Monday, February 15, 2016

review || ROUGH { review tour } by Emily Minton and Julia Keith


Rough Ebook (1)
Self-Published | February 1, 2016 | Erotic Shifter
The Bear Chronicles of Willow Creek, book 1
★★★1/2

SOURCE: THE HYPE PR


***NO CLIFFHANGER. THE BEAR CHRONICLES OF WILLOW CREEK ARE WRITTEN SO THAT EACH INSTALLMENT IS A COMPLETE STORY AND CAN BE READ ALONE***

Ethan Artair lived his life happily in Willow Creek. Living among shifters, he was able to live free and allow his bear to do the same. Everything changed, the day a reporter came to his little town and made everyone’s life a living hell. As mayor, he had no choice but take a human wife to disprove the reporter’s claim that no outsiders are allowed their town. Disgust filled Ethan when he met his new wife, but his disgust quickly changed to something he never thought he could feel for a human, lust.

Amelia Calder is forced to live with the scars of her parents’ death. While growing up in foster care, her only desire was to see her younger sister be happy. Knowing her minimum wage job would never be enough to care for her sister, she made the only choice she could. She decided to move to a town she had never heard of and marry a man she had never met. Fear filled Amelia when she finally met her new husband, but her fear quickly changed to something else, something she's never felt before, lust.

Can lust turn into love, between a human and a bear shifter?

Rough is an erotic shifter novella. If you don’t like insta-lust that turns into insta-love, a sex starved bear shifter, a virgin heroine that craves her mate, or tons of smoking hot sex this is not the book for you.

{ about karen ferry } .

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USA Today Best Selling author, Emily Minton is a Kentucky native. She is proud to call the Bluegrass State home. She claims she bleeds blue–Wildcat Blue! She has been married to her husband, David, for over twenty years. They share two wonderful children. Emily loves to read and has more books on her kindle than most people could read in a life time, but she intends to read every single one. She has published nine books, but there are many more are floating around in her head. She hopes to get them all on paper before long.
Julia Keith
Julia Keith is a UK native based out of Bradford England but she loves to go back to her family roots in Scotland whenever possible.
Although Trapped With An Alpha is her first published novel, Julia has been a part of the Romance community for years through blogging and reviewing.  Her love of Paranormal Romance inspired her to start some of her own stories and after sharing one with her now Co Author Emily Minton, she decided it was time for the world to meet the characters she had grown to love so much.

{ excerpt } .

AS DISGUSTED as I was at taking a human wife before, my revulsion is completely gone now. The moment I caught the spicy-sweet scent of her arousal, I knew she was mine, my fated mate. She’s the one woman I’ve spent my entire twenty-nine years looking for. Now that I’ve found her, there’s no damn way I’ll ever let her go.

Her brown hair reminds me of the earth after a long rain, beautiful and rich. Her skin is like porcelain, with a few freckles sprinkled across her nose. The scar on her face doesn’t take away from her natural beauty. She’s small, barely above five feet in her sandals. Her body is curvy, with luscious hips and succulent breasts. It’s all I can do not to take her on the floor in front of everyone. My bear is desperate to claim her in front of everyone, making it known that she is taken.

“You’re mine.” I growl out, looking into her jade green eyes.

Taking a step back, a frown instantly mars her beautiful face before she murmurs, “Excuse me?”

Ignoring her question, I grab her hand and pull her through the airport at a swift pace. My eyes roam the space, looking for somewhere, anywhere we can get a minute of privacy. Finally spying a bathroom, I jerk her inside and shout at the men standing at the urinals. “Get the fuck out.”

Within seconds, zippers are up and the men are rushing out the door. Letting her go, I place her at the back wall. “Stay right there.”

Pushing the doors open to each stall, I make sure they’re all empty, before pushing a trashcan in front of the door. As soon as I’m done, I turn to look at the human woman shaking on the far side of the wall. Again the thought “mine” crashes through me and my bear goes wild, clawing my insides in his need to get to her.

She places her hands flat on the wall behind her, never taking her eyes off me. “What’s wrong, Ethan?”

“Not a damn thing.” Walking towards her, I can hear her heart beating in a quick rhythm and smell fear radiating from her. Above that though, I can smell her need for me. She’s in heat, and I’m going to take care of her. I’m going to make her mine forever.

Reaching her, I place my hand on her cheek. My large hand covers the entire side of her face, threading into her dark hair, making her appear even smaller than she is. Tipping her head back, I look down into her eyes and say, “I need you right now, Amelia. I’m sorry, I can’t wait.”

Her green eyes meet mine, and they are filled with both trepidation and excitement. “But we’re not married yet.”

I nearly tell her that I only need to mark her once and we are more than married, we’re mates. Instead, I gentle my voice, “You were mine the minute you got off that plane. A piece of paper isn’t going to change anything. I need you now.”

My eyes are drawn to her slender throat, her pulse beating erratically “We’re in a bathroom. I don’t want my first time to be in a bathroom.”

Her words take a second to register in my brain, and I can’t stop myself from crushing her against my body. She’s mine, only mine and completely untainted. I will be the only man to ever feel the pleasure her body can bring. I take a minute, attempting to control my need, before responding. “I won’t take you here, but I need to mark you.”

She wiggles in my arms, looking up at me with a look of confusion. “Mark me?”

Shit, this is where having a human mate is going to be tricky. She doesn’t understand what I need as a bear shifter. Even after I explain what I am, she may never understand. Taking in a deep breath, I lean forward and run my beard-covered cheek over her scar, letting know it doesn’t bother me. “I want to smell myself on you. No, I need to smell myself on you.”

“What did you just say to me?” she asks, her body shaking with a mixture of both need and fear. Her head may be telling her she should be afraid of me, but the rest is urging her to take me any way she can get me.

Moving my hands to her hips, I pick her up and press her upper body into the wall, forcing her to wrap her legs around me. “I’m gonna lick your pussy, until your taste is the only flavor on my tongue. Then, I’m gonna pull out my cock and come all over you.”

Her eyes flare with indecision. “Uhm… I’ve never. I uhm...”

Cutting her off with a deep kiss, I get my first taste of her as I carry her to the sinks. I continue to explore her mouth, sliding my tongue along hers, while placing her on the counter. Finally pulling back, I go to my knees, spreading her legs apart. Pushing her dress up, I take in her cotton-covered pussy. Rubbing my nose over her mound, I can’t help but breathe her essence in deep. “You smell so damn good.”
 

{ review } .

As the synopsis tells you, this is a story with insta-lust, quickly followed by insta-love. And knowing that going in... Well, it certainly helped.

After Ethan, 'leader/mayor' of the small town that shifters live in -- and only shifters live in, allows a reporter to interview him, asking questions about why the only residents of Willow Creek are direct descendants of the founders, questions start to arise. In an effort to calm those questions, as well as keep more questions from popping up from the new influx of tourists, Ethan decides a plan must come into place and as much as he hates to do it, he decides that the shifters must take human brides/grooms.

Ethan, being the leader, states he will go first. What I loved about him going first was that as much as he hated the idea, he knew it was best for the town. Never in his wildest dreams would he guess that his fated mate would be of human form and not a shifter. He accepts that his bear will be unhappy with never finding it's true mate -- until he starts going through wannabe brides online and his inner bear won't let him move past one woman in particular.

Twenty-one year old Amelia aged out of the system, but with her sister still in the foster home they were placed in, she has been paying her previous foster mom rent so she can stay with her sister Liza. A -- the rent was atrocious and quite frankly, highway robbery, but B -- as much as I loved Amelia's need to keep Liza safe and sound, and not needing to work the two jobs Amelia does and for her to go to school... Honey, girlfriend's gonna be an adult; she can get a job and go to school. So I was a bit annoyed with Amelia on those parts.

Amelia is a bit of the Cinderella of the jobs she's been working at -- with the scar on her face and the poor clothing on her body, people poke fun at her more often than not. When one co-worker laughingly shows her an ad to be a bride, she decides to go for it. Never in her wildest dreams would she imagine what would come from it.

The insta-lust comes quickly after, in a scene that would have had any woman running. Amelia's fear was evident, but her go with the flow didn't quite seem to fit. However, the next chapter was in Amelia's point of view, and her recall of the scene allowed for everything to feel ok to the reader.

I would not necessarily call this an erotica, to be perfectly honest. Sex does take up probably a good 75% of the book, but that doesn't quite fit the erotica category in my opinion. Aside from the insta-lust and insta-love, the story itself was crafted well and the set up from the next book still has me excited to continue this novella series. This was a super quick and easy read, and the sex has the paranormal aspects one expects to find -- the mating, the biting, the claiming. And with that paranormal aspect, insta-love tends to be right in the mix, so it wasn't so much the insta-love that had me questioning parts, but rather Amelia's reactions in the very first Amelia/Ethan scene. We cover two-months' time in the few pages of this story. The time jumps aren't 'boom' in your face so it wasn't necessarily easy to see that we were jumping in time, but front to back, the idea and feel for this book and series was good.


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