ARC Review: The Muse by Anne Calhoun

The Muse is the third book in the Irresistible series, it's the second book that I've read in the series. The book is a standalone, you don't need to read any of the others to read this one and reading this one will not spoil anything in the prior books. Anna Calhoun is an extremely talented writer. Her gift for providing vivid imagery and complex characters is outstanding. My issue with this book was that I felt overwhelmed by the author's literary prowess but distinctly underwhelmed by the romance.

The Muse is about Arden and Seth. Arden's back story is really interesting. When we meet Arden, her family is caught up in a Madoffish ponzi scandal where her father and brother played the Madoff role. Arden's father and brother are in prison, Arden has lost all of the privileges of being a part of the very very upper crust segment of Manhattan society and she is struggling to figure out how to salvage her life and her family's name. Seth, our hero, is a Afghanistan war vet who lost good friends in the war and returned home to become a bike messenger and nude model (long story). Seth has kind of put his life on pause and basically spends his days dodging traffic. He's seen horrific things and has not been able to fully recover from his trauma.

Seth and Arden meet when Seth becomes the model for Arden's drawing class. From there, Arden hires him to be her private model and from there, much more.(not for pay though, not the 'much more' part). Arden and Seth start a really erotic affair where they both lose themselves and separate from the trauma that has become their daily lives. That part of the book was good. I totally believed the emergence of the relationship as Arden and Seth got to know one another. They were from different sides of the track but their connection made sense when the layers were peeled back and you could see that both of them suffered from an inability to connect to the world around them.

The reason this book wasn't higher on my ratings scale is because there was just so much description of everything. There were tons of pages dedicated to sketching that included every detail from light to shading to even what the texture of the sketch book looked like. Sometimes when I was reading this book, I honestly felt like I was in a art class. And then there is all the description of Seth and his relationship with the brother of one of his fellow soldiers who died in the war. There are lots of scenes that are just about how Seth is helping him and the other people connected to the soldiers who died to cope with life now. That is good and touching but it was too much and it began to take away from the romance aspect of the story. There is also a lot of information about Arden's family and legal issues. Again, kind of fascinating stuff but it overwhelmed the connection between Arden and Seth.

I cannot stress enough how well written this book is. It's just that too much of the writing breaks off into sub-plots that I didn't care enough about to be interested.

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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ARC Review: Evening Storm by Anne Calhoun

Yes to this author but possibly no to this particular story.

I feel like I’m on a bad trip because this the second book in a row that I’ve read where the main characters spend as much time apart as they spend together. If you are like me, when you pick up one of these books you are looking for the romance….ok, well a little freaky deaky too but at least some romance. It is really hard to find either the “freaky deaky” or the romance in a book where the couple is not a couple, and not working towards becoming a couple (in any obvious way) for most of the book.

In Evening Storm, Simone is the owner of an upscale lingerie boutique who meets Ryan when he brings one of his many women to the store to buy her lingerie. Ok, you can probably already see that we have a problem. In general, I do not enjoy reading about the leading couple with other people. In this book, Ryan wasn’t just with other women, he was with them, like in the biblical sense, and that’s not all. As a part of building his….friendship (????)with Simone, he describes his sexual encounter with another woman and of course, like a good (read: irritating) heroine, she enjoys the experience and is titillated by it. I have on my “dude whatever” face right now. You can’t see it, that’s why I’m telling you. In reality, I still don’t know if Ryan was telling Simone stories because he thought she would like it or because the ish really happened or because he thought she would get off on her. Either way, me no likey.

I think it’s worth mentioning that throughout the book Ryan is embroiled in some corporate scandal at which he is the center. And I have to tell you, I didn’t really care for that storyline either. Ryan’s conduct wasn’t entirely consistent with his character representation. I just had a hard time understanding why he made the decisions he made. The author tells us, from Ryan’s POV that he has some sort of moral compass that just didn’t really sync with my feelings about his depiction.

The sex scenes when we finally get to them are decent they were just decent. The writing of this book though is what saves it for me. I could give it 3 “good” stars all day long just for the writing. I can’t really recommend this book but I can say that I plan to look at other books by this author because her writing is exceptional. I peaked at a few other reviews which confirmed my thinking that this isn’t the best example of this author’s writing so I remain hopeful.

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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ARC Review: Unforgiven by Anne Calhoun

UNFORGIVEN is erotic romance author Anne Calhoun’s first foray into mainstream contemporary romance, but don’t be fooled—it’s still scorching hot, with a heavy dose of angst and the wrenching emotions Ms. Calhoun is known for. It is very much a character-driven story, centered on two fragile, broken characters wrestling with past mistakes and broken dreams and trying to overcome the trappings of the past to forge a future together. The characterizations are spot on and realistic, but the book is slow: the focus is completely on the hero and heroine and their emotional development, with no additional subplots. It is aptly titled as well, since it is ultimately about seeking forgiveness from oneself and those one has hurt in order to live a life that’s truly one’s own.

Adam Collins is the former high-school bad boy and speed demon of rural Walkers Ford, North Dakota, whose ultimate dream was to escape Walkers Ford and race motorcycles. Graduation brings with it two alcohol-fueled decisions that alter his life forever: the destruction of girlfriend Marissa Brooks’s foreclosed historic home and a motorcycle race with a fellow student that ends in his death and Adam’s enlistment in the Marines as penance. Twelve years later, Adam returns to his hometown as a civilian to serve as best man in his best friend’s wedding to his ex-fiancée, with whom he was involved for 10 years whilst deployed and broke up with seemingly inexplicably. If that’s not a setup rife with drama, I don’t know what is! Immediately upon returning home, Adam comes face-to-face with Marissa, the woman whose heart he broke all those years ago when he left, and decides he wants everything he denied himself as a teenager. Only in order to have a chance at something beyond meaningless (but very hot!) sex, he needs to throw off the yoke of the past. His stubbornness in clinging to the past and believing he doesn't deserve dreams or a future can be exasperating at times, but watching him learn to let go, forgive and ask for forgiveness in turn, and find who he is outside of his identity as a former troublemaker and responsible Marine is also incredibly rewarding. And for someone who doesn't believe he deserves a HEA, he does some incredibly sweet things for Marissa!

Marissa Brooks is the last of a once-prominent family in Walkers Ford, known for being dreamers rather than doers. Having lost the historic family home, Brookhaven, in her teens, she was raised on stories of its grandeur and her father’s dreams of restoring it to its former glory, and has lived her entire life shackled to that duty. She is determined to renovate Brookhaven to prove to everyone in town that the Brookses can do more than just dream. A family legacy is a heavy burden to bear, and having spent her entire life living to fulfill her father’s dream for Brookhaven, Marissa is desperately afraid to chase her own dream—sailing around the world in a sailboat—now that the end of her father’s dream is near. Finding the courage (with Adam’s help) to take that final step to complete the house and earn her personal freedom is a huge part of the story and Marissa’s development as a character, and something that makes her incredibly relatable and realistic.

The two of them together have combustible chemistry and a relationship dynamic typical of reunion stories: Adam is determined to set things right and have everything he’d wanted when they’d been in high school; Marissa is equally determined to not fall for him again because she doesn’t believe he’s back for good. They complement each other perfectly as a couple and help each other work through 12 years of issues and broken dreams—even if the ending does feel a bit too tidy and pat, considering the amount of emotional baggage each carries.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed UNFORGIVEN. I tend to favour lighthearted contemporary romances to counteract some of the darker stuff I read, but this had the right combination of steam and emotional intensity without delving into tortured-hero/heroine territory, and it’s incredibly well written. Definitely recommended if you’ve enjoyed Ms. Calhoun’s other books (though this is definitely lighter in all respects), or if you like some angst in a romance centered almost exclusively on its protagonists. I’m looking forward to JADED, the follow-up starring two of the secondary characters in UNFORGIVEN.

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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