Finished Reading January 12, 2016

3.75 Stars
First, the stories in this book are incredibly steamy. They are also awfully short. To short to create well developed characters.
Story #1, Copping to It, was the steamiest. However, it had the least character build. And the situation was a bit over the top. The ending felt rushed and uncompleted.
Story #2, Cop Appeal, the characters were better developed and the sex was erotic. The end was dubious and left you feeling like the story was incomplete.
Story #3, Copping Attitude, had decent character build (considering the length of these stories). It was the most romantic of the three stories.
I think if each story had been a full length book they could have made intriguing & suspenseful stories. Ms. Virna DePaul definitely has grabbed my interest & I will be checking out more of her books.

Purchased from Amazon January 6, 2016 ( )

All three men are in law enforcement, Ty and Luke are undercover cops and Noah James is with Internal Affairs. All three are dominant personalities and they’re willing to do anything to get and keep the women they’ve set their sights on. They are also very good at dirty-talk and very well-endowed. Let’s just say, they make a two handed grip possible ;)

The book blurb sums up each story very well, so I will dive right in to the review portion.

Story #1 – Copping To It

Elements: Voyeurism, exhibitionism, oral sex, menage M/F/M.

I was very disappointed in this couple, the heroine in particular. Her need for kink with a dangerous edge in order to get off aside, she rarely engaged her brain throughout this story; slipping from one dangerous situation into the next while riding on the high of her angst of letting the one man she’s lusted over to want her as she is. I have no problem with dark eroticism, but it didn’t work for me in this story. Using a potentially life-threatening situation as a catalyst for the romance between the hero and heroine was quite a stretch. When she gets caught spying on the gang she once wrote an expose on, she’s forced to watch Ty (the undercover cop and star of all of her fantasies) get a blowjob from another woman as part of his gang initiation. Feelings of jealousy and intense arousal are at war. Arousal wins out. I’m not going to lie, that scene was hot, but I also felt a little disappointed. Perhaps even a little jealous on her behalf. Because the heroine was okay with it as well as aroused, the reader is supposed to feel at ease that the hero wasn’t technically cheating (because he was thinking of Claire when he “came”). I’m still not sure how I felt about that scene. Moving on. As if being forced to watch isn’t grueling enough, the current gang leader insists she be raped (though he doesn’t word it as such) by Ty. Ty refuses to take the woman he’s been lusting after in that way in front of the gang.

Problem #1) He tries to emotionally push Claire away by saying he doesn’t want her, she’s not his type, etc. He doesn’t want to go through with the order for fear she would one day come to hate him for it. As a cop, I’m surprised he didn’t see it coming that someone else would step up to do to Claire what he doesn’t want to see happen.

Problem #2) If he knew he was going undercover, and he was debriefed by Claire on the inner workings if the gang, he must have known some form of sexual contact would happen between him and another woman (or other women) yet he still wanted to pursue Claire? Because it’s so romantic to get involved with an undercover cop who may have to have sex with other women to keep his cover. Not.

Problem #3) Even after the coast is clear for a quick escape, instead of getting the hell out of dodge, Ty wants her again! Once again, neither one of them thinks about using a condom. Even if Ty would welcome binding her to him with a baby, that he didn’t have the decency to point it out to the oversexed heroine is not okay.

While I did see the chemistry between the two characters, and I have to admit that the sex was hot, I really missed any indication of intelligence from either of them. The heroine was so oversexed that her emotions kept swaying back and forth between want, need, lust, jealousy, fear, hurt … I got whiplash. During the BJ scene, for example, she’s so eager to have Ty in her mouth that she’s fully engaged, and then suddenly she’s ashamed to know that others are watching. What? Not too long ago she was aroused. I didn’t by her reactions to what was going on around her. In fact, she didn’t seem to fully know herself. At least that was my impression of her character. I think she crossed the line from enjoying a kinky edge to being seen as a floozy. The “danger” was just a convenient cover for them to get what they both wanted.

Rating: 2/5

Story #2 – Cop Appeal

Elements: Ménage M/F/M, Stalker, Reunited lovers, Older heroine-younger hero.

I enjoyed this story a little more than the first. The story of Luke Anderson and Sarah Larson was one of the rich guy and the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. With Sarah’s single status, it’s the green flag for Luke to make his move. Instead of just coming out and saying that he missed her and still wants her, he decides to call in on a silly bet they both made a long time ago. After a lot of back and forth and Luke using his sexy dominance to elicit the kind of response he’s always wanted from Sarah, they finally find their common ground once again. The horizontal kind.

I didn’t dislike the characters per se, but I didn’t love them either. Sarah still has hangups over her social status in comparison to Luke, even though he had never given any indication that it bothered him. That misconception was all on her. She was a little older than Luke, but out of the two, he seemed the more mature one. Now that was a disappointment. She also had the bad tendency to verbally put herself down in front of him; always referring to the derogatory nickname she’d garnered in the past. He intends to have and keep her for good this time, even going behind her back to find out what she’s hiding from him. But to smooth things over, he uses one of her weaknesses against her – to let him push her boundaries and give her what she never wanted to admit to. Enter Noah, the Internal Affairs Detective handling her case.

Again, the sex scenes were hot, but the heroine was a little too weak and self-sacrificing for my taste. I couldn’t get a clear picture as to what made her so appealing to him, other than he was able to get her to do things he liked, even if she wasn’t one hundred percent convinced she would like it. There’s submissive, and there is weak. She came across more as the latter. Still, this story wasn’t as over the top as the first one, so that counts for something. As for Luke, I thought he had his heart in the right place. He didn’t see the signs that would have clued him in into just how insecure Sarah felt around him, both in the past and in the present. But when you have such a dominant male as a character, I like to see a female who can be an equal and choose to submit out of love and desire, not because she has no backbone.

Rating: 3/5

Story #3 – Copping Attitude

Elements: Heroine is a rape survivor

Noah was the dreamiest hero of the three, and this was my favorite story in this collection. He was gentle and sweet and mindful of Jenna’s trauma. He pushed her, but he always let her set the pace or take control of the situation. He was also incredibly patient with her.

Jenna was sweet, and you could tell there was a tough cookie underneath that vulnerable exterior just waiting to be freed. I didn’t blame her for the mixed signals or mixed emotions. In a very short time, Noah had managed to break through a lot of her defenses leaving her scared yet hopeful. I loved the open and blunt conversations they had, mostly from Noah. He had nothing to hide, and he knew he had to lay out all the cards on the table if he wanted to have a real chance with her.

The sex was hot, but I got swept up by the emotions and kind sincerity behind each of his gestures.

Rating: 4.5/5

Overall this was one scorching hot trio of stories. What I really liked about it was that I was able to read them back to back to back, and the heroes made cameos in almost all of them. There were also glimpses of the couples who came before in each subsequent book. Even though I found the first two stories to be less enjoyable than the last one, I enjoyed this author’s style, her descriptions, and the differing emotions she managed to bring out in me, so I would definitely say that i was engaged because I read this book in one sitting. I just didn’t agree with some of the choices that were made. The sex scenes in the last two books were pretty much the norm as far as dominating sex goes, but the first one had that dark edge that got the loudest reaction from me, somewhere between love and loathe.

I am a little confused as to why this set was published under the author’s other pen name. I have never read anything from Virna DePaul, but I have found that when authors choose to write under two different names, their writing styles tend to differ. I assume that is the point of a pen name – having the freedom to be a bit more creative, daring or just different. With that said, I would still read more from this author, under either name. If Copping Attitude was any indication, I know this author can deliver something to appeal to different tastes and expectations. I recommend it.

Average rating for all three: 3.16

Disclaimer: I received a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley for the purpose of an honest review. ( )

3.5 stars

With a lot of erotic romances I've read they seem to concentrate more on the sex but with this collection, it had a fair amount of romance in it too.

I cant say I had a particular favourite of the three but I did like how we met the character of book 2 in book 1 and the character from book 3 in book 2, if you know what I mean. ( )

ARRESTED BY LOVE
Edit

“Arrested by Love” by Virna DePaul is a LoveSwept Publishing Company contemporary erotic romance that I received a copy in exchange for an HONEST review. Girls, get out the fans – it’s a hot one! At $2.99 this is a great deal for the Kindle — it is actually three novellas within the book. All three are linked by the male characters in it, and as you can figure from the handcuffs on the cover, law enforcement is involved. The other thing that is involved in 2 of the 3 novellas is a menage – so if that is off-putting to you, this may not be the best choice. You’re warned.

From reading the author bio, I see that Virna DePaul is a former prosecuting attorney, and you can tell from the concepts of these stories. The best part of these books (okay, the best thing AFTER the sex scenes) is that you also get a taste of what law enforcement has to deal with on a daily basis. In “Copping To It”, Claire & Ty explore some of the darker aspects of her sexuality while showing exactly how far some journalists and cops are willing to go to stay undercover. (Um, no. No pun intended. Or well, hey – sure, it was intended because actually it ends up being pretty good LOL!!) The second novella, “Cop Appeal”, features Sarah and Luke, lovers who missed their chance four years back. Sarah ended up marrying another cop, divorcing him after his violent tendencies erupted and then being stalked by him. Again – smokin’ sex scenes between Sarah & Luke… a menage… and some insights into why police would want to be Internal Affairs officers. The third & final novella, titled “Copping Attitude” is really great, especially as it delves into the touchy issue of surviving a sexual assault. Questions are broached about why someone would think a certain person might “deserve” to be assaulted and how to get past those societal condemnations.

The only complaint I would have about this book is that the third novella seemed a bit “rushed” at the end to come to a final conclusion. Dropping her vendetta against the judge just seemed really abrupt and was tied up rather quickly that if I’d have blinked I probably would have missed it.

Great beach read… but even better for the nightstand so that you can turn out the light and turn on the hubby (or BOB – LOL!). ( )