Review: "They'd been perfect gentlemen all night until they'd taken her home. Then they'd been perfectly bad boys for her."
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 6, 2012
Book 1 "The Dirty Dozen". Followed byThe Bikers' Babe.Plot:Series - 12 mates (The Dirty Dozen) travel between construction sites as a skilled work crew. Each pair of besties like to share women and are looking for The One to settle with.Book 1 - Kyle and West reckon Brandy's their One. With only a few weeks to convince her and some mysterious problems on the construction site, can they get their HEA?Comments:- Contemporary menage erotic romance with mild suspense plot.- 2948 kindle locations, 37,247 words.- m/f/m, m/f - generous, caring, explicit. Reasonably frequent. Relatively vanilla for menage (no bdsm, toys, m/m, DD, or Alpha Dominance).- Brandy is a survivor of violence - a mugging, attempted rape. Her past affects her present and the way she approaches a sexual relationship with her men. Doesn't hold her back much, but it's there. There is further violence against her by the Bad Guy.- Book 2 picks up Cole and Zack's story as they find the woman they can have a forever with.- A few of the standard poor proofreading issues. Enough to irritate but not so much they overly detract from the story.Opinion:Not too shabby, really. A nice little menage romance with sweet, non-Dominant men who simply want to woo and care for their woman. It's a good read, on a par with other books of the genre from the Siren Publishing stable. But it also has a nice twist where Brandy gets to show her strength. Which pushes it up a notch in the enjoyability factor.My only complaint about this book is I wish Monroe had given us more backstory. There is obviously a lot of history between and behind The Men, not least West's slimy injury, and I would have enjoyed seeing some of that examined. Similarly, Brandy's reasons for leaving Memphis, and even the previous Bikie Attack, could have been further explored. While this lack does not detract from the story, it's addition would have given the characters more depth and a stronger HEA. It also would have added to the word count, and this style of book from this publisher tends to the "short novel". Anyway, without that history we live firmly in the moment, which is fine, but I was left just a little disappointed.3.5 stars rounded up because I do like the character of Brandy. She's a normal woman with an inner strength. She's caring, accepting, sweet and loving, but she's also a fighter. Admirable.-CR-