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Title: Fallen for You (The Killer Next Door #1)
Author: Carlie Sexton
Genre: New Adult / Erotic Romance Thriller
Cover Designed By: Hot Damn Designs
Synopsis
If you believe your life is the sum total of your choices, what do you do when things just don’t add up? You are about to find out. It won’t be pretty. It won’t be dull. And surely, it won’t be safe. In fact, making just one wrong choice could put evil at your bedside watching you sleep.
And so it is with Kate Simmons, a young woman who, by choosing to regain her life, actually puts it at risk by the very choices she makes. After unimaginable heartbreak stops her world on a dime, Kate falls into a three-year blackness of self blame that brings her to the edge of life, itself. As time finally brings light back through tiny cracks of renewed desire, Kate moves out of the prison she made for herself in her mother’s home to find a new reality, rooming with her best girlfriend, Charlie.
Yet, to be free is to be vulnerable, and Kate’s choices more than ever mark a splattered line between being happy and being dead.
Care to choose? Here’s your menu:
A strangely alluring building manager so possessed with wanting you for his own, he’ll bury more than the fact he has a girlfriend; a buff college student for whom you are clearly hot, as are all the other girls on campus; a pushy lawyer who is as handsome as he is intoxicated with conquest, who doesn’t take no for an answer, who gets what he wants — always.
Sometimes, it’s whom you choose. Sometimes, it’s who chooses you. If you’re Kate, it’s both, and it puts you on a perilous road where good looks and humor are the thin masks of jealous delusion and utter violence.
You’re in trouble when the sum total of your choices is written in blood red.
Review
This is the story of Kate.
Kate is starting a new independent chapter in her life after the tragedy of losing her first love. She moves into a new apartment with her best friend Charlie, returns to school, and starts to try living again.
Kate meets Roger – Roger likes Kate…..
Kate meets Neil – Neil likes Kate….
Kate meets Mark – Mark likes Kate…..
Kate starts to experience feelings for all three men, only the feelings vary depending on the guy!
Mark is sexy, has a harem of women, and makes Kate feel all kinds of good squirmy
Neil is a lawyer who is used to getting what he wants, he wants Kate. Neil makes Kate feel things that she never thought she would feel or experience again.
Roger just makes Kate feel plain creepy!
This story has many elements. It is not your standard contemporary romance. The series title gives some indication of that “the Killer Next Door”.
I really liked the plot lines in this story, the thriller element twisted with the romance. I felt enough emotion to get the creepy Roger vibe along with Kate, the Mark is sexy vibe, and the Neil is sexy and dependent and a whole lot of goodness vibe. Unfortunately though, I did not get the emotion of the characters as plots were unfolding.
The language was text book perfect sentence structure and as it read it felt stilted. There was no true conversational flow, rather each sentence read like a statement. The fear element did not translate for me, and that left me disappointed with the delivery of a great story idea.
Additionally, I struggled with the points of view from this book. It appeared that the book was intended to be told from a narrator perspective, but then it was seem to be from the characters POV, but with their reference in the third person. It also would chop and change within a couple of paragraphs, which sometimes confused me. It appears this is a debut novel, and that said, these issues, would likely resolve as Carlie develops as an author. These are not enough for me to have detracted from the story.
As I have said – the plot is a great story twist, and it keeps you guessing as to what will happen next. I have jumped into book 2, Taken by You and can’t wait to see how it unfolds.
Title: Taken by You (The Killer Next Door #2)
Author: Carlie Sexton
Genre: New Adult / Erotic Romance Thriller
Event organized by: Literati Author Services, Inc.
Synopsis
How tragic it is when a caged spirit finally finds its freedom and — entranced in its ecstasy — is invited by that freedom into a cloaked dance with danger.
In Book One of this three-part epic, Kate Simmons — young and alluring, and finally out of her cage of grief — attracts more than attention. Intoxicated by her newfound independence, a blithe Kate is on her way to finding out that around the corners of life, some life-changing eye-openers await. As the story continues in Book Two and she begins to churn a dangerously turbulent trail, it is Kate who now has to snap to, to react, to outrun, or become yet another tortured victim who vanishes down the path of wrong choice.
Having already roiled the risky waters of jealousy, Kate moves in with Neil while Roger — an enamored oddity — visits his son in Germany. Upon his return and finding Kate gone, Roger’s predator mind becomes unhitched, and then unleashed, on the hunt of a lifetime. But whose life?
Step by creeping step, even as Kate’s future closes in on her, she attends — obliviously — to her new life, working through the challenges of fresh relationships, losing family members both to death and to deceit, questioning the depth of love.
Every path offers a choice. Every choice offers a consequence. And every consequence summons its due. As emotions swirl across fateful days and nights, some in Kate’s life will reach out to touch happiness in warm embraces, others to sever ties in bloody traces.
The stains of passion are frequently mistaken. The question here is who will be taken?
Review
This story is part two of the Killer Next Door Series. In this book plans are made and action is taken for Kate to be away from Roger. We learn more about her family relationships, and we see her relationship with Neil grow.
Charlie and Mitch, Kate’s best friends take the next step in their relationship. And life goes on.
Roger becomes more obsessed, and goes to any length to locate Kate…
This book is filled with back story for Kate and Neil, and the start of exploring other characters and relationships.
This book for me was a filler kind of book – the book to pad out a story and make it go further…
I can see why the story was there, only, the details and back story really could have been incorporated into book 1. Not knowing where Book 3 is going to go, it is hard to say if this detail and story was absolutely necessary, so I will withhold judgement on that until I finish Given to You.
Carlie continues to weave a wonderful plot idea. The fact that the story holds my attention is what helps with my rating of this book. I still found the writing style frustrating. It is clear that Carlie is an articulate author – there is no hesitation about that. What frustrates me is the conversational aspects of the story. This story is written in such a way, as was Fallen for you, that there is no room for assumption or misinterpretation of action, which is fine in and of itself. However, I found that the emphasis on explaining every intricate detail in each conversational exchange, even if it was rehashing something that you had read earlier, made the character interactions slightly unbelievable.
This is my personal take on the style, not a negative per se. As the familiarity between characters grew, the formality of exchange did not diminish, and when characters are intimate, the continued formality and over explanations confused me. Additionally, as with Falling for You – the Points of View/Narration aspect of the book, were still inconsistent – however, not as noticeable as in Fallen for you.
This book will also rate a 3. It is not a bad read – I really enjoy the storyline premise and the plot. I am curious to see how it unfolds, especially after the state this book was left in. Because the story is so strong, it helps to overlook the other things that for me detract a bit from the story telling.
Title: Given
to You (The Killer Next Door #3)
Author:
Carlie Sexton
Genre: New Adult / Erotic Romance
Thriller
Publication Date: September 24, 2013
Event organized by:
Literati Author Services, Inc.
Synopsis
To give is a virtue. But to give your very self, the ultimate bequest. Offered in love, it can be wondrous. Offered in desperation, it can be deadly.
In Book Two of this three-part
epic, young and tempting Kate Simmons at last seemed to have reached a safe
haven of happiness when she moved in with Neil, ambitious and persevering, both
in his legal practice and his love life. Taking great care to protect his trophy
and the surprise he had in mind for Kate, Neil hired security to accompany his
soon-to-be fiancée on a scavenger hunt of a lifetime. As Book Three continues
their saga, it is life itself that is in the balance when Kate becomes the
hunted as the jilted Roger snatches his prey.
The obsessed minds of Neil and
Roger now take aim squarely at each other â€" with a bare and exposed Kate
directly in the crossfire. Knowing her very life will be the winner’s spoil,
Kate stares agony in its ghastly face as it approaches for the death dance.
There is no time, no place, no
safety in a war of fixation. A war in which the winner will be either the last
one standing, or the last one to die.
Review
This is the third installment in the killer next door series. This story picks up immediately where Taken by you leaves off. Roger has taken Kate, and Neil has no idea…..
As the drama unfolds, there are a number of situations that Kate needs to ‘survive’, luckily Neil, once aware, is desperate to find her. This installment is essentially the climax of Roger and Kate's relationship, and the true beginning of Kate and Neil’s relationship. Kate and Neil are wonderful together, and Roger is well... creepy!
Unfortunately, this book contained the same issues as the previous two that made it tough for me to get in to. The speech structure remained formal throughout, which made it hard to relate to these characters, especially when they are with their group of friends. The shifts in the story telling (ie: from Kate and Neil, to Roger) seemed to occur at random times, and it broke the flow of the story for me.
The love story was sweet, and the way that relationship ended was perfect for the characters.
I found the drama almost anticlimactic, drama and tension unfolded early in the story, then there was a lull, and I expected the end to finish with a bang, but I was like left asking “really, that’s it?”
Again, the premise and plots for this story were there – it was a great plot twist on an ever told genre, unfortunately the delivery didn’t work for me. I will go with another 3 hearts – this piece of work is not bad as such – but it didn’t deliver the suspense, action, and sizzle that I was hoping it to.
Links
Amazon | Barnes
& Noble | Kobo
Taken by You (Book #2)
Amazon
| Barnes
& Noble | Kobo
Fallen for You (Book #1)
Amazon
| Barnes
& Noble | Kobo
| iTunes
About the Author
Carlie Sexton has had a passion for reading
her entire life. She loves it so that she dedicated her life to educating
children. As a teacher, she has had the profound pleasure of teaching children
to read and explore their imaginations through a good book. Just recently she
decided to write a story that had been on her mind. Now she has several that
she wants to turn into additional books. Writing has become a passion that she
dearly loves.
Carlie lives with her handsome husband in
Southern California. They enjoy the relaxed lifestyle that California provides.
They have two beautiful dogs, but no children.
Connect
with the Author:
Tour-Wide Giveaway:
·
One complete, signed paperback set of the Killers Next Door w/swag
(US Residents ONLY)
·
One complete set of ebooks
·
Three (3) $10 Amazon Gift Cards
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