ARC Review: Glamour: Contemporary Fairytale Retellings Anthology

I have a love/hate relationship with anthologies, but when I saw the list of authors attached to Glamour: Contemporary Fairytale Retellings, I knew I had to read it. I am so glad that I took a chance on this one as it was one of the best anthologies I have ever read. Each story was one I enjoyed, without a single disappointment in the bunch. 

Glamour includes novellas based on classic fairytales, including the following stories: 

Knot by Lili St. Germain (Rapunzel) 

Red Hot Pursuite by A.L. Jackson (Little Red Riding Hood) 

Ripples by Aleatha Romig (Prince and the Pauper) 

In A Stranger's Bed by Sophie Jordan (Goldilocks) 

Bedtime Story by Skye Warren (Sleeping Beauty) 

Royal Mattress by Nicola Rendell (Princess and the Pea) 

Music Box Girl by Sierra Simone (Twelve Dancing Princesses) 

Broken Harp by Nora Flite (Jack and the Beanstalk) 

Each one of this was quick and sexy, and just what I was looking for. These are the perfect quick bits steam for those that don't have time to sit down and read a full novel. I loved that they were modern retellings, taking what we have grown up loving about classic fairytales and putting their own modern twists on them. While I enjoyed all of these and would recommend this to readers, my absolute favorite here was Music Box Girl by Sierra Simone. I loved each story, and I think fans of Erotica as well as fans of fairytales will definitely want to check this one out.

**ARC Provided by Enticing Journey Book Promotions**

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ARC Review: Royally Bad by Nora Flite

I'm not sure what went wrong with this book but something definitely did not work. Sammy is a dress designer who gets sucked into some danger plot involving the "Badd" family. Sammy goes from making the wedding dress for the Badd Princess (or whatever), to coordinating a rehearsal dinner and being a maid of honor in the Badd family wedding. And oh, at some point between saving this entire wedding for a total stranger and her client, Sammy finds time to screw Kain Badd, one of the Badd princes. Oh, did I not make clear that somehow the Badd family is royalty? You want to know why I didn't make that clear? Because it is totally not clear in this book it's just kind of thrown in there.

That's another problem I have with this book, I didn't at all feel like I was a part of the story and I didn't have a good grasp of what was happening in the book. Like, I didn't really get what it was the Badd's did. I hated that the name of their enemy was "deep shots." No seriously, there was some rival gang that went by the name "deep shots." Deep shots sounds like something that belongs in a BDSM romance novel, not the name of a rival gang. And another thing, don't royal families have rival families or kingdoms or whatever. Why was there a rival gang? I seriously don't get it.

And while the mysterious world of the Badds was hard for me to understand or accept, what was worse was Kain and Sammy's....relationship. I'm not sure what to call it or how it came about. I know the two were attracted to one another but I have no idea how they got from their mutual attraction to the crazy obsessive feelings that had Kain causing problems with his family and threatening to kill people over Sammy. I just didn't feel any connection between Sammy and Kain. Nowhere in the whole book was the relationship between Sammy and Kain really developed in a way that made it make sense. As a result of that, I felt generally disconnected from everything that happened in the book. I didn't really care about Sammy and Kaine because I didn't really know them or their relationship. I also didn't understand how Sammy was taking care of her Mother while getting sucked into all the Badd family drama. 

I really tried to get into this book because I felt like I should like it. It had action. Kain was bossy and alpha. Sammy had a sense of humor and could stand up for herself. Usually if you put all those pieces together and throw in some hot sex, you've got my heart. The problem for me is that there was nothing that gelled all these pieces together in a way that made me like this book or even care about it. I just didn't find it to be very entertaining.

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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