I adore Helen!! All of her books are fantastic. All a great read! Page Turners right from the beginning!!! Hot steamy romance!!!

You fall in love with each Steel Brother and sister and the women they end up with.... her books suck you in and you feel that you know each character personally. ( )

Good lord, is this series EVER going to end? It started out as a trilogy, and then became a double trilogy, and now it's going to be at least eight books. And we ALL know that the author isn't going to give up once Ryan's story has been told, because obvious Marj is going to have to have her OWN books too (and it's clear as day that she's trying to set up Marj with Bryce), so this "trilogy" is likely going to have at least ten books in it before we're done. I had better stock up on alcohol now, because like a moron, I agreed to buddy read these books with a friend (back when it was still a "trilogy"), and I'm stuck. :|

On the one hand, this book is slightly better than some of the others in the series, because there is actually ACTION and a PLOT in this book. Sort of. The big "mystery" that has apparently hooked a lot of readers (not me...I am beyond all hope and enjoyment when it comes to these books, and I only continue due to keeping a promise and some perverse sense of amusement that I get from reading bad fiction, apparently) has a few twists and turns, but I can't say that any of them were SURPRISING to me. I saw the development with Wendy coming a mile away. At least a mile. Perhaps ten miles.

But whatever gains this book made in the plot department are lost in the shoddy writing and the general ridiculousness that is this series.

Apparently this book is supposed to be "erotica," but it manages to contain some of the least sexy scenes that I have EVER read, and I have read some really god-awful sex scenes in my day. Jonah and Melanie are supposed to be seasoned adults - Jonah is either 37 or 38 (I can't remember and I honestly don't care enough to look it up) and Melanie is 40 years old. And here are some of the "sexy" things they say:

Melanie (as she ponders anal sex with, keeping to the old romance trope, the ridiculously-hung man in her life): "Would I ever accommodate it...there?" ("It" is his penis, and "there" is her ass, in case you aren't fluent with hilariously bad internal monologue.)

Jonah: "I had only begun to show her the pleasures I could give her down there." (Are you fucking kidding me?!?! Mr. Oh-I-Am-So-Experienced calling a woman's genitals "down there?" Who even talks like that? I can honestly say that I haven't since I was in high school - and I certainly can't imagine saying it NOW. Jonah and I are theoretically around the same age, but his maturity is...lacking, shall we say.)

Their middle-school-esque chatter doesn't end there, however. Having barely known Melanie for two months, TOPS, Jonah declares that, if she leaves him, he will "never love another woman." As in, ever. Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone find this sexy or attractive at all? Because I don't. I find it pathetic and kind of manipulative, to be honest.

Look, nearly all of us suffer a huge heartbreak in our lives. Lord knows, I had my heart broken into a billion tiny pieces by a girl many years ago, and part of me still loves her and always will. But it's not romantic in the slightest, at least in my opinion, to say you'll never love again. I feel that if someone comes along who is amazing, I will definitely fall in love again - and I knew the girl who broke my heart a LOT longer than two months. Two months?!?! And that's being generous - it might be even less than that. You don't know someone in two months - Jonah doesn't even know a thing about Melanie's past, and he admits as much. That isn't love, sweet cheeks.

Melanie is just as bad, though. She falls pregnant with Jonah's child, suffering none of the expected infertility problems that might be expected for a woman her age who has never been pregnant. And she's sad and upset that he doesn't instantly propose marriage. Even more hilariously, they aren't even sure that she IS pregnant, either, because she has yet to take a pregnancy test, and she just assumes because her period is like one or two days late that she's pregnant. LOLZ. Who DOESN'T have a cycle that is late by a day or two now and then?

Except then he does propose marriage, so, uhh, everything is okay again, I guess?

Getting married solely because you're pregnant is a really, really bad idea. Any and all strains on your relationship pre-baby will still be there - except magnified, because you have this tiny little human who depends on you for sustenance and you aren't sleeping much because said tiny little human cries. A lot. And I really hate the trope of a woman falling pregnant and then getting married because it is, apparently, just the thing to do. No. Do not want. Especially when these two people BARELY know one another - and do NOT have a healthy relationship at all.

The author decides to go into BDSM, or whatever she thinks BDSM is. Apparently, in the author's world, BDSM is something that the Dominant (who is almost always a man in het erotica) wants and the Submissive (almost always a woman in het erotica) kind of just accepts. Melanie, the Submissive in this "relationship," has a lot of anxiety and fears about entering into this kind of sexual relationship with Jonah, but she does it anyway. Why? Because she "had pledged [her] life to him" and he "needed" it because he was suffering from emotional pain. Or something. He doesn't take her feelings or needs into account; he pretty much says he NEEDS this and she gives whatever he needs to him, even though she is definitely afraid that "things...might go farther than [she] was ready for." But because she loves him, she submits.

This isn't healthy, and anyone who argues that it is can kindly GTFO.

Look, in the right setting, I like to read BDSM (almost always between two or more female characters, for reasons, and not just because I'm queer). It can be hot when a woman chooses to submit herself to someone else. But it's not hot when a woman is afraid of being hurt - sexually, physically, and emotionally - but submits because she feels like she must to make her partner happy. And that is exactly what is happening here. And even though Melanie swears up and down that she just KNOWS that Jonah won't hurt her, he does. He rushes anal sex with her to the point that she literally SCREAMS when he enters her.

Look, anal can be...difficult. Some people, both men and women, don't enjoy it - and that is fine. But unless you're into pain (which Melanie isn't), it shouldn't hurt to the point that you are SCREAMING during the act (it was not an "oh god yessssssssss" scream, but a "this fucking HURTS" scream, by the way). And he doesn't even care that she's obviously not digging this - he just tells her to relax. As if she really has a choice at this point - she's completely at his mercy, and she might SAY that she just "knows" that he'll stop if she asks him to, but I really don't think he would at this point, because he's a self-centered asshole.

tl;dr: The sex was a whole bunch of NOPE NOPE NOPE in my book.

Also, why do random characters who really do nothing to add to the quality of the book (limited as it is) pop up for no reason?

And why does Jonah act as if prison guards will commit all sorts of crimes for a few hundred bucks? Yeah, some prison guards will - just like in any career, there are always some who are willing to bend the law for their profit. But the majority of prison guards, I would argue, are doing a job. They're drawing a paycheck. They aren't sadistic; they don't want to see people suffer. And Jonah just comes across as if he expects any and every prison guard in the joint holding Larry will do anything he asks for a couple of hundred bucks. It's insulting, really.

I just...ugh, I'm done. I just can't. I can feel brain cells committing suicide as I write this review. ( )