Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Review + Excerpt: Something Reckless by Lexi Ryan


Adult Contemporary Romance

Release: December 22, 2014

Blurb:

He talks dirty to me, but I don’t know his name.

He wants to tie me up, but I don’t know his face.

He turns me on, but I couldn’t point him out in a crowd.

I’ve fallen for an anonymous stranger, and tonight the anonymity ends. Tonight I want more than typed secrets and texted promises. I want something reckless. Heat. Passion. The thrill of being entirely possessed.

Because I suspect this anonymous stranger isn’t a stranger at all.

Lizzy Thompson met riverrat69 online through Something Real, a service promising to deliver meaningful relationships by forbidding its users to share names or photos until they’ve reached a certain benchmark. She was looking for love. He was researching an investment. They hit it off. Talked and flirted, hid behind screen names and cartoon avatars.

Now they’re breaking the rules and meeting in person. But Liz is prepared. She’s picked up hints and followed clues.

She’s ninety-percent convinced she’s discovered the identity of her dirty-talking online friend.

She wonders if her ex-lover Sam Bradshaw knows her identity too.

When she rolls the dice on one reckless night, her chance at something real could crumble.


Review:
I. Am. Completely. Obsessed. 

I started Something Reckless around bedtime. I thought I'd read a chapter or two and then go to bed, but who am I kidding? I've never been able to do that and the next thing I know it's 1am, the book has ended, and I'm left with a book hangover that hurts so good. My only complaint has to do with my own stupidity-- how am I just now reading a Lexi Ryan book? After reading Something Reckless I looked her up and saw all that I have been missing... and a lot of it has to do with characters in Something Reckless. I should point out that you don't have to read those books to understand Liz and Sam's story, but since I'm in so deep with New Hope's people, I really need to read about the other bumpy journeys to happy-ever-after. 

Okay, so enough gushing... Something Reckless gave me all the feels. I can identify with Liz. She's a single, mid-twenties woman, who isn't quite sure what she wants out of life career wise, but she knows that she wants what everyone else around her seems to finds so "easily"-- love, marriage and children. She, in a way, becomes desperate for those things that she makes a couple if-y choices that get her fired and down a friend or two. Then the online dating starts and let's just saw that New Hope isn't swimming with many eligible bachelors. 

Sam, though bit of a ladies man, is a good guy. He, like Liz, has made some not so great choices, but hey, they're only human. He has known Liz, his little sister's friend, has had her eyes on him for years, but he never acted on it till just a few years ago. Without giving up any spoilers, all I will say is that some drunken things happen, people get hurt, a couple years go by, and there are revelations and lies that are about to build them up and possibly tear them all down again. 

What is great about the way Lexi wrote Liz and Sam, is that even when they are doing certain things, or going about them in a certain way that you know wont be good, you can't help but feel for them and want to hold their hands and support them. It's important to give a character redeemable qualities when they are going about things in not so great ways.  Liz is just trying to navigate life. She's trying to find herself, what she's good at, what she wants, and just when it looks like that has happened, stupid things come to light that could take it all away. Sam, to me, just seems to be wanting to please everyone-- from his own heart, a crazy ex-stripper, and especially his family since his dad is big in politics. 

Needless to say, I loved every second of the beginning of Liz and Sam's story. Now that the whole Tink/River situation is out in the open I'm dying to know why happens next in Something Real. March cant come soon enough!

Happy Reading,
A

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Adult Contemporary Romance
Get the FREE introductory novella to the Something Reckless-- Something Wild!
“You need a good guy. A long-term guy. One who does dates and romance and emotional strings…I’m just an asshole who wants to tie you up, make you come, and walk away.”

Samuel Bradshaw is a man with a reputation—the kind of reputation that should have me running the other way. Instead, it has me searching for the shortest distance to his bed. I won’t be the starry-eyed girl who thinks she can change a man like Sam, and despite what he thinks, forever is not what I need. I need the things he makes me feel, the way he turns me on, and the promise of pleasure in his eyes. This promises to be SOMETHING WILD.
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About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling romance author Lexi Ryan’s novels have been described as intense, emotional, and wickedly sexy. A former college professor, she now writes full-time from her home in Indiana, where she lives with her husband, two children, and a neurotic dog. Find her on Facebook or Twitter to chat about books, TV, and her children’s latest antics.

Website | Facebook | Twitter
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Excerpt from Something Reckless

“You look amazing in this dress. I’ve been pretending all night that there’s something I want to do more than get you out of it.”

“What would you do with me if you got so lucky?”

“I’d keep you up all night, for starters.” He slides a hand into my hair and traces the side of my neck with his thumb. His groan rumbles through me. “Tell me what you came here for.”

I thought that was pretty clear. “I’m wearing extremely slutty underwear. What do you think?”

His nostrils flare and his breathing goes thready. “I think I’m going to have to up my game, because now I want to see it.”

I have to bite back a smile. “Good,” I say. My heart thumps out a beat, probably Morse code for please and thank you.

“How slutty is this underwear of yours?”

I lick my lips. “Oh, it’s damn near whorish.”

“Let me see it, Liz.”

I lift my chin and prop my hands on my hips. “Seriously? That’s all the seduction I get? Let me see it?”

He steps closer until I have to crane my neck to look at him, and holy hell he smells good. “What game are we playing here, Rowdy?” he murmurs against my ear. “Is this the one where we pretend we don’t want each other and sleep alone . . .” His fingers skim down my shoulder and my eyes float closed. “Or is it the one where I make you come so hard you scream my name and tomorrow you act like you want nothing to do with me?”

“Are those my only choices?” I ask, but I keep my eyes closed, focusing on the feel of his rough fingers dancing across my skin. The truth is, I don’t want to play either game. I’m done playing games when it comes to Sam. I’m done pretending I don’t want him when I do, and I’m done pretending our annual one-night stand is enough for me.

“Tell me you aren’t going to run away in the morning. Promise me you won’t shut me out again.”

I don’t know what that means, and I’m too scared to analyze it. My eyes are still closed when he takes my chin in his fingers and tilts my face up to his, still closed when he brushes his lips over mine and when I open under him because I’m helpless to this man’s kiss.

“Promise me,” he repeats.

“I won’t run away.” Then I unzip my dress and let it fall to the floor in a puddle, and my boldness is rewarded. Sam’s lips part and his breath escapes him in a rush.

He steps back and takes me in. The bra is strapless, black lace demi-cups that lift my breasts until they threaten to spill out. The panties—what there is of them—are a thong in matching black lace. Their fine lace straps sit in a sharp V high on my hipbones.

A ringlet of hair escaped my up-do, and he takes it between his fingers and twirls it around. I deserve a medal for not melting right here at his feet.

He hooks his index finger under the black bow between my bra cups. “Did you wear this for me?” His voice is a husky whisper that I can’t deny.

“Yes.”

His fingers skim my belly, trace over my hip, following the lace of my thong behind me to where the straps meet at the small of my back. My breath catches as he takes the fabric path over the curve of my tailbone and down, his fingers bringing every nerve ending to life as they pass. Electric pleasure whips through me.

“Fourteen months since I’ve touched you,” he says. “Fourteen months since I’ve gotten to hear the way you breathe when you’re turned on, since I’ve gotten to listen to you scream as I make you come. Tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

“I’d be lying.”

“Don’t lie,” he says, eyes hot and intense. “Just tell me you want me.”

Copyright Lexi Ryan, 2014
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