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

Compromising Positions by Dara Edmondson

Meet Crystal, Patsy and Maureen - three friends in their forties trying to run the obstacle course of mid-life. Crystal thinks she has the perfect marriage until she starts fantasizing about a handsome coworker. But when she suspects her husband is having more than fantasies about another woman, she digs in her heels and fights for what's hers. Patsy discovers her Neanderthal husband Bud having sex with his bowling buddy and wearing women's underwear. When Bud tries to take more than his fair share in the divorce, Patsy sets out to humiliate him into submission. Maureen has enough trouble trying to survive life with her rebellious teenaged daughter Rhianna. When she starts dating the teacher Rhianna has a secret crush on, the fur flies.

When I first started the book I had a huge "OH PLEASE NO!" moment, lol, but as it turned out it was really okay and I loved the way Dara opened up her story. You were hooked right away.

I enjoyed the dynamics between the girlfriends a lot. I always love close friendships in stories because we get to see and hear what is going on with them and their love life from a different angle. There are the thoughts in their heads, and what they share with their significant other, but what they share with girlfriends? That's always a hoot.

So let me tell you what I thought of each of the girls and their stories.

I never really clicked with Patsy. It's not that I didn't like her, but that she annoyed me. I mean yeah, I felt bad for her situation, even though it was kinda funny, but the way she dealt with it made me mad. She kinda just rolled over at first, doing nothing. I'm sorry but if that was me I would have done SOMETHING to get revenge right off the bat. But hey maybe I'm just spiteful like that. lol.

She moved in Crystal and her family, so you know there is going to be some boundary issues. I know these women are really close and all, but if they were that close wouldn't Patsy have known certain things? Like the fact that Chrystal had just lost a ton of weight and still struggles to keep it off? So why would she then go and purposely make all these fatty foods when Crystal even points out that she has been trying to go the healthy road with her family? It's like she was oblivious to the most obvious things.

And I don't want to sound snobby or anything but unless I was off on what I read, Patsy was in her early 50's. I swear it said she was married to Bud for 10 years and she got married when she was 42, correct me if I'm wrong. And she seemed so loud and obnoxious, and big. I by no means am a small woman. I actually struggle quite a bit with my weight but I just don't like reading about big women that don't care that they are big. I don't know, guess it's just one of my weird quirks. I mean age is always an issue with me and my books and it's not an authors fault by any means. Roz in Black Rose by Nora Roberts was the first older heroine I ever liked. And size goes the same way. I mean look at Night Play, one of Holly's favorite SK books, I could not get over Bride's size! But hey we all have our quirks.

So it was just little things like that bothered me. I also didn't like how uneducated Patsy sounded all the time. I know, I know she wasn't dumb, she had a degree. But she sounded that way! She was always talking with this "I'm so dumb accent". Actually that's a bad way to say it, cause I don't care that she had an accent (although I prefer if an author just says what kind of accent they have instead of writing with the accent. But again a personal preference), it was more just her way of talking or the words she used. Like always using ain't, stuff like that. I don't know. Guess I just wasn't really keen on Patsy and her part of the story.

I loved Maureen (I just hated the nickname Mo, YUCK!)! But I'll tell you now if I were her I would have smacked my daughter upside the head! And Holly I soooo know what your ewww moments were! Don't worry everyone, they ended up fine, but I can't tell you or it will ruin the book. lol. But Maureen was great, her personality and her issues with who she was attracted to had me laughing.

Rhianna, Maureen's daughter, annoyed me a lot. But I think she was supposed to. However I don't think the way her character just changed overnight was believable. And I think she acted a lot younger than her age. I don't really see a 17 year old doing the things she did. Well not all of it.

The only thing with Maureen's story was, I kinda felt it was left undone with one part. There is a major thing that is going on with Maureen in the book and when it comes full circle you're so happy for her. But then it's just done. Nothing else. I would have thought we would have seen more on that part, especially with her new friend, Hema, involved. But whatever I still liked Maureen the most.

Crystal was my favorite. That was until I found something out about her toward the end of the book that made me really cringe. I won't say what it is. But it is something that I am very, very against so it made her really unlikable for me. But I know everyone doesn't have the same beliefs as me so it may not be an issue for everyone.

Crystal and Wes were so great together and the issues she started to have were very believable. I loved watching her struggle with her weight and attraction to a different man, and her fight for a job she wanted and her husband. She was very real, and her feelings toward Patsy staying with her were very realistic. I liked that a lot.

All together? The book was good. I think what I was missing was an emotional attachment. I wasn't very emotionally involved, and I like to cry when characters cry.

I will definitely look forward to more of DE's work in the future. I'll just be looking for more emotion, or a better way of sharing the feelings, because I KNEW how the characters were feeling I just didn't feel it myself.

Grade C+

After The Night by Linda Howard

Hero: Gray Rouillard
Heroine: Faith Devlin
Category: Contemp
Page Count: 327, pb
Grade: B-
Buy It: Here or here.

Faith Devlin: A poor, outcast child in Prescott, Louisiana, she'd always adored the town's golden boy from afar. But he called her white trash that sultry Southern night when his rich, respected father disappeared, along with her pretty Mom. Now Faith wanted to hate Gray Rouillard...not to feel a powerful surge of desire. But she couldn't quench her passion, any more than she could hide the truth about the past she had waited so long to unravel.
Gray Rouillard: Even when he raised hell, he did it with style. Reckless, charming, and backed by Rouillard money, Gray controlled the town of Prescott -- and Devlin was a name he never wanted to hear again. But when he gazed at Faith Devlin, all he saw was a swirl of tangled sheets and her silken flesh beneath him. To care for her was impossible, unthinkable...because Gray Rouillard planned to use all his power to ruin her.

Okay for some reason I've been having trouble putting together reviews lately. And this one was no better, so I'm warning you now this is the only way it was happening, and there might be spoilers. Well there will be, I couldn't explain myself without them.

What I loved: How funny Grey was with Faith after they got together. When they were in bed and she told him about the 'talking in French' when he was with another woman and not with her. So the next time they made love he purposely talked to her in french. I just loved how he was with her. For the most part. He cracked me the hell up in the bathroom "God damn woman! Can't you tell I'm busy in here!" (or something like that)ha ha ah.
I love Faith's red headed temper! She didn't back down, even when she was scared.
She rocked!

My Issues: (there are way more issues than loves) Monica has major issues, and they were never dealt with. She just gets to forget that she was pretending to be her mama for seven years and screwing around with a old family friend? And she said to Faith that she sent the notes and cat but would never do what Alex did. Yet didn't she go to her house with a gun that night??? Hello!!!! She should have been put into a crazy house.
Alex said he killed Guy by accident....ummm how do you shoot someone in the head by accident? And yeah he could have been lying but why did it seem that people still bought it in the end?
Grey never said sorry to Faith for calling her trash that one night. Never explained why he took his anger on her mother out on her.
And I didn't like how Grey cared so much about his crazy mother all through the book, at the expense of Faith, then in the end just told her to shove it basically. She was crazy from the get go.

In ending: Even though I had more issues than loves for this book it ended up being pretty good. It still had me intrigued the entire time. Even if I didn't like the way it was tied up. I really wish it had an epilogue, I wanted to see what happened with Micheal/Monica, Grey/Faith, and the mother, you know after the weddings. But Grey was hot, Faith was awesome so overall it was good.