DARK NOTES
Genre: Dark Romance (standalone)
Author: Pam Godwin
Release Date: April 5, 2016
They call me a slut. Maybe I am.
Sometimes I do things I despise.
Sometimes men take without asking.But I have a musical gift, only a year left of high school, and a plan.
With one obstacle.Emeric Marceaux doesn’t just take.
He seizes my will power and bangs it like a dark note.
When he commands me to play, I want to give him everything.
I kneel for his punishments, tremble for his touch, and risk it all for our stolen moments.He’s my obsession, my master, my music.
And my teacher.
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This brutal man is my home. His hell is my heaven.
I’m his Ivory, and he’s my darkest note.
If there’s one thing that Pam Godwin knows, it’s how to write one seriously intense alpha. The mere name alone, Emeric Marceaux, is enough to get my motor revving. This man will give you shivers and you’ll actually feel his intensity crackling through the pages. It’s utterly delicious. He’s a dose of dangerous, with a splash of depraved, and all of it is tied around a sexual magnetism that’s so captivating, your fingers will tingle turning the pages.
Dark Notes is a standalone dark romance with a deliciously kinky element of the forbidden teacher/student. Add in the fact that Ivory is only 17 years old, and you got yourself one crazy ride of a book. But that description doesn’t even begin to do this book justice.
Ivory Westbrook is a survivor with big dreams. Being the only empowered student in one of the most elite and expensive performing arts high schools in the nation, she has a lot to prove, but her talent as a pianist is unparalleled. Unfortunately she lives in a world where money is power and she has none. She’s lived a hard life in her young years; her father is dead and her mother may as well be with her addiction to drugs. She’s survived unimaginable horrors from a tender young age, but she’s a survivor at her core. With only a year left of high school, she’s that much closer to her dream of making it into Leopold, the highest ranking college in the country. Now all she has to do to get even closer to that dream is impress her new music teacher, who just happens to be the most intense and captivating man she’s ever laid eyes on.
Things begin to simmer between the two of them at first sight, and the author does an incredible job in making the sexual tension practically palpable enough to taste. Emeric is one of the most captivating characters I’ve read in a long while. He oozes sexuality and yet there’s this edge to him that adds an element of fear that just works so well.
I didn’t expect to like Ivory as much as I did. I’m not a fan of sexual abuse issues being the go-to for heroines in dark romances, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s Pam. She’s written an incredibly broken yet persevering heroine with Ivory. She has deep rooted issues, but never once are they glossed over. It’s incredibly raw, painful and believable. You can understand her captivation with Emeric. You can completely understand why she does the things she does and craves the things she does. The author lets the rich character development paint the whole picture for the reader. Never once do you feel like you’re being told anything; you feel it right along with the characters.
While the sexual tension between Ivory and Emeric is instantaneous, that is the only instant thing in this book. The rest is the most delicious sort of slow burn. It’s almost like watching the most sexual game of cat and mouse unfold, and even though you know what the end result will ultimately be, you still can’t stop reading.
Tonight, she’ll bend for my punishment, tremble for my touch, and I’ll risk it all to show her exactly what she means to me.
So you may be asking yourself if I loved it so much, why not a 5? The reason for that is because I did find parts of the story to be too predictable for my tastes. As soon as a few particular elements were introduced, I knew straight off the bat where it would be leading and how it would end. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the entire book was that way, not at all, in fact. There are certainly enough twists and turns packed in to keep you guessing. Pam Godwin is a master of her craft and she seems to get better and better with each new book. If you’re looking for a dark romance with a bit of kink and taboo thrown in, you really can’t go wrong with this one.
If there’s one thing that Lauren Layne knows how to do, it’s to write a swoony, feel-good, and super sexy contemporary romance. Cuff Me just may be my favorite in the series and of course the grumpy Vince is definitely my favorite Moretti brother…so far anyway.
It was a nice change of pace from the typical broody and tortured hero that you normally find in romance these days. After two books of wondering what made Vin tick and made him the man that he is today, I can certainly say I was not left disappointed with the way the author handled it.
#HappyFeels
Sparrow Raynes grew up the daughter of a drunken father who happened to work for one of the most feared men in the Boston underground. But now that man is dead, and his son who’s known to be even more ruthless is to be her husband…and she has no idea why other than it’s been arranged and her father agreed to it. So she’ll do it, but she won’t like it. In her eyes it’ll be a marriage in name only because no way can she give her heart to the devil with the steel-blue eyes that’s known as The Fixer. He’s ruthless, he’s cold-blooded, but she refused to cower from him like even the most deadly of the deadly underground seem to…
Sparrow was exactly the kind of gritty anti-hero that I needed. L.J. Shen was not afraid to stick true to her characters and pulled no punches to do so, and I respect the hell out of her for this. Yes, Troy did some things that may not sit right with some readers, but for this reader, I loved to hate it. See I love when an author takes risks to stay true to the characters and that was definitely the case here. This is no insta lust, insta-love, or insta-anything. Troy and Sparrow’s connection formed over time and it felt authentic because of that. Considering how Troy is and where he came from, I wouldn’t have bought it any other way.
L.J. spared no detail to make her story gritty and real. It was action packed, super sexy, and filled with twists and turns. It was enough to keep me at the edge of my seat the whole time and eagerly turning the pages to see what will happen next. The romance was sizzling hot and together with the plot it all came together perfectly.
My only minor quibble with the book was that it went a little much and too creative with the analogies at times. But that was such a minor thing compared to everything that I loved about it that I barely batted an eyelash at it.
Have you ever read a book that touched you on such a visceral level you almost felt like you were living it along with the characters. Where you felt every emotion, every painful revelation, every bruise and emotional scar? A book that gutted you and at the same time you can’t stop thinking about? A book that you just know will stay with you for a long while yet? Sinner’s Creed was that book to me.
Dirk is a nomad National for Sinner’s Creed MC. He’s the shadow that you don’t see coming, and only see right before your final breath. He’s a third generation, and the MC life is all he knows. He grew up with violence and blood. The club is his life and his salvation. He rides for it, he kills for it, and he knows that eventually he’ll die for it. But then a blonde beauty rocks his world to its very core.
Dirk and Saylor’s relationship may have started off from 60 right away, but there was always something so fateful about it. I was totally buying what the author was selling and man oh man but she sold their love to me. I felt it to my very core. It could have been cheesy or OTT, but it never was. It was beautiful, and real, and authentic. I was eating it up with a spoon and loving every second of it.
When I read 
Ali is not the typical heroine you’d find in books. She’s a tortured soul; a drug addict, a stripper, a woman that put her sister through hell and back in the first book. You know that there must be a good reason for her to have become the woman that she is now, and that is the story that Divided gives you.
While Divided focuses on a different couple from the first book and their HEA, do yourself a favor and read the series in order. While the author does a fantastic job giving you the backstory along with any details you may have missed without having it sound redundant, it helps to read 
