin of delicious-looking cookies, he's charmed. He takes the cookies to his baseball team's practice, only to watch them be devoured without getting so much as a bite.

Suddenly, Ivy has her pick of the town's eligible bachelors--except Jaxon. How can she prove her sister wrong and win Jaxon's heart?

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Excerpt

Ivette Wayland caught her breath. With the sun shining down on him, Jaxon Langford always caught her just a little unawares. He only lived upstairs, but every morning she found herself anticipating his first appearance of the day. She gazed through the plate glass window of her cozy tea shop as his little black Scottie dog scampered to keep up with his long strides. Jaxon halted just outside her door.

Would he enter?

She ached to run her fingers through that molasses-brown hair, still damp from the shower and sparkling like sugared ginger crinkles. It was ridiculous how much she yearned to touch him. He was her landlord, for goddess' sake. Ivy reined in her longing. Jaxon paused on the sidewalk and quickly stepped over to hold open the door for the tiny, elderly Hazel Bestwick, president of the Hazard Historical Society.

Please come inside, Jaxon.

A couple of young boys on their way to school, backpacks swinging, asked him a question. Jaxon leaned down to answer. He fist-bumped the taller of the two boys and grinned. Jaxon's smile shot straight to her core. As if sensing her watching, he glanced at the window, trying to see through sunlight bouncing off glass, his eyes the color of a well-steeped Irish breakfast tea.

She let out a little sigh. What she wouldn't give to have him for...

"Focus," said a voice behind her.

Ivy jumped and blinked twice to bring herself back to reality. "You have customers. Remember your goals."

Her older sister's constant criticism put her on the defensive. Ivy swung abruptly to face her, causing her high blonde ponytail to smack her own cheek. She shoved it back. "Business is steady."

"My business is steady." Holly drew herself up straighter in her pink bakery smock smoothing a hand over her flawless updo before sweeping an arm out to draw Ivy's attention to the nearly empty tearoom. "Your business is slow. And he..." She flapped her hand toward the window "...is a distraction to success. You can't have it all."

Having lived in both California and Texas, award-winning author AIMEE O'BRIAN now resides in the beautiful wine country where she writes dark, sexy, funny romance. With her three children grown and experiencing their own adventures, she and her husband are free to explore the world. When she's not reading, writing, or planting even more flowers in her garden, she can be found stomping through ancient ruins and getting lost in museums.

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Book Blitz with Excerpt + Giveaway: Avenge Me by Tamela Miles @XpressoTours

Avenge Me by Tamela Miles

Publication date: December 30th, 2024

Synopsis:

Hands Clean: Afterburner

A costly mistake, that set in motion a horrific chain of events, seemingly have Lili paying for eternity. One being, walking the world's oldest streets and dirt pathways, has the power to save her -- if there is any of her soul left to save.

Witch Bitch: Assassin

To the people in Mason's world, Luna deserves every bit of sympathy as his grieving girlfriend. But does she, really? A long buried and probably best forgotten secret fuels the fire of a vengeance that keeps Mason alive and guarantees the demise of unfortunate others.

GPS

Zayne is having a bad week. He's lost his girlfriend, his part time job, and he's failing two classes. The only bring spot in his life is time spent in his car, talking with his technologically enhanced GPS. The navigation system seems to truly know and understand him. It also knows things, dark things, that may put him on the path towards an evil force that just won't quit.

XO

Lauryn is not the girl she used to be. Her demanding life as a struggling, single mom takes its toll and leads to a night out with friends and poor choices -- choices that open a door to an otherworldly force that's straddling the fine line between not so good and ungodly.

Hotel Paper

Las Vegas is losing its charm, but Zach and Paris decide to stick around for one more unforgettable night of sin. He finds himself in her embrace in the darkest of ways and begins to question how well he knows Paris -- and how well he knows himself.

**This is a short story collection that is closely related to Tamela's last release, Kiss Me Deadly

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Excerpt for XO

She knew from the way the young woman lay splayed on the wet pavement, her chest rising and falling unevenly, that she was dying. Even if she could call emergency services, they wouldn't arrive in enough time to save her life. Sicaru`'s eyes were drawn to the woman's chest, and she marveled at the simple act of her drawing breath. She hadn't taken a breath in many years.

"Help me, please," the young woman croaked, blood trailing from her mouth to her chin.

Sicaru` dropped to her knees next to her and grasped her hand tightly. "You're dying. You know that, right?" She shook her head slowly. "There's nothing I can do for you," she said quietly. "But there's something you can do for me. Let me become you."

TAMELA MILES is a school psychologist with Ed.S degree and a graduate of California State University San Bernardino and California State University, Dominguez Hills. She is also a former flight attendant. She grew up in Altadena, California in that tumultuous time known as the 1980s. She now resides with her family in the Inland Empire, CA. She's a horror/paranormal romance writer mainly because it feels so good having her characters do bad things and, later, pondering what makes them so bad and why they can never seem to change their wicked ways.

She enjoys emails from people who like her work. In fact, she loves emails. She can be contacted at tamelamiles@yahoo.com or her Facebook page, Tamela Miles Books. She also welcomes reader reviews and enjoys the feedback from people who love to read as much as she does.

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Review: Saved by My Stepbrothers by A.K. Rose & Angel Lawson

Saved by My Stepbrothers by A.K. Rose & Angel Lawson

Series: Family Confessions #3

Publication date: November 28th, 2022

Pages: 214

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

Who killed Olivia Davenport?

After years of being on the run, Kate Stevenson knows the only way to save her stepbrothers and their friends from a life of hunting, is to solve the crime that consumes them.

Using her investigative skills, Kate digs into the past, uncovering secrets and truths about the Davenport family that may destroy them. There's a darkness that follows the women at Davenport Manor and the closer she gets to solving the crime, the more danger she puts herself in.

But danger isn't unfamiliar to Kate. She feels the thrum of it in her blood, the taste of it on her tongue, and the men in her life have trained her to take care of herself.

How far will she go to solve this murder? And will the five of them survive the outcome?

Saved by my Stepbrothers is book three in the Family Confessions a dark, why choose, romance by Angel Lawson & A.K. Rose.

Available at:

Review:

If you can't beat them? Join them. Kate has decided that hunting with her stepbrothers and their friends is the way she wants to go when it is clear she will never be able to leave their sides. Putting all her skills to use she starts poking at old wounds and seeing what festers to the surface. While her stepbrothers may appreciate her holding them to their mission, she may be getting in deeper than she should. In addiction, the FBI is starting to recognize the influx of males going missing in the area and has an inkling that Detective Higgins and his friends may have a lot to do with it. Davis is under a lot of pressure to keep the FBI unaware of the Davenport mission while also fancying that maybe he could step up in the world of law enforcement but to betray his family would destroy him. When Kate starts to catch on to Davis's situation he punishes her harshly to the point where the family seems to be falling apart. But that isn't the only threat to the group. Olivia Davenport's murderer is still out there and if Kate doesn't find him soon, he might find her instead.

I like getting to see the men start to realize that Kate is more than just their favorite play toy to torture and manipulate. She became important to them and they became important to her. Whether that was Stockholm Syndrome or simply her realizing that she was a big a monster as them and embracing who she was, I don't know. I think this book brought all the frustrations to an end as well as tying up a lot of lose ends. There were a lot of red heron additions that could have been left out as they didn't really provide any real intel into the investigation that Kate was conducting, but I suppose adding more characters to be the potential big baddie she is hunting for would throw off some readers. I honestly felt that the person who killed Olivia was who they were from the start. From the minute the ointment was applied I had my finger pointed their way. But it was interesting to learn how petty such a massive crime actually was.

I still don't like Davis. In fact, if he had died at the end of this book, I would have celebrated. 

Paul will always be my favorite. He was the most calm and reasonable aside from Oliver and I loved how he derived comfort from tending to Kate and providing aftercare for her. I think he was one of those types who could let the beast off the leash at times but hid the animal well behind cool and collected bravado. 

This book was a nice end to the series but once again I struggled to really know who's side Kate was on. Was she with the guys? Was she out for herself? She had lied so many times and manipulated the situation over and over that I had a hard time knowing whether she was actually all in with the group or if she was just biding her time until she could throw another one of them under the bus and try to escape. I think if her loyalty was a little more defined in either her inner dialog or something then I would have been able to believe her when she said they were a family and she'd never leave them. 

While I would have liked a bit more from the two amazing authors, I can understand that sometimes not all series are as good as others. That doesn't make me love their work any less just don't think this series is their best works. It was on the low end of middle-of-the-road for me.