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ARC Review: Rock Hard (His to Claim #3) by Opal Carew

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Title: Rock Hard
Author:  Opal Carew
Publisher/Year:  St Martin Press 6/10/14
Length:  31 Pages
Series: His to Claim #3

Overview

Rafe Ranier was my boss and secret crush. A rock musician by night and head of a billion dollar empire by day, Rafe could have any woman he wanted. But I was just the shy secretary he never noticed. For years I obsessed over him, until I finally realized I had to walk away. I needed to break from the secure life I’d always known to discover who I really was.

I never expected Rafe to follow me.

Now I’m on the road with his band, Savage Kiss, and all my secret fantasies are coming true. But I fear I’ve made a huge mistake, because if I get any more attached to a man I can never truly have, my heart will be broken beyond all repair.

My Thoughts

just to preface – the summary above is a bit out of order since Melanie was only offered the roadie job with the band – she hasn’t accepted it yet, but based on where things are going with with her and Rafe, and her and Travis for that matter, it’s easy enough to assume that she’s going to accept.

In this 3rd installment, we see things between Melanie and ‘Storm/Rafe’ heating up in a good way – they are hot for each other and really get into role playing.  where ever they can.  Travis continues to have a role in things, and that makes for an uncertain future.  I guess the question that lies ahead is

1) who will she choose

2) when will Rafe be ready for a relationship since it’s pushing Melanie away

3) what’s next for Melanie since she hates her job and wants to be an artist but doesn’t have the means or confidence.

Off to book 4 🙂

Confusion: Books in a Series out of Order???

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I’m sitting here scratching my head trying to figure something out.  I’ve been hooked on the Sinners on Tour series by Olivia Cunning, read through Backstage Pass and Rock Hard – thinking that i could cruise into book 3 Double Time while waiting for book 4 Hot Ticket to come out.  So I started reading Double Time and realized that i’m kind of lost.

at the end of book 2, we know that Sed and Jess get together and are basically on the edge of a proposal.  We know that Brian and Myrna have decided that they want a baby soon…and that’s basically it.

Then i pick up what’s labeled as Book 3, and well, there’s so much that clearly happened that even after just 7-8 chapters, i feel like something has gone drastically wrong.  People are coupled off, married, there’s been a bus accident, the Sinners have already put out their latest album.  where did the time go?

so now i’m a bit miffed, upset and overall confused.  I go back and read some of the summary to what’s called book 4 – and find that maybe that’s supposed to be book 3 and they were just released out of order?  So now, the part that makes me more annoyed, not just that i have to wait for the real book 3 to come out, but that i know what’s going to happen because i’ve already read about 60+ pages of the sequel.

kind of ruins the suspense a bit – so i might have to distance myself from the series for a while, hopefully forget what i just read about, read a few other things and then maybe by the time that Hot Ticket comes out, i’ll be able to put a fresh lens on things.

Review: Rock Hard (Sinners on Tour Book 2) by Olivia Cunning

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Ahhh….the bliss and enjoyment that i find in sequels to stories that are actually good!  Rock Hard is the follow up to Backstage Pass – and it didn’t let me down.  In book 1 we are introduced to Sinners – a rock band that is of course made up of 5 of the hottest sexiest men around.

We already know the story around Brian and Myrna since book 1 centered around them and their budding relationship.  We also got to know a bit more about Trey, Sed, Jace and even Eric – but not tooooooo much.

So book 2, Rock Hard starts in a bit of a confusing place.  We’re introduced to Jessica and Sed – they are clearly in a relationship and that’s what threw me off since it was my understanding that Sed was single in BP.  Then i had to remember after a few minutes that there was a scene in book 1 where Sed is sitting at a table on the bus and Myr catches him looking at a picture of a girl.  So…this means that this intro scene is a little bit of a flashback.

That being the case, we meet Jess when she’s breaking up with Sed since he’s not entirely all that supportive of her goal of becoming a lawyer.  He basically wants to take care of her and have her just be there for him.  She’s not having that, so she returns the engagement ring that he had just given her and we are then fast fowarded into present day.

Sed is the womanizer and sex addict that we came to love and appreciate in BP, and Jess is trying to pay for school with a summer stint as a stripper in Vegas.  Ironically, the Sinners are in Vegas for a show and decide that for Brian’s bachelor party they are going to go to a strip club, and of all the clubs in Vegas, they go to the ONE that Jess is working at.

Shock, surprise, lust and a bit of brawling all get rolled up into this scene, leaving the sinners all bruised and battered, and Jess w/o a job.  Sed finds out that Jess has been fired, tries to give her money to make up for it, she goes to return the money, and ends up working for Myr on tour w/ the Sinners.

One thing that we all know from a deep emotion like ‘Hate’ is that it comes from a true place, usually love.  Well, Sed and Jess clearly HATE each other, yet they quite obviously love each other as well, even if they aren’t ready to admit it to themselves or each other.  The story that ensues from here takes us on a roller coaster with both of them, with their lives together and separately, and with all the paths that they go down, it’s hard to picture exactly where they are going to end up.

In the middle of all this, there’s a medical emergency that comes into play, not for either Sed or Jess, but for Trey, as a result of the brawl at the strip club that first reunion night.  that alone adds in enough drama and suspense to keep the story going in a completely different way.

There are times when i hoped for a happy ending and times when i thought that it would be too cliche.  the good news is that Olivia Cunning did a great job and gave us less of what we’d expect and more of what readers really want.  Now i can’t wait to finish Double Time the 3rd installment of the series.