Review – Taste Me by Tamara Hogan

He wants her so badly he can taste it…

Ever since their tempestuous fling years ago, incubus Lukas Sebastiani has known that siren Scarlett Fontaine was meant to be his. But when you’re a sex demon with an insatiable desire, relationships are…complicated.

Her siren song brings men to their knees…

Rock star Scarlett Fontaine desperately needs a break after a grueling tour. But with murder and mayhem surrounding her band, and Lukas guarding her body, life is going to be anything but peaceful.

Every encounter between them creates more turmoil—and heat—until Scarlett pushes Lukas to the boiling point, and unleashes forces that go way beyond anything she can hope to control…

I struggled with this one. It started off with a lot of potential. Rock star heroine coming off a year-long world tour, exhausted and emotionally spent, determined to confront Lukas and get her life back on track. Unfortunately, it fell short of that potential over and over.

Scarlett has loved Lukas since she was a teen and after she grew up, he was her first lover. When he woke up the morning after, he saw he had left bruises on her and ran away with no explanation. This was the major conflict keeping them apart but when they had sex again for the first time, it was all off page. It picks back up with Scarlett alone in the shower afterward, thinking about how delicately he treated her.

“She felt inexplicably cheated”

Yeah, me too. If this is the major source of conflict, I want to be shown it, not told about it later.

There is also a subplot with a killer. When someone close to Scarlett is killed, she is told about it and the chapter ends. It picks back up 3 days later. I was so disappointed that the chance for some awesome angst was missed.

That was my issue with this book. Disappointment. Disappointment that all the sex scenes up to 75% of the book were fade-to-black, that all the emotional moments were skimmed over. Disappointed that the book is advertised as an urban fantasy but there is no world building. It is briefly mentioned that the supernatural population crash landed on Earth many years ago but doesn’t say where they are from or how they adjusted here. And disappointed that the killer was one dimensional. No idea why he did it or how he did it. He seemed to be just one more throw away plot line.

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Release Date: March 1, 2011
Format: Print and Digital

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Vivian Arend and fated mates

Once a world is established, there are all kinds of fun things an author can do. It doesn’t matter if this is contemporary, historical or paranormal; every book/series has a setting and rules that need to be followed to make the second book fit.

And the third, and etc.

Maybe it’s more apparent in paranormal, but it’s in all series—think about it. If suddenly the contemporary series you love has FBI shooters popping out of the walls when it’s always been about small town relationships, something is going to feel off.

So world building is important, but here’s where it gets interesting from my point of view as a writer. Let’s say I’ve written a series about wolves. Set in the north. And there is sarcasm.

Basic outline, but it will do. 😉

Now that I’ve got that in place, I can explore the world and do all kinds of mischief. I can make my books longer, or shorter. I can bring in characters from old stories, or mix in new variations that still fit within the world rules.

This was the plan for BLACK GOLD: Takhini Wolves #1. I already had established the rules in the Granite Lake Wolves series, and the number one comment about that series was people wanted the stories to be longer.

Hello Takhini! These books are novels instead of novellas. More time for characters to grow, to get in trouble, to drink themselves silly on moonshine. Also, though, more time to play with difficult concepts that don’t fit into a novella length story.

The Granite Lake Wolves have fated mates, which is a trope I love. The earlier stories had dealt with telling mates who didn’t know about wolves, or dealing with baggage, but in Black Gold I got to play with a new, tough reality. Mates who become mates, but haven’t the slightest clue about each other. How can they actually get to a HEA, despite the physical attraction they can’t help feeling?

So, yes, the story starts with a bit of a rush, but it was so interesting for me to watch the characters come into a real, solid, forever and ever relationship in spite of, well, in spite of being mates!

If you want to watch people grow and challenge themselves, and find true love, I hope you’ll try BLACK GOLD, now available in both ebook and print.

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Black Gold
Takhini Wolves, Book 1

Their wolves are howling at the moon. Their human halves are on different planets.

Lone wolf Shaun Stevens’s automatic response to the words “happily ever after”? Kill me now. Yet with all his friends settling down he’s begun to think there may actually be something to this love-and-roses crap.

One thing’s for sure: his dream mate will have to out-cuss, out-spit and out-hike him. So he never expected the one to push his forever button would be a blue-blooded Southern debutante with a voice as dark and velvety as her skin.

When Gemmita Jacobs steps off the plane in Whitehorse, Yukon, it’s about more than her caribou research project. It’s her declaration of independence from an overprotected upbringing. Except there’s something in the air she can’t quite define—something that unexpectedly rouses her mating instincts.

Moments after their eyes lock, the deed is done—and done thoroughly. When the pheromone dust settles, though, all the reasons they don’t belong together become painfully clear.

It’s enough to make a wolf learn a whole new set of cuss words…

Warning: Two strong wolves getting exactly what they deserve. Includes wilderness nookie, shifters being naughty in public places, the Midnight Sun as a canopy for seduction and grizzly shifters on the loose. Oh, and don’t forget the sarcasm.

 

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Ebook: Amazon| Barnes & Noble
Kobo| Samhain | Sony | Apple

Print: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Book Depository | Booksamillion
 | Powells | Samhain

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Vivian Arend: Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

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