Reviews by Erin O‘Quinn

Start with four very dead young girls, none of them Catholic, all bearing parts of a rosary. Add a sinister dark-clad man with a revolver, a priest with more than one secret, a former cop who has conveniently left no trace of himself, and a sick, cunning serpentine brain behind all of it. Stir in a sizzling, erotic attraction between ace reporter Samantha Copperton and hardened cop Andre Rodriguez. Try not to cringe at the masturbatory yearnings of another man who desires Sam in and out of his dreams, and a raven who always seems to watch over the grisly proceedings with “wings of doom.” What do you have? A cocktail for brutal, serial killings and lust that is too potent to control. You have the hugely entertaining LOVERS AND SAINTS. I will not give away the plot any more than I have. But I warn you, readers--this book moves with blood-pounding tension from start to finish. You will be stirred by the sensuous love scenes. But even more, your blood will hammer to the pulse of the ominous Gregorian chant that the killer slips into Sam’s CD as he draws ever and ever closer to his final prey.

Add to cart

(Rating 4.3) In my imagination, author May Water is a long-haired, rose-cheeked sprite with no love at all for convention and a huge passion for people. She is a bit of an actor and very much a charlatan, a jokester and a serious writer. Yes, I imagine May at her May pole, dancing around the fluttering ribbons festooned with flowers and calling to rising and falling seabirds, calling into life a tale of long ago love between two engaging people, but with a bit of a modern flair. This particular author May of my imagination cares not a whit what any other romance writers may hold as strict convention, for she has her eyes set firmly on an inner spirit. Her character Marewyn is a kind of enchantress, versed in herbal lore and given to visions of several past lives she has lived with Jann, her Magnificent King. And in between and around them dances Sir Erick, a grinning musician who loves the two of them, and who only once enters a small game of threesies. The sex is rampant and specific, sensual, hot, demanding. It is masturbatory, it is mutual, and just that one delicious time it is triple, involving Erick as Jann looks on. So I would call May Water’s book hot and erotic, all the while it is soft and magical--a tour de force of modern and ancient, of demure old-timey dresses with see-through Victoria’s Secret bodices. Read this book if you want to enter a world of a stubborn, sensual King and his saucy, sexy and loving lady Marewyn, a world of Danish longships, of runes and wild stallions and ancient rituals--a flagon of old wine with a zesty modern twist.

Add to cart

When I pick up a contemporary romance, I want to read about characters who interest me, characters who really could exist in real life, characters who sound and act like living, breathing human beings. I guess you could say that without interesting characters, I don’t care whether they make love or not, or whether they ever fall in love. Keeping that in mind, let me say from the outset that I really like Professor Brooke Johnson and Ranger Travis McTeer. So when these two individuals careen into and off each other, leaving sparks flying, I get interested; when they finally come together in a satisfying coupling, I put a virtual bookmark on those chapters; and when they pass that magical threshold when I know they are perfect for each other, even under conflict and stress, I stay interested until the closing paragraph. I give Jan a 5 for pure sexiness of writing. The sex scenes, especially the role-playing BDSM, were titillating and believable. Their sensual discovery of each other’s bodies was slow and tactile, leading us on to deeper delights. The discrepancy between their dimensions was handled with light humor and sensitivity. My concerns are few. I thought there was a little too much repetition (for instance, I got a little peeved when Travis called her “babe” for what seemed the 50th time). The “saw it coming a mile away” conflict with the vacuous sister was a little contrived. Finally, I wish that Brooke and Travis had been in that ranger tower much longer, really snowed in as the title promises. There, we would have discovered a little earlier the reason for his “Bear” nickname as he took her, even with his broken ribs, out of her ivy tower of academia and welcomed her to his own, very tall, tower.

Add to cart

Please give this a 4.5 for well written plus very erotic Whoa, cowboy! After fifty pages of teasing and almost-falling, I fell hard. Well, Wendy and I fell hard... when rodeo cowboy Jackson finally found the right way to approach the beautiful rancher, a woman fifteen years his senior. He had just wrenched her away from another man, and he felt very much the hero. Now, he had to confront Wendy as a real person, as a widowed mother of two near-grown daughters, a dog-hard-working rancher facing the ruin of her ranch who would accept nothing from any man. Mmmm, Stacey Espino certainly knows how to pace the erotic shimmers and trembles and awakening tremors of a woman. Once you start Midlife Ménage, I promise you that you will not set it down casually and have to remind yourself to finish it later. Wendy McCay is a fully-realized character. She is independent, tough, self-deprecating, lonely and scared. Jackson, only 29 years old, sees in her a woman with “history written on her skin and knowledge in her eyes.” Only trouble is--Wendy cannot seem to escape the prison she has made for herself, the cold isolation of widowhood, the determination to conquer the world on her own terms. The muscular, handsome and cocky cowboy Jackson seems to have all the right ingredients to bring her out of her sexual igloo. But her neighbor Wade, another strong man who lives near her, has loved Wendy for fifteen years. He has the money, and he has the desire to help her. And besides, Wendy has been attracted to him for years, too. But she has been too bottled up to return more than a smile. She recognizes his love and even begins to fall for his hand outreached in a gesture of help, and more . . . Which of these alpha males will win in the battle for Wendy? They have already admitted to each other that it will be a cock-fight, and may the hardest one win. In a surprising twist, the men decide to put up a unified front (so to speak), and finally Wendy is ready and eager to accept both sensual men--not one at a time, or on alternate nights, but at the same time. The resulting ménage is hard-core hot and sex-plosive, leaving nothing at all to the imagination. But the fact that the main character is a sympathetic and appealing woman makes the reader almost enter into her pleasure zones. That’s a trick that Espino has pulled off superbly, making us feel very good indeed when at last we close the book on her happily-ever-after. My rating is really a 4.5, but there is no option for half-way measures on the rating scale!

Add to cart