Wednesday Book Whoreding

Last week I posted that I was reading Karen Erickson's "Playing With Fire" series. I finished all of those, including a fourth book: Notorious.

The series started out well, I enjoyed Book 1, but went downhill from there for me.

Book 1: Forbidden, featured Austin and Micheala, who are roommates. Austin is Bi-sexual, and has fallen in love with Michaela, who thinks Austin is gay and not interested in her.

In Book 2, Tangled, Trevor wants Scarlett, who wants Drake, who wants Trevor. Trevor ends up with Scarlett, and one day Drake goes to ask her if they are together. She tells him yes and he's heartbroken and says, "Too bad we can't share him", and she says, "Maybe we can".
She doesn't say, though, that she intends it to be a one-night thing, not a permanent tri-ad, and then when they are all together she looks at Trevor, asking him with her eyes to promise that no one is going to get hurt, and he promises with his eyes that no one is going to get hurt. Really? Because I never hear them inform Drake of this.

In Book 3, Scandalous, it really goes to hell in a handbasket.  Alexa has had a crush on Eric for years, since she was a young girl and he was her brother's boyfriend.  She sees him again at her brother's wedding and she still has the hots for him. They end up kissing, but then he breaks it off and admits he has a boyfriend.
He goes home and admits to said boyfriend what he did. The boyfriend, Brandon, suggests Eric invites her to meet them for a drink. Before they ever even meet, Brandon is hot and horny for Alexa. About ten minutes into the meeting, he's angling for a threesome. She agrees, but doesn't want to be with him.
Except then when Eric's doing her, she's hanging onto Brandon's neck and calling out his name.
In the end, Brandon and Alexa end up together and Eric's kicked to the curb.

In book 4, Notorious, Eric is into heavy drinking and anonymous sex. He meets Stacy, who's finance left her for another man. Neither of them want to get together, but they end up together. One day Stacy meets her old friend, Alexa, for lunch, and Alexa, not knowing Stacy is seeing Eric, admits she and Brandon aren't doing well and they were thinking of looking Eric up and inviting him back in. Stacy tells her Eric doesn't want to get involved with them again and they get into a big argument.
Not a few pages later, Stacy is asking Eric how he feels about sharing her with another man. Are you kidding me? After what happened the last time he shared? This author thinks it's okay to be so completely thoughtless with someone's feelings, and that's romantic?

I also read Cowboy Casanova by Lorelie James.  I had thought I wouldn't enjoy it much because the excerpts were taken from when they were in a BDSM club, and I don't really care too much for it.
But turned out they spent the majority of the book not at the club, and I liked Ben as a person, and the sex was good, and the story was good.

And, last but not least, I read Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich.

This is book 18 (or 21 or so if you count the novellas...which this one actually kind of seemed like) of the Stephanie Plum series.

Stephanie Plum is an inept bounty hunter working for her cousin's bail bonds business in New Jersey. Her antics and her crazy family are (were) hilarious....for about the first dozen books.
Like most other readers apparently, I absolutely loved the first several books of the series. But then it just got to be the same things over and over again. Eighteen books later, she has no more of a clue than she did in Book 1.

Oddly enough, I enjoyed this book, though. I can't explain why. I must have just been in a good mood.