Review: Double Time (Sinners on Tour #5) by Olivia Cunning

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Title:  Double Time
Author:  Olivia Cunning
Publisher/Year:  Sourcebooks 11/6/13
Length:  416 Pages
Series: Sinners on Tour #5

Overview

He Craves Her Music and Passion

On the rebound from the tumult of his bisexual lifestyle, notoriously sexy rock guitarist Trey Mills falls for sizzling new female guitar sensation Reagan Elliot and is swept into the hot, heady romance he never dreamed possible.

She Can’t Get Enough of His Body

Ecstatic to be on tour learning the ropes with Trey’s band, The Sinners, Reagan finds she craves Trey as much as she craves being in the spotlight.

They Both Need More…

When Reagan’s ex, Ethan Connor, enters the scene, Trey’s secret desires come back to haunt him, and pleasure and passion are taken to a whole new level of dangerous desire.

My Thoughts

i think that it’s safe to say that we were all sitting on the edge of our seat just waiting to get Trey’s story, especially with everything that’s happened to him over the course of the series and how steamy and sexual we’ve seen him be as well.  While our experience thus far with Trey has been as the bi-sexual hottie of Sinners with a crush on his Best friend Brian, there’s clearly more than meets the eye with him.

This final installment starts off with us meeting Reagan at the finals for a competition looking for a temporary sub for Exodus End’s Rhythm guitarist.  Exodus End of course being Trey’s older brother Dare’s band.  Anyhow, Reagan surprises everyone by being a chick and with her talent and attraction, she and Trey some how find themselves together quite quickly.  Backing things up just a little bit though, Trey’s not the only guy in her life.  Reagan lives with Ethan her best friend, ex-lover who now happens to be gay. (at least that’s what he’d told her).  Suffice it to say, because she’s a female and one that’s quite attractive, the band and management have decided that she needs to have her own personal security which is great for Ethan since it means that he can stay close to her.

see…we know from the onset that their history wasn’t clean – they used to date until Reagan walked in on Ethan having sex….with another guy.  she wasn’t too excited about that and ended things but they managed to keep a close friendship.  which is to ethan’s benefit of course since he’s still in love with her.

So we quickly come upon the weeks leading up to the tour and luckily Sinners and EE are on tour together.  that means that Trey has the chance to get even closer with Reagan and vise versa.  It’s such a shock to their systems because of their chemistry and how much they have in common that Trey has even told his usual fleets of adoring partners in each tour stop that they aren’t welcome, and we see in true fashion of all sinners men that he falls hard and fast.

What i love here too is that since we know Trey is bi himself, we know that his radar is pretty attuned to things.  He’s sees from right off the bat that Ethan’s not quite what he says, and he sees that there’s a flame that he’s holding onto.  Ethan of course in the hopes of breaking Trey and Reagan up so that he can be there to pick up the pieces does his darndest to seduce Trey but what he quickly finds out is that you can’t play games with Trey and that he’s usually one step ahead.

What comes from this is a lot of hot sex.  Trey/Reagan, Trey/Ethan, Trey/Reagan/Ethan….you get the picture.  Olivia Cunning figured out just how to shake things up with this finale installment by giving us one hot and steamy threesome to entertain ourselves with.

Paired with that, we get the usual under pinning of a story line where someone’s out to get Reagan, we don’t know who it is and we don’t know what it’s going to mean for Reagan’s safety.  we do know that we have 2 very hot testosterone driven men who aren’t going to let their little sex toy come to any harm.  because everyone loves everyone else, professed it and there’s chemistry spilling over everywhere.

Enjoy!  i can’t wait for the spin off series supporting Exodus End now – i think that there’s a lot there and i can’t wait to see if what we got a taste of from Sinners about Dare will hold true.

Review: Wicked Beat (Sinners on Tour #4) by Olivia Cunning

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Title:  Wicked Beat
Author:  Olivia Cunning
Publisher/Year:  Sourcebooks 8/6/13
Length:  416 Pages
Series: Sinners on Tour #4

Overview

How Far Out Are Your Fantasies?

When Rebekah Blake becomes the Sinners’ new soundboard operator, she has no idea that red-hot drummer Eric Sticks is the only man who can give her everything her dirty mind desires…

My Thoughts

In this 4th installment of the series, we finally get Eric Sticks story.  It was a given that he’d be next given where Jace left us off in his admission that he’s in the band all because of what impression and influence/adoration he had from Eric (unbeknownst to him of course).  We don’t really know much about Eric to be honest, except that he LOVES to watch each of the couples with their women – he’s more of a voyeur than an active participant, but it’s something that we’ve kind of grown to like about him and not really find creepy.

We also meet Reb (Rebekah) who is temporarily taking the place as the FOH (front of house) soundboard engineer for her brother Dave who has been the Sinner’s engineer for years now but is slowly trying to recover from the awful life changing accident that we experienced in Book 3 that left him in a wheelchair.  Reb is Dave’s little sister and someone that he trusts with his job and not only because of her skill but because he knows that if he can get better enough to come back, she’ll give back the job.

When we meet Reb, she has an infatuation with Trey of course since that’s what a lot of ladies seem to want, although she slowly realizes that it’s Eric that makes her laugh and her belly quiver.  which is a nice change for her given that we’ve learned that she had a hysterectomy and feels like she’s not sexy and cannot get intimate with a man (especially because her ex-boyfriend led her to believe that she didn’t feel right inside anymore afterwards).  mind you i kind of wanted to slap the guy since a hysterectomy wouldn’t make a girl feel any different while having sex.  just saying!!! you have to assume something else is going on there

So this story takes us on the journey of Reb trying to prove that she’s a great engineer and can handle the job as a girl while others want her to mess up.  We also go on the journey of Reb finding that she’s sexy and can be intimate with a guy.  It’s also great for Eric because we find that part of the reason that he’s always watching is because he’s quick to come and can’t last more than a few minutes with a girl which he finds to be embarrassing.

What i enjoyed about this story is that Olivia Cunning is quite thoughtful and creative in how she makes this situation work for both of them.  She gives us some great kink and descriptive sex scenes that show that she’s thinking from both angles yet again which is amazing.  Reb figures out a way to condition Eric to last longer while giving her what she needs w/o actual sex, that is until she realizes that maybe just maybe Eric won’t find any problems with her.

There are a few interesting and nice twists that happen in this story.  we learn a bit more about Isaac, her ex boyfriend who couldn’t have sex with Reb after her surgery.  We also get to see a bit more about Trey which is nice since I know the next installment is all about him (he’s the last single one).  we also get to see what’s next for Brian/Myrna since we know that she’s finally preggo.

I can’t wait for the next book and what’s great is that since they were released in ebook out of order, i already have it.  Enjoy the heat, and the passion that we’ve come to appreciate from these rockers and the nice bit of kink.  I was steamy myself and i really want to play dress-up after reading about Eric and Reb and what they liked!

Review: Hot Ticket (Sinners on Tour #3) by Olivia Cunning

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Title:  Hot Ticket 
Author: Olivia Cunning 
Publisher/Year:  Sourcebooks Incorporated (ebook 2/5/13)
Length:  400 pages
Series: Sinners on Tour #3

Overview

Where’s the Fine Line…
Between darkness and desire Need and oblivion Pain and pleasure

A man as talented as Sinner bass guitarist Jace Seymour needs a woman who can beat out his self-doubt…

A woman as strong as Mistress V needs a man she can’t always overpower…

And in each other’s tight embrace, an escape from harsh reality is always a welcome diversion…

My Thoughts

We definitely got a glimpse into the dark and stormy side of Jace in previous installments and it was really nice to see that this showed us a bit more about who he is and what made him HOW he is.   One of my favorite things about author Olivia Cunning is that she’s not one to shy away from dark back stories and manages to give us the good details without being ‘too flashback-esque’.  We get that in this installment, but it’s additive to the story – it doesn’t take away.

So here, we get to learn a lot more about Jace – about why he’s the dom in the band (or at least seems to have more of that BDSM background) and how that has come to be.  We also get to know more about Aggie – the stripper that was in the club with Jessica when we met her back in book 2.  She’s definitely a woman who can hold her own and we get that from the onset of the story – and we see why she feels that she has to build her own success.  which she has.

This story takes us through some of the events of the previous books that we’ve come to appreciate – the band goign on tour, brian and Myrna getting married, Sed and Jessica getting together, and then Trey and Sed finding themselves both in the hospital.  Through these rough times, we see how Jace copes with it, and it gives us time to see how he lives his life outside of the band, and what got him into the band.  

What i really enjoyed too here was that there’s a tie back to Eric and why Jace wanted into the Sinners so bad, and there’s a tie to Brian that we didn’t necessarily expect.

What i didn’t like though is that when we meet Aggie, she comes off as this badass which i really liked especially since Jessica and Myrna are such tough A-types however she gets this real clingy girly thing going for her during the tour and that’s not necessarily a good thing.  I was in the same mindset as Jace at times when he just wanted her to go away or tone it down.  It’s nice to see how that evolves into things in the story though. 

So my usual questions: 

1) What’s the end game for Jace and Aggie

2) Do Brian and Eric find out about Jace’s tie to each of them?

3) Who’s next in the band to get ‘tied down’ and how does that affect the dynamic?

well, i can’t wait for book 4 to come out on e-book which is super frustrating since they seem to have been published out of order AGAIN! 

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

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

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.