Friday Reads | Dance With Me

DanceWithMeFor today’s post, I’ve re-read Dance With Me by Heidi Cullinan. I read it the first time many years ago. I went to check my GR profile and it says 2014, but that’s only because I added it then, I read it long before that, and when the second addition came a few years ago I got that too. Didn’t read it, but hey, pretty cover – don’t judge! – so I have two copies.

I’ve read about half of Ms Cullinan’s books and liked most of them. I most often have a funny thing going on when reading her stories, though. She often puts in a character that’s just too much for me. Apparently, I’m fine with gory violence, dub-con, non-con etc etc, but as soon as there is someone who, say, tries to persuade someone into having a foursome I skim the pages until I’m safely back with just the two characters I want to read about LOL.

This is a lovely story. Laurie is a dancer, all grace and talent. Ed is a former football player who got injured and can’t play anymore. Both men have lost their way and their drive, both are fighting apathy, both are telling everyone they’re fine – they’re not, but together they can be.

Laurie has the most terrible family and the creepiest godfather in the world (though if you aren’t as great a fan of monogamy as I am you might find him hot…maybe. I wish I can unread him LOL)

I love this story despite icy mothers and pervy men, I loved it last time I read it and I loved it now. I wonder if I’m up for Special Delivery again…or maybe Nowhere Ranch (that I also got a second copy of – the cover, people, the cover! LOL).

What are your favourite dancer stories??

books2read.com/DanceWithHeidi *


26153131Sometimes life requires a partner.

Ed Maurer has bounced back, more or less, from the neck injury that permanently benched his semipro football career. He hates his soul-killing office job, but he loves volunteering at a local community center. The only fly in his ointment is the dance instructor, Laurie Parker, who can’t seem to stay out of his way.

Laurie was once one of the most celebrated ballet dancers in the world, but now he volunteers at Halcyon Center to avoid his society mother’s machinations. It would be a perfect escape, except for the oaf of a football player cutting him glares from across the room.

When Laurie has a ballroom dancing emergency and Ed stands in as his partner, their perceptions of each other turn upside down. Dancing leads to friendship, being friends leads to becoming lovers, but most important of all, their partnership shows them how to heal the pain of their pasts. Because with every turn across the floor, Ed and Laurie realize the only escape from their personal demons is to keep dancing—together.


* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

 

FridayReads | Bloodraven by P.L. Nunn

BloodravenI’m not one to re-read books, normally. So far this year I’ve found myself to re-read quite a few, though. Once I opened my folder with ebooks – I used to read epubs on an e-reader and only switched to using the Kindle app on my iPad when the e-reader broke down, so I have hundreds of books I haven’t even glanced at for a couple of years – I’ve found myself oohing and aahing over books forgotten.

One book that will never be forgotten as far as I’m concerned is Bloodraven by P.L. Nunn. I didn’t mean to read it again, but here we are.

Yhalen is captured by ogres and ogres are not nice creatures.

There is a lot of violence, lots of blood and pain, lots of evil, but there is also a political game, a long journey, and a fight for a better life. In a harsh world where no one will do you any favours your worst enemy might become your friend…and maybe even your lover.

This is not a fluffy romance for the fainthearted, it’s slow torture ending with love. I’m utterly impressed by P.L. Nunn’s ability to keep me interested all the way through the 660+ pages that this book is, so impressed by the way I’m getting invested in the characters and how I love them despite all the heinous things they do.

Hats off.

books2read.com/Bloodraven *


6617506A son of a forest dwelling people, Yhalen knows little of the world outside the ancestral forest, until he is captured by a band of ogres on a slave-taking mission. Only grim tales of the barbaric giants had reached the forest, but Yhalen soon learns that even the darkest fireside story only hinted at the brutality of these Northern warriors. He discovers the meaning of true fear at their hands, and only the awakening of ancient magic saves him from destruction.

Surviving ogre viciousness, he finds himself given to Bloodraven, the half ogre, half human war leader as a slave. Yhalen, refusing to bend, soon pays the price for offending prickly ogre pride.

But Bloodraven is no mindless, violent ogrish beast. Bloodraven has an agenda and Yhalen finds himself drawn in the wake into human and ogre politics, into bloodshed and cruelty and into the forbidden magic that is damnation in the eyes of his own people, but which might mean the difference between death and salvation.


* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.