Addicted to You - By Becca and Krista Ritchie (#ReadingCram)

Book 1 - Addicted Series

She’s addicted to sex. He’s addicted to booze…the only way out is rock bottom.

No one would suspect shy Lily Calloway’s biggest secret. While everyone is dancing at college bars, Lily stays in the bathroom. To get laid. Her compulsion leads her to one-night stands, steamy hookups and events she shamefully regrets. The only person who knows her secret happens to have one of his own.

Loren Hale’s best friend is his bottle of bourbon. Lily comes at a close second. For three years, they’ve pretended to be in a real relationship, hiding their addictions from their families. They’ve mastered the art of concealing flasks and random guys that filter in and out of their apartment.

But as they sink beneath the weight of their addictions, they cling harder to their destructive relationship and wonder if a life together, for real, is better than a lie. Strangers and family begin to infiltrate their guarded lives, and with new challenges, they realize they may not just be addicted to alcohol and sex.

Their real vice may be each other.

How can I even begin to explain how much I love this book? How much it blew my mind and ripped out my heart? How my mind was stolen and not returned until I'd read the entire series? How I lost the will and want to read any other books but these? How I stalked the authors because I loved their writing so much I needed more? How I felt like I had read nothing before I read this book? How does one even begin to describe perfection in words that fail to encapsulate the full emotional and mental gravity of how this book affected me? I imagine this is what souls feel like when someone asks "what's heaven like?" Nothing can adequately represent it. Nothing. "Addicted to You" took my expectations, crushed them into tiny pieces and from those pieces built something beyond my imagination, beyond words. This book is the start of a whirlwind series that will steal your life away until you only breathe the literary genius of Becca and Krista Ritchie. I was hooked from the first page and for good reason. "Addicted to You" is fast paced, heart wrenching, grimace worthy, love inducing real life. My attempt below to explain the "why" is only that, an attempt because I can only try to explain instead of simply writing - Read this fucking book because I can't write about perfection. I don't think book reviews work that way but this one should. Anyway if you want my sad attempt at explaining then read on, if not - buy the book.

SECRET Shared - By L. Marie Adeline

Book two in the Secret series.

This book is gold. If you don't want to read a gushing review just go get it and read it NOW!

In SECRET shared we follow the story of Cassie and Dauphine in good ol' New Orleans. Cassie is a recent graduate from the SECRET ladies club that helps sexually liberate woman and Dauphine is the current initiate. While I've come across books with similar intentions, they haven't been ground breaking reads but with Adeline it works! There is no fluff about the power of men to make a woman into a real woman. Instead it is about ten steps (see end of review) that help women rediscover and believe in the power of themselves. Note that I said RE-discover, because it's not that women never had belief in themselves, it's that somehow, something convinced them that they were unworthy and powerless.

Cassie is currently struggling with life after SECRET and the fact that the man she loves is having a baby with another woman. Cassie was going to leave SECRET to start a relationship with said love of life but with the baby on the way she turns to SECRET as a way of coping. Through an accidental encounter she meets Dauphine who has never been able to come back from her cheating boyfriend and best friend. I'm not surprised because her boyfriend sounds like a self absorbed prick and her best friend a lying selfish cow, she's better off without them. The hard part is the fact that idiot boyfriend becomes famous and using Dauphine as fodder in a book, causing her to hyper analyse herself. (If I could get my hands on that son of a-)

Breaking the Rules - By Kate Belle

Grace is an uptight old lady who seems to need Spanish Ramon to help her release her sexuality.
Maybe I am too young to be reading about a forty year old woman but I was incessantly annoyed with Ramon and even Grace. Grace's life seems fine, she is an academic faculty at a University and she has decided not marry. Go you, Grace. Until Ramon, a student wanting to study female eroticism and sexuality, asks her to be his adviser. Ramon is charming, handsome and annoying. He makes Grace feel uncomfortable. After the first meeting Grace is not impressed and hopes to transfer him to another faculty member.

But to her dismay her co-worker, Andrew, says that she has to have Ramon and it will be "good" for her. In the next meeting Grace falls in the rain. Thankfully Ramon is there to save her. Damsel in distress meet your saviour. Grace simpers because he smells so good and blah blah blah. Once they get back to the office Grace is not on guard like she normally is and Ramon takes advantage of this by fondling her leg, dripping water on it and then licking it. No, you read that right, licking her leg. The woman is hurt and the dude is licking her leg. If that wasn't ridiculous enough, Grace likes it. She tells herself she shouldn't be doing it and all those "I'm doing a bad thing" thoughts stupid women think. Luckily for her Andrew calls and interrupts the weird leg porn. Another male to the rescue. Someone please slap all the men in this book for being presumptuous assholes.

What I find most irritating about this dynamic is that Grace is an independent woman and she has a solid career but now she needs to be a sexual beast which only Ramon can help her with. Why can't Grace just want to jump the dude because he is hot?! Why does she need to be sexually weak and insecure? Why can't she buy a vibrator and have at it? As I said she is forty something so maybe I am just a product of my generation.

I finished this book, though it was frustrating, because it wasn't entirely horrible. I do wonder if my response to these characters was the difference in age. I will read the second in the series to see if the strong female characters Kate Belle introduces can remain that way throughout the story, fingers crossed. The sex scenes are well written but the plot well, I'll stop harping on about it. It may appeal to you, it may not and I hope I haven't turned you off it! Give it a shot, it's not a long read.

2/5

xxx
George

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House Australia for the copy!
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10/10/2013 - Got the title mixed up with Bloom. My apologies.