Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Romance
Approximate word count: 10-15,000 words
Availability
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on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or
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Author:
Kenady Ray
is the pen name of an author known for her books written under another name in
another genre. This is her first book
under this name.
Description:
“Jake and
Samantha's marriage is sorely tested when Jake is laid off from his job at the
forestry service. Jake's confidence in himself as a man is at the lowest ebb in
his life. Samantha is too exhausted from suddenly becoming the sole breadwinner
to give Jake the moral support he needs. The one thing they haven't lost is
their attraction to each other but is great sex enough to keep their marriage
intact through this difficult time?”
Appraisal:
Hot Devotion is the first installment of a
planned four part serial. I’d describe it as a romance, because it more or less
fits the criteria for that genre. But it also flouts some genre conventions. I’ll
start by giving my summary of a typical romance book. Girl meets boy. Sparks
fly. Things get rocky. Girl learns some lessons about life and love. They work
things out and get to the HEA (happily-ever-after) ending.
In Hot Devotion our heroine, Samantha, and
hero, Jake, have presumably already been there, done that, because they’re
already married. However, their marriage is in a rocky spot because of Jake’s
unemployment. So we’ll modify those first two steps of a typical romance to be
girl remembers what attracted her to boy in the first place. This is followed
by a few sparks, some rocky spots, and some lessons learned.
Then we hit
the climax and discover where being a serial shakes things up as we come to an
end that is a happy one for the way it brings the major threads of the story to
a positive conclusion, but introduces another conflict to act as a cliffhanger
and incentive to snatch up the next installment as soon as it is available. I’m
expecting each installment will follow a similar pattern until we hit a true
HEA at the end of the last volume. Or maybe not.
As for the
story, I like the main characters and want to see them get together, which is a
must have in the genre. That I could understand the feelings, motivations, and
actions of both the heroine and hero was a positive as Ray avoided the pitfall
of having one or the other do stupid things that can frustrate the reader in
order to create those rocky spots mentioned above. And the biggest difference
from the norm, that the characters are married, is a twist I can see splitting
romance fans. Some won’t like it while some should love it. Now I hope Ms Ray
doesn’t make me wait too long for Episode Number Two.
FYI:
Some semi-spicy
scenes.
Format/Typo Issues:
My review
is based on a pre-release beta version.
Rating: **** Four stars
1 comment:
Oh, I think this sounds interesting! :)
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