Review: Inside Out by Lauren Dane

The latest "sexy, pulse-pounding adventure"* (Jaci Burton) from the national bestselling author of Coming Undone.


In the wake of an attack that left her nearly dead, Ella Tipton has spent each day putting her life back together. She doesn't have any room for romance, but that doesn't mean she has to stop admiring the scenery.

Sexy security professional Andrew Copeland is no stranger to women, but he knows Ella is something different. Determined to get her to let him in, Andy does the one thing he can think of to get close: he offers her hands-on training in self-defense-and before long, all that skin on skin contact with have them both turning inside out.

While the Brown Sibling series is one of my favorites, Inside Out didn't thrill me like Laid Bare and Coming Undone. 

There's no doubt Ella Tipton and Andrew Copeland (aka Cope, Andy or Andrew, depending on who is speaking) have chemistry and are hot for one another.  I loved that Ella schooled their extended family on Andrew's virtues: his poetry, his art, and his woodworking skills.  I also loved seeing their courtship, the strengthening of their relationship, told via their notes and packages to one another. 

But it was the drama surrounding Erin's pregnancy and subsequent childbirth I kept tuning in for.  Also for Raven, though she affects other characters in such a way, be it positive or negative, I'm not sure why I like her so much. 

I am looking forward to Never Enough (September 2011), the next book in the series featuring the elusive Adrian Brown.

Eagerly Anticipating

Review: Seven Nights to Forever by Evangeline Collins

The author of Her Ladyship's Companion once again pushes the erotic boundaries of Regency romance.

Destitute after her father's death, Rose Marlowe has debts to settle and a younger brother to support. But she also possesses a matchless beauty-one that could command quite a price. Now, every month, Rose spends one week at a decadent London brothel, where she's become a sought-after prize.

Then one night she meets a wealthy merchant. Handsome, kind and compassionate, with a lonely soul that matches her own, James Archer is not her typical client. Falling in love with a client, never mind a married one, is unthinkable. Yet Rose can't help but lose herself as one night becomes seven-and seven nights leads to a chance at forever.

This is a love story, pure and simple.  Sure, the heroine is a courtesan, plying her skills to keep her younger brother in school, and the hero is in a loveless marriage with a shrew of a wife.  So there are some complications. 

Overlook those. 

Rose and James meet.  They spend some time together.  They start to think about one another in their moments apart.  They begin to need one another.  They each want the other.  Those complications I mentioned earlier crop up.  (You knew they would.)  But guess what?  Love totally wins!  And the journey Rose and James go on, both together and separately, is so passionate, so sweet, so amazing, their happily ever after makes the hell they go through worth it. 

(A very special thank you to Dear Author and Berkley for sponsoring the contest in which I won an ARC of Seven Nights to Forever.)