Friday, April 27, 2007

Natural Law by Joey W. Hill

Book Grade: B+
Cover Grade: F
Page Count: 499, ebook

The Cover:
Okay really I hate to be mean but WHAT THE HELL WAS ANYONE THINKING CREATING THIS COVER!!!! The woman's hands? Look like skeleton hands, and those nails are just bad. The mans back? Ewwww, it's all freckled or something and his hands look feminine. He's supposed to be this BIG manly man! Nothing about that cover says that. I mean his arm muscles don't even look like muscles, they looks like slabs of fat.

Here's a question that really boggles my mind, why can't they use real people? I mean I'm not at all for people on covers, but someones back would be fine. I just don't get why they did it that way. And most importantly.....does someone actually get paid to make stuff that looks like this?????

I'm sorry but as much as I really enjoyed this book I could not buy it in print with this cover.

From the Publisher:
Mackenzie "Mac" Nighthorse is a highly respected homicide detective and a career cop. There isn’t a dangerous situation that can back him down. However, the personal becomes uncomfortably entangled in the professional when he goes undercover in a high class BDSM club as a male submissive to find a Dominatrix who is winning the trust and then murdering her chosen partners. When his path crosses Violet Siemanski’s, he realizes he’s found a Mistress willing to be his ally in finding the murderess. But Violet is also going to shatter Mac’s shields and make him question who he is and what he wants, a challenge more disturbing than any case he’s ever worked.

From Me:
I absolutely was engrossed in this book. But before we get to my review I need to thank AND yell at Chantal! Thank you sooooo much for recommending I read this book, I LOVED IT! But WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME IT WAS THE SECOND IN A SERIES!!!!! Grrrr. lol. Okay moving on.

Mac is an undercover cop, he's been on the force for 20 years and is as hardened as they come. He's seen it all. He's about as macho alpha male as they come....until it comes to his sex life.

Mac has accepted the fact that for him when it comes to sex he likes to be Dominated. He's a sub and keeps his sex life as private as possible, he knows how the outside world views his sexual preferences and has no desire to deal with it at work.

But a case that comes to close to home forces Mac to make some hard decisions. There is a woman out there, a Dom, that is killing subs. She is gaining the subs trust, going to their house and murdering them. This is tearing at Mac because the hardest thing for anyone into D/s is trust. To trust someone and make a connection well enough to take it to your home is a BIG chance. And these men are trusting the wrong woman.

So Mac does what he has to. He tells his commanding officer that he will go undercover to a club called The Zone, it is the only connection they can find between all the murdered men. He tells her that he'll go in because it's his lifestyle so nobody will know he's on the job.

When he tells her he's going in as a sub she suggests he go in as a Dom since nobody would believe he's a sub as big and manly as he is, when he looks away and says it's best he go in as his real preference she is shocked.

I'll tell you right now this was one of my favorite parts in the book, soooo freaking funny. After his boss is shocked and they finish talking about the assignment she gives him some type of order (I forget what) and he says "yes ma'am"...then this happened:

A smile flirted around his sergeant’s lips.
“What?” he asked, surprised to see her color rise.
Darla gave a little laugh, waved a hand. “I guess I’ll just have to live with the images that come into my brain now when you say that.” At his blank look, she repeated his words. “ ‘Yes ma’am.’ “


I was rolling.

When Mac goes into The Zone he finds way more than he bargained for. He finds the Mistress of his Heart. As he struggles with this realization a murderer gets closer and closer.

I don't know if any of you know how against ebooks I am. I think it just takes away from the whole cuddling up with a book and makes it kinda of a cold sterile thing. If that makes any sense. I mean I don't' feel all comfy and cozy snuggled up to any piece of technology. I love the pages of a book. But anyway, it's not only that. Every ebook I've read, weather it's been a good read or not, has been fairly short and not as deep or detailed as a print book. That's not saying I haven't liked some, I loved Haley's Cabin, and some of the most erotic books I've read were ebooks.

But Natural Law broke the mold for me. First it was about 500 pages and I was jumping outta my skin excited about that. Then when I got into the story I was blown away. We not only got an extremely erotic read with all the D/s play but we got a book that you had to think and wonder who the killer was. We see Mac at work with friends and we see him in the club and submitting to Violet and we see the romance that builds between them outside of the D/s club. And let me tell you it was HOT!

I may still not understand the lifestyle of D/s but Joey W. Hill did a lot of research and even though it's not my sexual preference I very much enjoyed reading it. All of it. I will definitely be getting the book that came before this and all the ones that followed. I can't wait.

Check Chantal's Review out here.
Check out Joey W. Hill here.
And Buy Natural Law in ebook here, or in print here.

Read the Series in Order:
Holding the Cards
Natural Law
Ice Queen
Mirror of my Soul
Mistress of Redemption

20 Comments:

reviewer said...

I'm glad you liked it! I was kinda worried that you might not be into it.

Yeah, I didn't know it was second in a series till I was well into it. Sorry.
I didn't tell you on purpose btw. LOL.

Nicole said...

Yes I loved it! And what do you mean you didn't tell me on purpose! That is soooooo WRONG! lol...

reviewer said...

Because you would have put off reading it till you read the first one. LOL

Nicole said...

BRAT! lol. You know me to well.

Lori said...

Nicole, I gotta warn you, the rest of the books put this one to shame as far as the D/s thing goes. They are pretty graphic, and disturbing if the D/s scene isn't your thing. But Joey Hill is an amazing author, and the books are worth reading even if you skip over a lot of those scenes.

Lori said...

Oh, and I can recommend a couple other e-books that are fantastic if you want well characterized, long, thoroughly fleshed out ebooks. Let me know...

Nicole said...

Lori,
Thanks for the heads up. And YES! I am totally up for some great ebook reads. Maybe for my birthday I'll get an e-reader, or whatever they are called.

Lori said...

I highly recommend Sarah McCarty's Promises series as a first. They are western historicals. Awesome awesome books! Her wenb site is www.sarahmccarty.net and you can buy the books from www.ellorascave.com

And ask your hubby for an ebookwise for your b-day. It's inexpensive and the screen is the size of a paperback so it feels more like a book... no pdfs on it though. You can get html though.

Nicole said...

See I'm so lost, what is a pdf? And I thought html were codes for making templates. See I'm horrible. lol. But I will check out those books. Even if I just use my computer for them. It just takes me a whole heck of a longer time that way.

Unknown said...

I want this, I want this!!


PDF is like a scanned document, through adobe. HTML is just a formatting thing. Like you can send an email in plain text or HTML which allows you to edit the text, put in font changes, underlining, etc.

That's all I can help with though bc I don't know what the heck an ereader is!! lol

Nicole said...

Your right Zeek, she is great at getting into the core of it without moving from the story itself.

Thanks for comeing by, hope to see more of you!

Rowena said...

Dude, I so want to read this, though it kind of sounds like that Lora Leigh book that I tried reading last week, Dangerous Games...I think I'd much rather read this one instead, thanks for the pimp sweetie!

Rowena said...

Oh forgot to add, that is one ugly ass cover, that woman needs some meat on her hands, cause they look hella creepy!

reviewer said...

This is totally 100% different than Dangerous games. DG doesn't even have any BDSM in it. Sure, the Hero talks a lot, but he didn't walk the walk.

Nicole said...

Chantal,
If they aren't going to follow through with the talk what's the point right?

Zeek,
I am so glad you came over here, I haven't chatted with you in forever. And the depth of this book is what drew me in so much.

Wena,
Definetly get this one! But try the one that comes before this first. I haven't read it but if I knew I'd have read it in order.

reviewer said...

Thats one of the things that bugged me about DG. Clint kept going on and on about how kinky he is and how he wans to do all this cool wild stuff to her.
The sex was all pretty vanilla though. If I remember, he might have tied her down once, but thats as far as it went.

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