Sally Bend's Blog, page 37

Fetish & Fantasy Freebie Friday – Putting the TG in TGIF!

Well, if it’s Friday, then it must be time to bend our way into the weekend with Fetish & Fantasy Freebie Friday!

Every Friday I search through the free titles on Amazon, looking for those that might be of interest to similarly bent readers, fans, and lovers. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still download the titles through one of Amazon’s free reading applications.

Please do be sure to check the price before downloading anything, as most freebies are limited time offers, and some are specific to certain regions.

While you’re on Amazon, if you’d like to support my stories, could I kindly ask that you give these a read/review? 

Enjoy!

Book Review: The Queen of Days by Greta Kelly (fantasy)

Title: The Queen of Days
Author: Greta Kelly
Publication Date: October 24, 2023
Genres: Epic Fantasy
Protagonist Gender: Male/Female

An epic adventure. A flawed-but-lovable family of thieves. Fallen gods. High stakes. Greta Kelly promises a lot with The Queen of Days, but even if the tone was much darker than I anticipated, it was still a solid read.

If I were to have any complaints about the book, they would be pacing and emotional balance. It starts off so good, sucking you right into the story, with Tass (the Queen herself) a character who commands your attention, but then it becomes mired in backstory, squabbling, and really heavy emotional turmoil/manipulation. It picks up again before the end, with some great action scenes to close it out, but I struggled to remain engaged during the middle of the book.

As for the main character, Balthazar, I’m very much of two minds about him. I like that he’s a sort of fallen royalty desperate for revenge, a man who is decent and caring and loyal, but also given to following his heart rather than his head. He’s flawed in so many ways, and there are times it’s hard to respect him, much less like him, but he’s realistic. There’s also the issue of his tragic romance which I thought was going to be pivotal, with a late-stage betrayal of change-of-heart transforming the relationship and giving the story some life, but it never goes farther than convenient plot point. Otherwise, Zee and Edik weren’t really standout characters on their own, but I liked the portrayal of their marriage within the context of this found-family band of thieves.

That said, when it was fun it was tons of fun, with some great action scenes involving the promised heists and battles with fallen gods. It’s often intense, almost cinematically so, and the climax contained a few surprises that I thought worked very well. I wish it’d had a different tone, either less darkness and angst or more focus on redeeming those emotions, but that’s the reader in me who prefers hopeful, awe-inspiring fantasy to grimdark gloom.

Rating:  

My sincere thanks to the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Can’t-Wait Wednesday: The Queen of Days by Greta Kelly

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted here to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about that we have yet to read. Generally they’re books that have yet to be released. Find out more here.

My choice for this week is a new standalone release from an author I have quite enjoyed, a fantasy tale of deadly magic, dangerous heists, and found family.

The Queen of Days

by Greta Kelly
Adult, Fantasy
Hardcover and eBook, 384 pages
October 24, 2023 by Harper Voyager

From Greta Kelly, the author of the Warrior Witch duology, comes The Queen of Days, an epic adventure that weaves together a flawed-but-lovable family of thieves, a battle between fallen gods, and stakes high enough to cause vertigo—perfect for fans of The Lies of Locke Lamora and Six of Crows.

For Balthazar and his family of thieves, stealing a statue during the annual celebration of the god Karanis was just a good bit of fun…or a way to stick it to the governor who murdered his parents. And yeah, the small fortune in reward doesn’t hurt—even if his boss also hired the mysterious Queen of Days to join the crew as “the weapon of last resort…”

Whatever that means.

But Bal doesn’t know the ceremony isn’t simply empty words and dusty tradition; it’s true magic. The kind of magic that rips open a portal for the god himself. Only the idol that Karanis planned on using for a body now lies broken at the Queen of Days’ feet. And half of it is missing.

With the aid of a lovable brawler, a society lady turned bomb maker, a disgraced soldier, and a time-eating demon, Bal must hunt down the missing half of the statue if he has any hope of earning his money, keeping his crew alive…and perhaps even saving all of humanity. But as his journey sends him racing through the city—and across realities—he discovers that doing all this might just doom the city.

The city be damned. It’s time to kill a god.

Goodreads

Book Review: A Lady to Treasure by Marianne Ratcliffe (romance, lesbian)

Title: A Lady to Treasure
Author: Marianne Ratcliffe
Publication Date: Oct 15, 2023
Genres: Romance
Protagonist Gender: Female

Sapphic Regency romance is fast becoming a favorite genre of mine. There’s something about the setting, the costumes, the mannerisms, the social expectations, and the simplicity of life that I find comforting, and I’ve always been fascinated by history, so I love it when authors use the romance to more deeply explore a particular aspect.

In A Lady to Treasure, Marianne Ratcliffe delves into the worlds of business and finance, exploring how family obligations can place such weight on both personal freedom and professional responsibility. In an era where women were largely prized as marriageable commodities, Louisa and Sarah are both young women reaching far above what politely society feels should be their station. Louisa has been sent off by her father to find an eligible suitor, one with money and connections to rescue the family business, with no consideration given to the fact that she’s better suited to manage than her father. Sarah, meanwhile, is doing her best to avoid the question of marriage as she single-handedly cares for an entire family estate, trying to preserve it against the spending of her stepmother and gambling debts of her stepbrother.

Both young women are headstrong, independent, and determined, and that creates friction between them from the start. They chafe at one another, rub each other the wrong way, but there’s a deep personal respect there – albeit one mixed with professional disapproval. The romance here is slow-burn in every sense, a relationship that must first develop into an awkward friendship before being challenged and thwarted time and time again by . . . well, the ugliness of men. Theirs is neither an easy life nor an easy journey, and you’ll need to be patient to see the romance we sense eventually realized.

Along the way, though, there is a wonderful intersection of family drama and gender roles, one you’ll find yourself emotionally involved in very quickly. There’s a lot of anger and frustration to the story, an underlying sense of unfairness that left me feeling very protective of Louisa and Sarah, but there are some lovely secondary characters in their families who do provide ample moments of warmth and love.

A Lady to Treasure was more slowly paced (and a tad longer) than I expected, and the emphasis feels more like a work of historical fiction featuring a queer romance than a story that is a predominantly historical romance, but it’s captivating, well-written, and emotionally engaging. Worth the read.

Rating:   

My sincere thanks to the author for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Fetish & Fantasy Freebie Friday – Putting the TG in TGIF!

Well, if it’s Friday, then it must be time to bend our way into the weekend with Fetish & Fantasy Freebie Friday!

Every Friday I search through the free titles on Amazon, looking for those that might be of interest to similarly bent readers, fans, and lovers. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still download the titles through one of Amazon’s free reading applications.

Please do be sure to check the price before downloading anything, as most freebies are limited time offers, and some are specific to certain regions.

While you’re on Amazon, if you’d like to support my stories, could I kindly ask that you give these a read/review? 

Enjoy!

Fetish & Fantasy Freebie Friday – Putting the TG in TGIF!

Well, if it’s Friday, then it must be time to bend our way into the weekend with Fetish & Fantasy Freebie Friday!

Every Friday I search through the free titles on Amazon, looking for those that might be of interest to similarly bent readers, fans, and lovers. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still download the titles through one of Amazon’s free reading applications.

Please do be sure to check the price before downloading anything, as most freebies are limited time offers, and some are specific to certain regions.

While you’re on Amazon, if you’d like to support my stories, could I kindly ask that you give these a read/review? 

Enjoy!

Fetish & Fantasy Freebie Friday – Putting the TG in TGIF!

Well, if it’s Friday, then it must be time to bend our way into the weekend with Fetish & Fantasy Freebie Friday!

Every Friday I search through the free titles on Amazon, looking for those that might be of interest to similarly bent readers, fans, and lovers. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still download the titles through one of Amazon’s free reading applications.

Please do be sure to check the price before downloading anything, as most freebies are limited time offers, and some are specific to certain regions.

While you’re on Amazon, if you’d like to support my stories, could I kindly ask that you give these a read/review? 

Enjoy!

Book Review: Red, the Wolf, and the Woods by Scarlett Gale (romance, fairy tale)

Title: Red, the Wolf, and the Woods
Author: Scarlett Gale
Publication Date: Sept 1, 2023
Genres: Romance, Fairy Tale
Protagonist Gender: Female

Oh my, this was just marvelous – a fun, fanciful delight from beginning to end! Red, the Wolf, and the Woods is a contemporary fairy tale, an updating of the original story that’s full of magic and romance. It’s a narrative delight from page one, told by Scarlett Gale with a sense of humor that’s both self-aware and tongue-in-cheek.

Red (who does indeed wear a red hoodie) is a farmer, a dog trainer, a hiker, and a dutiful granddaughter. She’s a woman who doesn’t put up with nonsense, but who loves her time alone in the forest – which just happens to be the shortest route to her grandmother’s house. When she meets a rather large talking wolf one afternoon, it’s cause for caution, certainly a surprise, but nothing that saying “good boy” and tossing some dog treats can’t handle.

The story hits all the key points of the original story, but twists them into something sweet, and extends it into something romantic. I won’t spoil any of the delightful surprises, but there’s joy to be found as much in the story as the telling. It’s a slow-burn romance that takes through the kinds of tenderness fans of Scarlett know she does so well, offering something that’s softly, casually, naturally female-led. No real kink or fetish, just a natural realization of a young wolf’s first love with a more experienced partner.

Red, the Wolf, and the Woods is a quick read that will have you smiling from beginning to end. It’s the best kind of fairy tale.

Rating:   

My sincere thanks to the author for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Bradley Jones’s Chastity by Giles English (erotica, chastity)

Title: Bradley Jones’s Chastity
Author: Giles English
Publication Date: July 29, 2023
Genres: Erotica
Protagonist Gender: Male

One of the things you have to understand about Giles English is that while he writes very sexy stories about chastity and female domination, he also writes very, very smart stories about the same. There’s thought behind his stories, discussions about what feeds a fetish or defines a desire, and nowhere is that more prevalent than in Bradley Jones’s Chastity.

On the surface, this is a fun (sometimes cruelly so) tale of a young man in long-term inescapable chastity, chasing the high of pleasuring random women with his tongue and various strap-ons while longing to love ‘normally’ again with the impending release of his own pleasure. You see, in this alternate near-future Britain, the government installs free chastity devices that are inescapable, come with a contract (5 years, 10 years, or permanent), and block all sensory pleasure, including anal. It’s a commitment for those who choose to become chaste, and it’s given rise to an entire subculture of women who prefer their lovers that way.

There’s a lot of emotion to the story – including a lot of pain – and a lot of sex. The pain comes from one lover who has a fetish for BDSM, a sadist who loves inflicting physical pain almost as much as she does emotional. Those scenes may be hard to take for some readers, coming with blood and riding the line of dubious consent, but there is a purpose to them.

And that purpose leads me back to the intellectual aspects of the story. Giles asks a lot of questions about where our fantasies and fetishes come from, how and why we express them, and what they ultimately mean. He also explores the question of whether submission can be a selfless act, a sacrifice in belief of dominant women, or a selfish one, only venerating them because the submission is enjoyable. It’s not just a story about what it means for men, though – he also confronts what makes a woman a dominant or a sadist, what they get out of male submission and chastity, and how they view the ideal relationship.

Granted, I don’t necessarily agree with some of the conclusions drawn, but that’s fine because no two people embrace their fetish the same way or for the same reasons. Bradley Jones’s Chastity is a fascinating story in that respect, a passionate one in terms of the sex, and an emotional one with the rollercoaster journey he embarks upon to find love, romance, or just a relationship. Very well thought-out and presented.

Rating:   

My sincere thanks to the author for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Temp by Donna Jay (romance, lesbian)

Title: The Temp
Author: Donna Jay
Publication Date: July 28, 2023
Genres: Romance
Protagonist Gender: Female

Donna Jay is one of my favorite authors of lesbian (WLW) fiction. It doesn’t matter whether it’s on the erotica or romance end of the spectrum, she consistently weaves compelling stories of wonderful characters and deep, sincere, meaningful relationships. You feel like you know her characters, like you’ve been following their story for years, and become fully invested in their lives and loves.

With The Temp, she sprinkles in a bit of erotica (and some softcore BDSM), but this is a romance novel – an office romance, in fact, with a power imbalance where personalities subvert roles (and the age gap). It’s Carla, the younger temp in question, who is the aggressor, the tease, the pursuer, and the seductress, pushing Vivienne’s buttons with ease. Vivienne may be the boss, but she’s hesitant, all too aware of office consequences whether things go well or not, and while she may be a leader behind the desk, she’s a submissive in the bedroom.

The chemistry between the two of them is hot, right from the start, as a night of speed-dating pushes buttons, excites minds, and sets expectations that quickly have to be confronted and explored when Carla shows up the next day as Vivienne’s new office temp. There’s a cat-and-mouse aspect to their flirting, a delicious play of double entendres and inappropriate touches, all hidden in plain sight behind Carla’s joking admissions of romance. Their dialogue is absolutely sparking, and the way each touch is described is wonderful.

This is a story about so much more than just office flirtation, though. It’s a story about the weight of past loves, the obligations of family, and the need for human connection. It’s when the women get out of the office and into each other’s lives that the sweet part of the story blossoms . . . and where the sorrowful moments of hurt and regret sting the most. Donna Jay always makes her characters work to explore their innermost selves, to discover their wants versus their needs, and whatever obstacles she puts in their way are there to make them stronger.

The Temp is such a good story, a sexy, heart-warming romance with a sense of fun throughout. It’s got a few surprises before the end, but all part and parcel of finding our happily ever after.

Rating:   

My sincere thanks to the author for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.