Review of Unfiltered and Unlawful: by Payge Galvin and Ronnie Douglas
Unfiltered and Unlawful by Payge Galvin and Ronnie Douglas
Payge Galvin has always wanted to be a writer and feels incredibly lucky to be the head co-writer of the amazingly hot UNFILTERED series. It all began during a spa weekend with Payge Galvin and eleven of her best friends (and a few���okay, a lot���of Cosmos), when talk of the sexy books they loved to read turned into dreams of the fabulous stories they’d love to write. A plot slowly emerged: twelve strangers, a pile of dirty money, and a dead body���and one crazy plan to write the sort of books they would want to read, together.
This is, at its heart, a love story. Oh, sure, there’s also great���I mean REALLY great���sex scenes, believable characters, a murder, drugs, a cover-up, and enough references to unrequited love to fill a boxcar headed out of Rio Verde, where most of the action takes place.
But Sasha���the twenty-something lead character���is party to a murder in the coffee shop in which she works as a barista. In fact, she and twelve others who are in the shop when the murder goes down are all equally complicit in the crime when they steal the man’s drug money���$100,000, split twelve ways.
The incident���which is capped by the innovative cremation of the remains by a customer whose family just happens to own a funeral home���sparks a need for Sasha to get out of town. But she can’t go alone. She needs to take her borderline abusive ex-boyfriend with her in hopes of starting a new life away from the druggies who are bound to come along and want their money.
Can she domesticate Tommy, the bad boy she just can’t seem to stay away from? Or will she finally consummate her smoldering attraction to Adam, Tommy’s cousin? He’s tall, muscular, and every girl’s dream wrapped in tattoos from head to toe. He’s also attracted to her, but, as luck would have it, he knows that���as his cousin’s main squeeze���Sasha is off-limits.
Without revealing too much, Sasha does find herself finally in a secluded location with Adam and the sexual tension is so thick you couldn’t cut it with a sharp condom wrapper.
“I arched my back, my breath coming in short gasps as need grabbed me by the throat. This was so wrong, but that didn’t matter to me anymore. Nothing mattered but the feel of Adam’s skin against mine, of his lips skimming over me. He trailed kisses down my body, his tongue flicking out to tease me with the promise of what he would do next.”
Okay, so maybe there’s more than just tension here. Sasha tries so hard to keep her friendship with Adam strictly platonic, but the battle is an uphill one. Does she ultimately lose? Will the drug lords find Sasha and kill her? The suspense is delicious, and the author spins it out well.
This book is for every single female���and married, too, I suppose���who likes their sex scenes hot, explicit and steamy. I didn’t find the sex offensive or off-putting in any way. After all, the reader gets caught up pretty quickly in the excellent descriptive passages detailing Sasha and Tommy’s dysfunctional but highly erotic relationship. And sure, the pace of the plot lags a bit as Sasha goes through about ten orgasms in a row, but who cares?
I won’t spoil the ending by revealing whether or not she and Adam finally get together, or whether the drug dealer’s friends ever catch up to her���not to mention the police, who don’t seem to wonder where one of their premier drug kingpins has suddenly disappeared to. Suffice to say that you won’t be dissatisfied with this book overall, if it’s your kind of read.
