Love Bytes
Reading books that feature nice, kind hearted men can be extremely enjoyable but sometimes you just want a Bad Boy and boy does this anthology deliver! This anthology features five different novellas with bad boys ranging from hit men to drug cartels and everything in between, I felt there were a decent mix of stories all within the bad boy theme and they were all pretty darn enjoyable. Don’t be mistaken though, these aren’t soft, feel good or redemption stories (not that the book doesn’t have its moments) so if you’re looking for a lot of fluffiness, this one won’t be for you. If you like you’re men a little harder, maybe a little on the monstrous side, but with a ton of hotness also thrown into the mix, I’d recommend giving this one a look. Monsters by James Cox 4* This is a classic story of boy meets boy…at least until the second boy blows up the first boy’s family! Hitmen and vigilante justice collide in this one and, I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get my happy ending here. (Rest assured that I did get one. :D) With plenty of action, this was a great way to kick off the anthology and I enjoyed it immensely! Sunshine and Snakes by L.J. Longo 4* Any story that takes place in prison is pretty much automatically going to be a little darker and little dirtier than your average story. Here we have a hitman that’s well known for always managing to get his mark regardless of whether he’s behind bars or not. When he learns of his latest target, however, he hesitates and what follows was a nice mix of sweet with suspense. I’m not usually big on prison stories but this one was well done and I enjoyed it. Live or Die by Kai Tyler 5* This was by far my favorite story in the anthology; old friends on opposite sides of the law turned lovers. Infiltrating a drug cartel isn’t easy regardless of the situation but when its run by an old friend, its just so much worse. This one was super hot with a lot of action and suspense in all the right places! I loved this one from start to finish and what a finish! Completely surprised by the end and I loved every bit of it! $250,000 Love by Jessie Pinkham 3.5* This was a decent story but not all that up my alley to be honest. In this one an illegal gambling runner is forced to hire someone to protect his lover from a corrupt politician and while there was a decent amount of suspense and the steaminess I’d come to expect in this anthology, the story itself just didn’t click with me in any significant way. Silent Devotion by Angelique Voisen 3.5* This one deals with a pretty heavy dose of ‘wow, that’s one f*cked up situation’. No kidding. In this final story you have a hitman that has dedicated over a decade to searching for his missing/captured childhood friend. Obviously, that situation is pretty screwed up in general but the author did a pretty good job of taking a horrendous situation and soothing it with a heavy dose of sweetness. This was a decent way to end the book but I just wasn’t as into it as I was some of the earlier stories presented.
