Format read: ebook provided for review by the author
Release Date: 19 March 2012
Number of pages: 78 pages
Publisher: Lyrical Press
Formats available: ebook
Purchasing Info: Goodreads, Author’s Website, Amazon, Lyrical Press
Blurb:
Want to get your man talking? Give him booty!
Desperate times call for desperate measures. And Shay LaCosta is pretty desperate. She’s wrecked her blissful marriage of five years by demanding she and her husband Dylan have a baby. What the hell was she thinking? She knows she was wrong and she’s ready to set things right, if only Dylan will let her. Bet he can’t shun her Booty Camp offer: delicious, white-hot sex in exchange for what’s going on inside his brain.
Dylan may be macho and stubborn, but he really does miss his wife. A little of Shay’s pushing gets him past their estrangement and into her web of seduction. She seems to have an erotic week mapped out to perfection, and who is he to complain? Their marriage is meant to be, so they’ll fight with each other, and they’ll fight for each other.
WARNING: Racy Language, Hot Sex, Seduction.
My Thoughts: I enjoyed Diane Escalera’s previous steamy romance
Dangerous Desire, so when I read the blurb of
Still Hot For You I was immediately intrigued and excited to read it.
Diane Escalera explores something very few romance novels do: creating a romance around an already married couple. I was curious and doubting how the romance part could be made exciting when that initial thrill and frisson of the h/h meeting, getting attracted and getting to know each other (one of my favourite parts actually) would be missing. But Diane Escalera manages to compensate the lack of the usual timeline of get-to-know-each-other by involving the reader in the high-running emotions of a couple still very much in love but hurting and trying to reconnect.
I know finding the problem which could break the harmony of the relationship must be even harder when the h/h are a married couple and the author doesn’t want to irrevocably destroy any chance for reconciliation (and also not lose the reader’s forgiveness for their transgressions -> so definitely no cheating!). Still the one Diane Escalera found (Shay wanting a baby and Dylan not) wasn’t really a succcess with me.
Shay states that her wanting a baby (the whole beginning of their argument months ago) “was pretty stupid”. I am a modern working girl, my career is important to me, I’m still young and so not ready for kids yet, but even I bristled at that. Why is it stupid that she wants a baby being almost 30 and having been married for more than 5 years to the man she loves? I think it is a natural evolution of their relationship, but the way she always found the root of their problems with herself and her self-accusations made me annoyed with her at times.
Dylan on the other hand is a wonderful character. He is a manly man: virile and oozing charisma and seduction, and he deeply and strongly loves his wife, his whole life revolves around her. (His reason for not wanting a baby now is that he doesn’t feel they are financially stable enough for that. However they live in a quite well-off house with jacuzzi outside, he has a Mustang and she has a Lexus sport coupe, all signs that they live quite comfortably…)
Despite the shortness of the story (it is a novella of only 78 pages) Diane Escalera made Dylan a well-rounded and layered character (much more than Shay in my opinion, who often ruffled my feathers).
Verdict: As expected Diane Escalera cranks up the heat and gives a story sizzling with seduction and chemistry between her characters, the intimate scenes between Shay and Dylan were combustive enough to put fire to the page.
However, on the emotional level I wasn’t fully convinced that they had resolved their differences by finding common ground and truly revealing themselves.
I give Still Hot For You 3 stars!
Stop by Book Lovers Inc. tomorrow to read Diane Escalera’s guest post, a steamy excerpt and for a chance to win Still Hot For You!
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.
About Stella
Stella is a proud bookaholic and a self-taught multilinguist in training. Besides reading, her other great passions are travelling and baking. When she is not globetrotting she lives in sunny Budapest, where she loves to spend her free time preparing (and feasting on) delicious cookies or devouring equally yummy books. Her favourite genres are urban fantasy and romance and she couldn't live without her daily dose of sunshine. Besides being the Latin Lover on BLI Stella also blogs about books and a bookish life on Ex Libris.
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I agree that 30 is not young to have a baby! Older woman risks the danger of complications at birthing.
Especially as she has been married to her husband for 5 years. It would be different if they only got together and they want to savour a little “alone-time” before thinking about babies.