Unintentional Virgin by A.J. Bennett

Book Summary -

Book provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

Length - 203 Pages (DNF at 50)

Published by - A.J. Bennett

My Rating - 1 Star

Blurb

Karma Points is cursed. Cursed with a stupid name and the inability to lose her virginity. She's on a mission to lose her virginity before she turns twenty if it's the last thing she does.

One night, her good friend Eva brings her to an underground club where Karma meets a tattooed bouncer. He’s far from the clean-cut type she normally falls for, which makes her think this finally might be the night she crosses the threshold of womanhood.

Excited, she goes home with the bouncer named Jax and as always, her dreams crash down once again. Jax cannot believe she is willing to give away her virginity to a stranger she met at a club. As the only son with five sisters and a widowed mom, he can't morally go through with it, even though he's never been more tempted in his life.

Unwilling to let her walk away he strikes a deal. Karma has to spend three weeks dating him and then decide if she wants to have sex or walk away.

Review 

Ohhhhhh, where to begin? The fact that I didn’t finish 50 pages in or the lackluster and spectacularly annoying characters? 

Lets see...Firstly, Karma Points isn’t cursed. Oh no, she is damnably, bloody annoying. Infuriatingly immature for an almost 20 year old, she behaves more like a fifteen year old. She is ignorant, self-involved and so narcissistic that it made even me aware of it!

They say that ignorance is bliss, well if I was as ignorant and blissful as Karma, then maybe I could’ve enjoyed this book, or at least been able to read it all the way through to the end. The fact that her BFF (and quite possibly, ONLY friend other than her father and father’s boy-toy!) didn’t even know she was a virgin shows me that this book wasn’t thought out real well.

In the very least it didn’t help me believe they were BFFs, so no points there. Not to mention the creepy and completely out there moment where Karma rings her Dad for advice on what to wear to lose her V-Card!!! Oh yeah, that happened - gag!

Then once we’ve dissed on Mummy dearest and announced that we’ve been in therapy since the beginning of time because of parental issues (no surprise really when Daddy turned out to be gay and Mummy is a self-involved Bikini/lingerie model - gah!) as well as chased around the poorly treated pet dog, Princess, we’re on to meeting the main man of the hour - Jax.

As first interactions go, this one was a doozy. No, no, not in that instant attraction, primal awareness kind of way, this was one EPIC fail. No chemistry, no pull. Nothing. Zip, zilch...nada. Unless you count Karma making some comment about the bouncer smiling. Seriously, insert over exaggerated eye roll right here!!! If a bouncer’s smiling, then darling, he’s not going to be good at his job, which is to look intimidating and lethal. Duh!

So after nothing happening with the guy that will end up being the love of her life (I presume since I didn’t finish.) we then go through a myriad of whiplash. From scoping out potential hotties at the bar to considering becoming a nun and buying a chastity belt. She hasn’t even spoken to anyone and she’s already ready to throw in the towel. Does she realize that her cherry isn’t going to magically be popped? She’s desperate (supposedly) to lose her virginity, yet so far, I haven’t seen her even try and do anything about it. 

Then she’s abandoned by Eva and starts sulking that her BFF doesn’t want to help her...help her with what? Holy cow balls! Grow a pair, walk up to a guy and say, “Do me!” THAT is all it takes, REALLY!!!

Then we have to wonder if she’s ever interacted with other human beings when she approaches a guy who is hunched over a drink looking all broody and thinks to herself, “Yes, this could be the guy who is going to screw my brains out tonight!” My neck still hurts from how hard I was shaking my head.

Finally we move back onto Jax. “He was thrilled that she remembered him. How pathetic was that?” Uh, pathetic enough that I’m revoking Jax’s Man-Card and taking his testicles away for good measure since he CLEARLY has a vagina! And then it becomes even more pathetic when Karma tells him that she can’t get laid...Pity fuck anyone?

It was at this point that I couldn’t read on any longer. I’d already checked half a dozen times, sure that I was further into the book than I actually was and I couldn’t do it to myself any longer. 

Karma is supposedly cursed, I say she’s the harbinger of her own misery and fate, but in all honesty, I’ll leave it up to you to make up your own mind. 

Madame and The Whorebag Express: The Night Circus

Madame and The Whorebag Express: The Night Circus: Because we are all readers, we decided to start monthly book discussions. As an introduction, we picked The Night Circus by Erin Morgenst...

Book Review - Ruined by Tracy Wolff

Ruined by Tracy Wolff

Didn’t finish at 30%. No surprise really when I discover that here we have yet, another abused woman. This time though, I had NO idea that this theme would be in the book, and after reading to about 20% and wanting to put it down because of the sheer mind numbing nothingness going on, I forced myself to at least give it another ten percent. And yet, here we are…

Ruined is supposed to be for fans of Bared to You by Sylvia Day, which I consider myself to be, so when I started reading this book and it opens up with her whining and being surprised that her brand spankin’ new Louboutin heels are giving her blisters and hurting her feet, you can imagine my reaction...

She meets Ethan in a scene that almost reminds me of undercover boss in reverse. The woman admits that she’s googled him before, yet she doesn’t recognize him since he’s wearing…wait for it…boardshorts. I had no idea that they could make a person’s face look so drastically different. I do believe I might need to research this new found information!!!

Dude buys her a blender and strawberries, the ungrateful cow takes the blender back but keeps the strawberries that it seems her roommate has gorged herself on….Yep, this is really riveting stuff, especially when the author has managed to write in such a way that there is no chemistry between the characters at all. 
You want an example???
So he’s just kissed her for the first time and here is the quote: “The tip of his tongue slides gently along my own, circling slowly, slowly, slowly.” I’m just going to pause it right there for a minute to point out two things. One – The word tongue is one of the most un-sexiest words in the world. If there hasn’t been a list put out with tongue on it, then there should be. It. Is. Not. Sexy. And Two – writing slowly, slowly, slowly is making reading this kiss even more awkwardly painful and, yes, you got it, SLOW!!! We get it, he’s savouring her, teasing her, tempting her…would you look at that, those three examples could have worked instead of slowly, slowly, slowly. 
Now onto the rest of the quote: “Licking along the top of my tongue, then the bottom before moving on to the inside of my cheek, the roof of my mouth. He plays with the frenulum between my upper lip and my gum, and I shudder a little-no one’s ever done that before and it’s shocking how good it feels.” 
NO, what’s shocking is that someone thinks THIS is sexy!!! And don’t worry love, I shuddered too, cause the whole thing was creepy. Honest to God, who catalogues everything that goes on while you’re kissing? If you’re able to think about where the guys tongue is and what he’s doing with it, then clearly, he’s doing it wrong!!!

Now we get on to the fun bit, the ungrateful cow. She’s not only ungrateful, she’s also convoluted. In her first scene with Ethan we discover she doesn’t like blueberries. Really, doesn’t like blueberries and yet in the scene where he’s still kissing her from above… “He tastes like spearmint and lemonade. And blueberries. Always blueberries. On him, they taste delicious. Sweet and tart and oh so addicting.” Ummmmm….double take, say what???

Then there’s this line: “I’m stubborn, more than strong-willed enough that I can usually outlast the best of them-“ Ahhhhh…No! You’re Not!!! This is the woman who so far has given in to her roommate over the shoes, who gave in and drank a blueberry smoothie even though she doesn’t like blueberries AND who allowed her boss to give her a project way over her head and then let everyone in the office give her a hard time over it. 
If you’re going to have a line like that in your story, then please, please, please, (see what I did there) make sure that you have the goods to back it up. There is nothing more annoying than an author believing their character is strong and independent yet has written a weak willed co-dependent. It was at this point that I put the book down and decided I couldn’t take it anymore. 

There is a lack of emotional connection between the reader and the main character, which flows through to the other characters. The action that there is, is mind numbingly boring and the overtly obvious hints that she was abused we overdone. We get it, but subtlety works best for these kinds of things.
As someone great once said: Anyone can put words on a page, but it takes a true author to tell a story. In this case, it’s just words on a page.
1 star.

Trouble by Samantha Towle - Book Review

Trouble by Samantha Towle

As I write this review, I’m reminded of the great accomplishment that has been achieved here. No, it’s not that the book is that good – it’s not – it is in fact, the actuality that I have managed to finish a book for the first time in nearly two weeks. And when you read as many books as I do, THAT is something to be considered an accomplishment!!!

Trouble, though, is anything but. It is poorly edited, boring, iPad throwing-ly annoying and as cliché as everything else that I have read lately, the difference however was that it was written semi-decently. THAT is the only thing that helped me get through the mud pile and into the wide open space of What-to-read-next-ville.

The storyline is the same old, same old. An abused woman runs from her abuser to greener pastures (usually in Texas or Colorado), in this case to search for her mother, and falls in love with the first guy she meets.

Yep, I told you it was cliché. 

…He’s so hot. His eyes make her panties melt off and she has never felt like that with any other man…blah, blah, blah. See, I told you - boring.

Stuff happens and they get shit on but they end up living happily ever after when she forgives him for something totally unforgivable. Did I mention in this book the male lead, Jordan, spends a lot of his time jealous of his dog? Yeah, so that actually happened…

The fact that this is another, in a long line of books with similar themes that I either haven’t enjoyed or have flat out hated, makes me wonder why books about abused women keep on being published? 

Someone had to have decided that - like vampires and shifters in the late naught-ies or casual and light BDSM in the early twenty-teens - we as an audience supposedly want to read this kind of thing. The thought of the person that started this particular trend makes me want to track them down and hit them over the head with their own book! 

I don’t read to relate to women who have been traumatized by their own upbringing, or by ‘no fault of their own’, I read to lose myself in some fantastical, whimsical adult fairy tale of drama, angst and hot sex. It’s hard to get turned on when all you can do is wonder if the chick that’s about to get laid is going to flinch when he touches her somewhere, or you’re expecting her to at any minute put the kibosh on his plans to gets laid because she’s having flash-backs to what happened with such and such. 

Sure, I chose to pick up this book. And, yes, I did consciously read it. But the reasons behind my choice are two fold; One – It was recommended to me by not only Goodreads but also amazon.com as something I would like since I had read and rated another book. Two – I was hoping that the tags and ratings on Goodreads were actually accurate for once and the book would be as good as the rating it’d been given. So where Goodreads’ accountholders have given it a rating of 4.11/5 stars, I’ve given it 2.5. And again, that’s despite all the crap and shit in this book!!!