1.5☆

What I liked:
Standalone
HEA

I had a hard time staying interested in this book.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an ARC from NetGalley.

A Day of Pleasure Anthology by Cora Cade

Three steamy novellas based around The Drunken Duck pub feature two brothers and one of their friends meeting the women they will end up marrying.

MORNING LIGHT: Tennyson “Tenn” Sharpe has had a crush on Noah Harper since she was sixteen and he was nineteen. He went off to war, became an Army Ranger and retired after ten years in the service. Now that they are back in the same town together with nothing standing in the way of exploring their relationship potential the two set out to steam up the pages. Noah’s brother, Chris, has been best friends with Tenn since childhood and is unsure what their friendship will be like in the future if Tenn and his brother end up together. Fairly simple straightforward friends to lovers romance story with a set-up for story two.

TWO IN THE AFTERNOON: Molly Ryan is manager of the pub and has let slip the fact that she might be under threat by a predator she thwarted in another city. With Molly as prey her boss, Noah, calls in his buddy Cal Eversman to act as bodyguard and Molly’s brother Ryan, also a lethal military guy, sends in a couple of guys to protect her as well. Cal is gorgeous, built, big, lethal and interested in Molly. Molly is attracted to Cal but they don’t act on their interest as he will be moving on…mostly don’t act on it anyway ;) There is a HFN for Cal and Molly by the end of the book and Cal’s sister, Lainey, is introduced to star in the third story. (I would like to see a book about Molly’s brother in the future)

STAY THE NIGHT: Lainey has uprooted herself needing a change in profession and location. She left behind an abusive boyfriend and moved to be closer to her brother. Chris Harper, architect and brother of Noah from the first story ends up, eventually, with Lainey. This was a quick romance with the bad guy making an appearance, getting his comeuppance and being given the boot before Chriss and Lainey can have their HEA, too.

The three stories are short so there is not a lot of character development and limited time to develop and explore plot in depth. For novellas they were fine. I can say that I believe I would enjoy spending time with the people in these stories and did enjoy spending time with them. The three stories together flesh one another out making for an interesting larger story. I would love to read Ryan’s story in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and Entangled for the ARC – This is my honest review.

3-4 Stars

A Day of Pleasure is a great box set with three interconnected stories.

Morning Light: 4 stars.

Tennyson has been in love with her best friend Chris' older brother, Noah, since they were teens. But he left to join the Army Rangers when she was 16. It's been 10 years since she's seen him and now that he's back, she's intent on getting him to see her as more than just a young girl, as his brother's best friend. She doesn't know that while he was serving his country, her letters kept him sane and kept reminding him of her. Now that he's back, he's determined to claim her as his, that is, if his little brother hasn't already claimed her first.

For such a short story, Morning Light is surprisingly well crafted and well drawn. Tenn and Noah's relationship developed naturally and it was evident their feelings had been brewing for years. The only thing that could have made their story better is if it had an epilogue. Other than that, though, it's great - sweet and steamy and paced well.

Two in the Afternoon: 4 stars.

Noah (Morning Light) has asked his friend, fellow Army Ranger, Callum Eversman, to look out for Molly while he and Tenn are on their honeymoon. Cal is only too glad to do a favor for his friend while he's on leave, but he didn't expect to find his charge so enticing. Molly is in North Carolina after she followed her Delta Force brother there, and she's loving where she's settled. She left behind an ex she had put in prison for assaulting her, and it seems as if perhaps he's sent someone after her. Thank God Cal's protective instincts are in overtime here. But, can they resist their growing attraction to each other while living in such close quarters to each other? And can Molly resist falling in love with a guy who's just going to leave in a couple weeks to go back to the Rangers?

I really liked Two in the Afternoon. Cal and Molly have serious chemistry, and Cal is one of the sweetest, fiercest protectors I've read in quite awhile.

Stay the Night: 4 stars.

Stay the Night is the third in the A Day of Pleasure series and my favorite. This time it's Chris and Lainey's story. Chris is Noah's brother and Tenn's best friend (Morning Light) and he's been attracted to Lainey, Cal's sister (Two in the Afternoon) since she came to town shortly after Cal did. But, he's never made a move, just content with admiring her from afar and lightly flirting with her when he saw her. Lainey, like Molly, is in town after dealing with an abusive ex, and she's not really open to relationships, especially ones with playboys like she assumes Chris is. But, when Chris comes to her rescue after she falls and sprains her ankle, she soon sees a different side to him, and their attraction explodes.

I really liked Stay the Night. I wasn't sure I'd like Chris again after the hurtful words her threw at Tenn in Morning Light, but he thoroughly redeemed himself here. And Lainey is the perfect woman for him - she's sweet, she's sassy, and she's tough.

I suppose all writers have a weakness. Mine, as a book reviewer, is articulating why I didn’t like an author’s writing style. Which is the dilemma I find myself in after finishing this series of short stories. I can’t exactly explain why I didn’t like them, but I know I didn’t.

The first clue that these three stories didn’t connect with me is that it took me SIX days to read a little over 300 pages. I knew I wouldn’t be able to read much this past week, which is why I chose this anthology with three novellas. I get twitchy if I don’t read at least something every day, but I could barely make myself read more than a few chapters each night. And when I did have a good chunk of time to read, I would lose interest fairly quickly.

Yes, the stories were pretty steamy. But other than the first story (which was about a couple who knew each other growing up and had a history of being friends), there was very little build-up to the relationships. I didn’t feel any chemistry between the couples. And the interactions between the characters (all of them - not just the hero and heroine of each story) often felt contrived and overdone.

The author tried to bring in some drama with the second and third novellas with plots involving abusive ex-boyfriends, but I didn’t feel it was fleshed out thoroughly. Instead of the past seeming menacing and dangerous, the bad guys seemed more of a caricature than an actual bad guy. And our alpha-male, super-protective heroes? They didn’t impress me either. I’m okay with being protective, but I’m not okay with going out an exacting revenge of the beat-the-crap-out-of-someone kind. Yes, I understand these exes physically hurt your woman (or sister), but that doesn’t make it okay in my book.

The sample chapter I read before requesting this ARC drew me in, but my interested tanked after just a couple chapters. I think because there was a lot of telling the reader, instead of showing the reader, I never connected with any of the characters. (For instance, in the first story we learn that the hero and heroine wrote to each other for ten years while the hero was in the military overseas - could we not have read some of those letters?) Even having all three stories interrelated didn’t help. Add in the characterizations that two of the three women were coming out of abusive relationships, but then were extremely comfortable with their sexuality - which would seem contrary to how they would behave right after escaping from those situations, and I just wasn’t buying anything this author was trying to sell me.

I am always willing to cut a story some slack if it’s a novella/short story, but even then these didn’t work for me. I got through them, but just barely. I wish I could better explain why these stories didn’t work for me, other than just saying they didn’t. But they didn’t. And that's all I've got...

* thank you to NetGalley and Entangled Publishing, LLC/Entangled: Select Contemporary for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review

Smokin'! Put the kids to bed and hand the remote to your hub and kick back with this trio of stories that are sure to melt your winter socks and have you fanning yourself.
I loved these short stories that are set to the time of day involving a family and friends in a small town. The are hot as hell, funny, romantic and the men and women both are just over the top.
They're the kind of people you want as friends because they're better than family and always have your back. The stories were great, low angst (my fav) and the plot lines flowed well from book to book but you could read them as they were initially published, individually. I loved this anthology because there wasn't a break.
Just read it for the men ladies. Good lord these men. The women were pretty sharp too.
Fantastic read. Lot of punch packed into these pages.
4.5 stars


** advanced copy from NetGalley and Entangled for an honest review. The thoughts and opinions are my own**

A fabulous anthology. Good solid stories with a wonderful premise. I enjoyed reading these.

An anthology of three stories set in a lakeside town in North Carolina , with alpha heroes who are sweet and sexy, and feisty and independent heroines. As I’m looking forward for ages to reading Gabe Ryan’s story – “A Full Heart” - I was excited to get to know these related characters.
All these men – Noah, Cal, Chris - are swoony, sexy, tender, sweet, territorial and fiercely protective of their women (the same could be said about the three heroines) and they’re great romantic characters. They’re really every woman’s dream book boyfriend.
I enjoyed the strong love and friendship relations displayed in the stories, but I found there were just too many parts about sex, women constantly aroused and men sporting erections. In those parts sometimes the reading became a bit tiresome and I really wasn’t interested in those segments and found them repetitious, even if the sex scenes are mingled with emotional ones. Of course, if you like erotica,
After Gabe Ryan’s appearance in this anthology (“Two in the Afternoon”), now I’m even more curious and eager about his story.