Tag Archives: Forbidden

Review: Forbidden by Jodi Ellen Malpas

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Title: Forbidden
Author: Jodi Ellen Malpas
Publisher/Year:  Grand Central Publishing 8/8/17
Length:   368 Pages

Overview

What do you do when you can’t control your feelings for someone? When you know you shouldn’t go there? Not even in your head.

Annie has never experienced the ‘spark’ with a guy-the kind of instant chemistry that steals your breath and blindsides you completely. Until a night out with friends brings her face to face with the wickedly sexy and mysterious Jack. It’s not just a spark that ignites between them. It’s an explosion. Jack promises to consume Annie, and he fully delivers on that promise.

Overwhelmed by the intensity of their one night together, Annie slips out of their hotel room. She is certain that a man who’s had such a powerful impact on her and who could bend her to his will so easily, must be dangerous. But she’s already in too deep. And Jack isn’t only dangerous. He is forbidden.

My Thoughts

When you read the intro and see that our darling author tells us that we’re going to get a story that she’s gotten a lot of push back and grief about – that the story content is something that’s quite controversial – well i think that anyone with half a brain knows that they have to read this one.

So unlike many of the others that we’ve read – this one isn’t as cut and dry.  We know that typically there are several reasons why our couples can’t be together – usually of their own doing – meaning that they feel like there’s a reason not to be together.  In this case though, there’s no reason in the hearts of these two leading characters for why they can’t be together – but there are factual reasons why they can’t – yet it’s something that slips their minds all the time.

Annie is our leading lady and she’s finally establishing herself in all aspects of her life.  she’s moved into a new place that’s truly her own and it’s not just a home, it’s the studio that her really successful architecture business is run out of and she’s got a great group of friends who really helps pick her up and keep her happy.  It’s when she’s out with her friends that her life turns upside down.

Jack – the man at the bar who makes her feel a lot of things that she shouldn’t.  Who comes on so strong and so hard that she should run, and she does, but then some how she finds herself running right back to him.  What started as a one night stand, turns into something that’s so dangerous and so hot that we are waiting as we turn every page to see them combust.

He’s married – and he’s also the contractor of a job that she’s spearheading, and she meets his wife, and she’s unstable.  Yet, they don’t care and they carry on with their affair – because they believe that they are soulmates and that they truly own and possess each other.  The question that we have throughout this entire book is how long can they keep it a secret from their friends and how long until Jack’s wife discovers it as well?

When Annie is attacked with a knife, and someone ends up in the hospital broken in ways that are far too scary to imagine, we wonder if there’s ever a way for there to be happiness.

I think that it’s a nice change to be honest, to see a story that makes you question the entire premise of their relationship, and try not to judge it since it’s sad to say that things like this just do happen in life sometimes.  You can’t choose who you love and you can fight what you feel in your heart for so long sometimes, but there are times when even that isn’t enough to keep you apart.  That’s exactly what our author was trying to say in her intro i think, and i think that she delivered a story that is true to the core of what the intentions were.    I hope you give it a read.  Enjoy!

Review: Forbidden (Her British Stepbrother #1) by Lauren Smith

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No-Brainer

Title: Forbidden
Author: Lauren Smith
Publisher/Year:  Grand Central Publishing 1/12/16
Length:   168 pages
Series:  Her British Stepbrother #1

Overview

He’s her first. He’s her everything. He’s her . . . stepbrother.

Kat has always been a good girl. She studies hard and never stays out too late. But when sitting in a pub on her birthday, she realizes she’s a nineteen-year-old virgin who’s never really lived. And she wants tonight to be the night that changes.

Then she sees him walk in. He’s tall, dark, handsome, and straight out of her deepest fantasies. His voice makes her knees feel weak, and when he smiles, she imagines him doing wicked things to her in bed. From the look in his eyes, she knows he’s imagining it too. So when he asks if he can walk her home, she hears herself whisper yes . . .

My Thoughts

ahhh yes, yet another naive innocent virgin to be seduced by the naughty guy with lots of experience right?  Well, while the premise isn’t anything new persay – i think that what we have here will get to be interesting if you take the series name into account.

We meet Kat when she’s out on the town in Cambridge with one of her close friends – and this is something new given that she always moves so much because of her father’s work, and she’s finally at a place in life where she can put roots down since she’s now in school in Cambridge.  If that weren’t enough to change her life from the mundane bits that it’s always been, on this same night she sees a man enter the pub who owns the room the moment he steps in, and others in the pub whisper about him and his conquests which of course makes things more interesting.

that of course is the introduction that we have of Tristan – who’s soon to be the Earl of something or other, and of course, in true fashion, he’s a man that women gravitate towards, and he doesn’t matter much what he leaves behind him as long as he’s enjoyed himself for the time being.

All that changes when these 2 meet – they find that there’s a chemistry between them that’s quite powerful, and i think that it’s only a matter of time to see how her innocence makes Tristan want to change,  and then to see what lengths he goes to in order to prove it.

Given that there’s not a ton of ‘substance’ to this first book, we don’t get a lot of romance and heat, but we know that there’s chemistry of course.  It’s not until the end when the game is changed for them, that we see that there’s going to be much more to the story.

While it’s sweet – there were bits of the writing style that i’m not necessarily feeling – and that’s interesting because I’ve read other stories by this author and i don’t recall having that same impression.  Personally, it seems more in the editing than the writing, so i’m not going to keep it from letting me read the next installment in the series.  I wonder how this is going to play out knowing again that this series is ‘the British Stepbrother’ – so it’s onto the next to see what that means for this budding couple.