Monday, March 26, 2018

Book Reviews: The Raven Room & Savage Bonds

Here's a series I don't know how to feel about.

The Raven Room - Ana Medeiros

Anything you can imagine. Everything you crave. For the members of The Raven Room, it’s every fantasy fulfilled. But for some, that desire is a matter of life and death. 


Drawn by needs he cannot control, Julian ventures to The Raven Room, a secret and exclusive sex club in the underbelly of Chicago. It goes beyond sex. It goes beyond kink. The Raven Room is the only place where Julian finds release from the dangerous urges that threaten to destroy the successful life he’s worked so hard to build. 

When the police link the Raven Room to the death of a young woman, it threatens to expose a number of powerful people—people who would kill to stay anonymous...

Meredith’s body can’t get enough of Julian. He has opened her sexual horizons to tempting new possibilities. But out of bed she’s an aspiring journalist, and The Raven Room is the story she’s been looking for. By writing an exposé on the club and its elite clientele, she plans to launch her career. 

As Meredith embarks on a sexual journey into the forbidden world that Julian inhabits, questions emerge, and dark appetites threaten to swallow her whole. How much can she trust the man who has laid bare her erotic nature and how much will she sacrifice in order to protect him?

It's been a long time since a book made me gasp in an uncomfortable way. Almost to the point that I was ready to put the book down and not finish it, but I did because I was so close to the end anyways.

I don't know how to even describe this book, to be honest. It's not a love story, and it's not really about the relationship between Julian and Meredith at all, they are really good friends who happen to have sex periodically. It's not really about Julian and Alana, who have the most bizarre and absolutely brutal sex I have ever read (and that's saying something). There's Meredith trying to write a story on The Raven Room, we see a little bit of what happens there, but it's tame compared to what Julian dishes out for Alana. We learn about Julian's rough beginnings and these twins he misses? Pines for? I have no idea. Then there are girls being murdered with ties to The Raven Room. The whole thing is all over the place and it was hard to know what this book was really about. It certainly isn't as described because honestly, Meredith's role in her "sexual journey" is such a minor part of the book it seems not worth noting at all.

I'm going into book two feeling uneasy and uncomfortable, I can't imagine Julian getting worse but I think that's where we're heading.

   



Savage Bonds - Ana Medeiros

Journalism student Meredith Dalton is driven to launch her career with an exposé on The Raven Room—an illicit and exclusive sex club hidden in the shadows of Chicago’s Chinatown. 

But Meredith's also driven by desire for her lover, Julian Reeve, a card-carrying member of the club who has expanded her sexual horizons. When Meredith uncovers evidence that the recent murders of two women are connected to The Raven Room―and possibly to Julian—only tracking down the true killer can prevent her from an impossible choice between her two passions.

Unsure who to trust, Meredith zeros in on the killer and a web of organized crime. But what are the consequences of diving deeper and deeper into a dangerous world unwilling to relinquish its secrets?

Alright, this book made a little more sense to me and it didn't feel as if the author was trying to go in several directions all at once. In this book we focus more on Meredith, which is what I thought we were going to do in book one but no, that was all Julian. I actually had to take away all the sexy times so I could appreciate the suspense part of this book, which could have been so much more if it didn't get clouded with the sex. Sure, it's erotica and it needs the sex but this would have been great if that was taken away and this was just a suspense with some sex in it. Does that make sense? It's a bit slow moving which almost made it a DNF, but I wanted to know about Tatiana and her ties to Thompson. I wanted to know what the heck is happening and of COURSE- it ends on a damn cliffhanger. So now I have to wait for book three, but there isn't enough suspense to keep me waiting for it. It's not one I'm going to set a release date alert on.

Overall? I'm giving this one 2 out of 5 stars, an improvement from book one but not tremendous.

   

1 comment:

Heather J @ TLC Book Tours said...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this book for the tour.