Cover Reveal: Crossing The Line

**This cover reveal was supposed to be posted on Monday. My apologies to the author and TWCS for only posting it now; I've been extremely sick.***

Crossing The Line (Daniels Brothers #3)

Summary

Detective Paul Daniels has spent four and a half years mourning the loss of his wife. He’s been doing his best to raise their daughter, Chloe, with the help of his in-laws. When they inform him right before Thanksgiving that they’re going to be moving over two hours away, Paul finds himself without anyone to watch Chloe—especially when he’s called out to a crime scene in the middle of the night. Little does he know that meeting his baby brother’s girlfriend and her sister, Megan, will change everything.

Megan Carson has taken a few wrong turns in her life, but she’s doing her best to get back on track. When she meets Chloe, the little girl swiftly worms her way into Megan’s heart. The opportunity to help Paul out and watch his daughter appears to be a blessing in disguise. She quickly volunteers to be Chloe’s live-in nanny.

Everything is working well until the three of them head back to Ohio for Chris and Elizabeth’s wedding. Paul has a little too much to drink during the reception, and he and Megan end up sharing a heated kiss. When he wakes up the next day, he has a pounding headache but remembers nothing.

Megan, however, isn’t willing to forget. Over the past few months since she’s been playing nanny, her feelings for Paul have changed. He is everything she never knew she wanted, and now that she knows there might be something there, she’s going after what she wants—Paul.

Sherri spent most of her childhood detesting English class. It was one of her least favorite subjects because she never seemed to fit into the standard mold. She wasn't good at spelling, or following grammar rules, and outlines made her head spin. For that reason, Sherri never imagined becoming an author.

At the age of thirty, all of that changed. After getting frustrated with the direction a television show was taking two of its characters, Sherri decided to try her hand at writing an alternate ending, and give the characters their happily ever after. By the time the story finished, it was one of the top ten read stories on the site, and her readers were encouraging her to write more.

Seven years later, Sherri is the author of seven full-length novels, and one short story. Writing has become a creative outlet for Sherri that allows her to explore a wide range of emotions, while having fun taking her characters through all the twists and turns she can create. She is most well known for her Finding Anna Series about a young woman rescued from being a sex slave by a wealthy Dominant. Sherri’s eighth novel, Crossing The Line, is scheduled to release September 2014.

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Review: Red Zone

Title: Red Zone
Author: Sherri Hayes
Publication Date: February 7, 2013
Source: Publisher via Net Galley
Summary (from Goodreads)
 After a case ended badly for Rebecca Carson, she’s losing her mind sitting around her apartment waiting on her superiors to allow her to return to work. Since she was a teenager, the only thing she’d ever wanted was to join the FBI. Now that dream was in danger.

Gage Daniels has made a pretty good life for himself. A nice house. A career he loves. As a professional football player, he’s used to getting almost everything he’d ever want with just the snap of his fingers. This includes women. A well-timed smile is usually all it takes to attract the opposite sex, especially in Nashville.

When a stalker threatens Gage, the team owner calls an old friend, Rebecca’s ex-partner Travis Hansen, to help protect his star quarterback and find the person responsible. Hansen offers Rebecca the job, and she jumps at the chance. It’s work, and it will get her out of her apartment. How bad can it be?

Posing as Gage’s girlfriend, however, isn’t as easy as it seems. The man is relentless. Rebecca must work to protect Gage while staving off his advances. She’s there to do a job, nothing more. The last thing she wants is to be another notch on a hotshot athlete’s belt.

As the stalker continues to up the ante, Rebecca finds it harder and harder to keep her distance from Nashville’s star quarterback. He isn’t what she expected in one of the city’s most notorious playboys. Now all she has to do is keep him safe until they can find his stalker, and hope she doesn’t lose her heart in the process.

I’m not a football fan, but after reading Red Zone all I wanted to do was watch men in tights tackle each other—much to my husband’s joy. He’s been trying to get me interested in football for years. I think he wants to send Sherri Hayes a gift basket for making this miracle happen.

I admit that I was a little hesitant to request Red Zone. The summary was catching and made it sound like a good read, but the only book I have read by this author was Slave and I wasn’t a huge fan of it. So yes, I was a little worried that I wouldn’t enjoy it and end up giving it a not so favourable review. But I’m so glad to say that wasn’t the case. And have you seen the cover? Yummy.

I can’t say that I was a fan of Rebecca’s. To me she was just so one dimensional.  Maybe it was because she had a hard time expressing her feelings or was unsure of how to feel about everything, but she really just seemed to lack emotion most of the time. Even when, as a reader, you knew she did care she was just so reserved that it was hard to connect with her as a character. It was clear she cared for her sister and even for Gage, but it would have been nice to see a little more depth to her.

It also seemed a little off for an FBI agent she didn’t really seem to know all that much about being undercover when it came to looking and acting the part. It was a minor thing, yes, but it just bugged me. I would think it would be second nature for her to know that if she was playing Gage’s girlfriend that she should look the part. I get why Hayes had her the way she was, so the hero could draw out that side of her no one else saw, but it just made her seem very unprofessional. 

I did love Gage, though. I have a thing for cocky, arrogant asses who are actually sweethearts beneath their cold layers. Although, I found myself wishing he was older the entire time. Not too much older, like 5-10 years, maybe. He’s twenty-six, so early to mid-thirties at the most would have been better for me. Maybe it was because of his actions or the things he said, he just seemed older than his twenties. Although being an athlete I know the older you get the sooner you’re out, so making him young made sense. (Plus, he’s the youngest of four brothers) Either way I still loved him.

If you like a little mystery with your romance than you should pick up a copy of Red Zone.  It is the second novel in the Daniels Brothers series, but it does stand alone. I haven’t picked up the first novel, but I think Behind Closed Doors will be the next one added to my (very long) TBR list. And with two more brothers in the family there is potential for two more books—I’m hoping for a “Paul and Megan” story to follow.

Review for Slave

Title: Slave
Author: Sherri Hayes
Publication Date: July 28, 2011
Source: Bought
Summary (from Goodreads):

Stephan has lived the lifestyle of a Dominant for five years. After several rebellious teenage years, it gave him the stability and control he had been seeking after his parent’s death.

As president of a not-for-profit foundation, he knows what his future holds and what he wants out of life. All that changes when a simple lunch with his college friend and Mentor, Darren, leads him to buying a slave.

Thrust into a situation he never thought he’d be in, Stephan can’t walk away. He is compelled to help this girl in the only way he knows how.

Brianna knows only one thing, she is a slave. She has nothing. She is nothing.

Can Stephan help Brianna realize that she is much more than just a Slave?

                                 Review

I picked up Slave because of all the rave reviews everyone was giving it. Yes, again I was tempted by other people’s opinions. I really have to stop picking up BDSM books because of the reviews. Why? Because (again) I was slightly disappointed. It was an okay read, very quick which I liked since it did its job and distracted me for the couple of hours it took for me to read. But I was just left…wanting.

We’re introduced to Stephan, a Dom in the BDSM world. He’s told by a friend that there’s a young girl in need of rescuing. A slave to a very cruel and abusing Dom. Stephan is not about buying his Subs but once he meets the young Brianna he knows he has to help her and get her away from Ian. Thus, he purchases his first human being. Brianna is scared and scarred and sees all men as the enemy. The enemy that will beat, starve and basically rape her. Can she find the good in Stephan and become the Sub, not the slave, he desperately wants her to be?

We don’t know because the story just all of a sudden ends. And that’s when I find out it’s only one of three books (I believe) in the Finding Anna series.

The writing wasn’t bad. Hayes has a way of pulling you in even when you feel like the book isn’t really all that captivating. It’s labeled Erotica but, while there is mention of Brianna’s past horrible experiences, there is no erotica in the story. There’s no sex of any kind, erotic or not. Now, while I’m glad Stephan kept it in his pants and didn’t damage the poor girl any more than she already was, when I pick up an erotic book, I want an erotic book. I guess the kinky stuff is coming later on, but who knows?

There was no back story to the characters and I guess that’s where I felt disappointed. I like knowing who the characters are that I’m reading about. I like to get into their heads and their lives and know what makes them tick. We find out nothing about Stephan and Brianna, and I found that very frustrating. I want to know how Stephan got involved in the BDSM world, I want to uncover Brianna’s past and find out exactly how she came to land in Ian’s hands when she appears to come from a very normal background – the one and only thing we did learn about her.

I get that Hayes wants to keep us guessing and wondering so we’ll be inclined to read the next book in the series, but I believe that she could have given us some insight to the characters and still kept the mystery for the next books.

I’m conflicted on the ending too. It felt like a chapter ending, not a book ending. I liked it, but at the same time I said out loud, “That’s it?”

Child trafficking isn’t something that’s wrote a whole lot about. I think the whole thing is still very taboo in books. I haven’t come across very many fictional books anyway, so I did find it interesting that Hayes mixed slavery with BDSM. It’s a unique take on things, but that’s the take that bothered me. BDSM is supposed to be about people wanting to be in that world. Brianna was sold and forced to be a slave, and even when Stephan bought her in the purpose of saving her he still messed up. Instead of collaring her and trying to turn her into a sub he should have been alerting the authorities and getting this girl the right kind of help, not the kind of help he felt she should have.

I think Hayes wrote the BDSM world in a very misleading way. There still could have been a story if Stephan had done the right thing. Brianna could have been given help, set straight and sorted out the mess she went through and Hayes could have sent her back to Stephan whole and in full control of what she wanted.

Because really, we’re supposed to believe Stephan is a good guy, and while I do see good qualities in him, isn’t he just as wrong as her previous owner to buy a human and keep her against her will?

1/2