5 “angel” “lobster” Kisses!
Wow. Wow. Wow!!!! So I loved with an all consuming passion S.L. Jennings's first contemporary romance, Fear of Falling , it was one of my favorite reads of 2013 and officially made me a devotee of hers. Taint just made me her b!%@# for life and is one of my favorites reads of 2014…are we noticing a trend here? I’m hooked…sold…sign, sealed, delivered…she could write about snow melting on toilet paper and I. Will. Read. It. Probably with a dumb @#$ goofy grin on my face too…kinda like the one I’m wearing right now. But I’m getting ahead of myself. As usual. (I usually do when I love books as much as I loved this one!)
Justice Drake…umm…hello – I want to hump his name! Then I find out he’s a 6’2” bronzed god with dark hair, denim blue eyes and muscles for days and I was drooling. A lot. Then…he opens his mouth…and I’m done for. Physically…yes, Justice is the definition of perfection in my eyes and I may or may not have the strong desire to lick him from head to toe…but Lord have mercy his personality is spot on for making me putty in his hands. That’s honestly what I fell in love with first (I swear…I’m really not lying about this!)…his wit, his sarcasm, his humor – I got it, I loved it, I couldn’t get enough of it. He was that perfect combination of charming but cocky, smooth and sexy, alluring but sincere. I can’t even tell you how many times I burst out laughing at some dry thought he had…for example, one of my fav’s… ‘I clear my throat, praying that when I finally grow the balls to open my mouth, actual words and sounds will come out.’ I mean…I had high expectations of Justice in my head and he completely exceeded every single one of them. I am a self-proclaimed man w#@%# lover and Justice has to be one of the best I’ve ever read. I love getting inside their head, understanding what makes them tic and then, of course, that moment when everything changes and the girl who is usually behind it….there’s nothing better.
‘I’m a lot of things – crass, stubborn, brutally honest, egotistical – but one thing I am not, is careless. I know my boundaries, and I never cross them. In a business where lines can be easily blurred, those boundaries are outlined in black Sharpie, traced in gasoline, then set the f^@% on fire, ensuring that no one even gets close enough to inhale the fumes of temptation.
Yet, here I am, touching, tempting, tasting the limits. Begging to get burned by an angel with a halo of fire.’
Allison Elliot-Carr…oh Ally girl…my fiery angel…that’s a great word for Ally…fiery. It very much depicts who she is in my mind. She’s got such a fierce and spicy personality…I loved her and how she both complimented and challenged Justice. She didn’t give in or conform, she wasn’t perfect, she just was who she was. Unapologetic, quirky, funny, and genuine. I loved that she didn’t back down from Justice…from the moment he threw his know-it-all attitude in her face, she was persistent and fought to see through to the real man lying underneath the bravado. I felt bad for her…for her situation…she felt stuck to me and I think she blamed herself for things that weren’t her fault, which broke my heart. I also felt her confliction because she knew that her actions might not exactly be pure but everything she was feeling with Justice was so real and intense. I can’t lie, I would kill to get some of Ally’s POV with all this…as much as I adored her personality, I can only imagine how fabulous it would be inside her head.
‘Seems like I can’t stop the word vomit when I’m with her. There’s just something about Ally that distracts me just enough to forget myself, beckoning my truth like a siren’s call. I just want to tell her…everything.
Maybe we were friends in a past life. Or lovers.’
I’m such an angst w#@%# …and I loved the angst between Justice and Ally…I love the build…I loved that it was forbidden…and call me cliché but I loved how he fought it (cause he did!) and absolutely couldn’t resist her. Deep down, man w#@%# ways aside, job aside, past aside…Justice is a good guy. He may have an unconventional approach but his job is helping women…he just doesn’t sugar coat it…but there’s nothing wrong with that! I personally loved it! But back to J & A…they were so cute and normal together! I mean…their conversations, her either/or questions, eating ice cream together…their interactions were just so relaxed and casual and it was nice to just watch them get to know each other. The fact of what brought them together and why they were there just kind of…melted away and didn’t matter. I mean…yeah…so, they’re meeting is a little…different and their first encounter wasn’t ideal…and not many dudes know the girls entire history practically from birth like Justice does Ally but I think that’s part of what drew her to him. He needs different…he craves different – he can have and has had just about any girl out there…none of them have held his attention like Ally did…why? Because she’s not like all the other women that have come to Justice’s ‘workshops’…she’s not like all the other vapid socialites that are apart of that life…she’s not like every other girl that flocks to him…she’s unique…she doesn’t belong…just like him.
‘Kissing Ally would be so easy. Touching her, holding her, tasting her…it’d be like breathing.
I want to breathe. I want to inhale her in every way possible. I want her life to sustain me, her heartbeat to synchronize with mine.
But I don’t want to taint her. I don’t want her to be like me. A cheater. A deviant. An outcast. She deserves better, and I’m not better.’
All that angst was more than worth it…Ally and Justice are everything I could have ever dreamed for. I felt their passion…their connection…their pull – I think it’s physically impossible not to. Their sexual chemistry was just one more delicious layer of the A&J love fest that I was sucked into. I mean…Justice is walking sex to begin with…but hot d@#%! I was addicted. It was more that just sex…I keep going back to it but to me it was what made Justice and Ally, Justice and Ally. It really was all the small little details that when combined just makes them one of these perfectly amazing couples in my head…I don’t even know if I can pinpoint the moment they captured my heart but…they did. I loved that they built a friendship…they got to know each other more than just the bored housewife who can’t satisfy her husband and the guy who is going to help her bring the spark back to her marriage. They got to know each other as individuals…really see each other for more than just what everyone perceives. Obviously, the attraction is a given but to really hook a guy like Justice there has to be more than that…he can have any beautiful woman he wants…but Ally has this spark and personality that can’t be duplicated.
‘I know I want her body more than I want my next breath. And I know that meeting her, basking in her smiles and wanting her on me like a second skin has forever changed me. But can there ever be more? Can I spend every night counting her freckles, like I once counted the stars? Can I replace my sunrise with the vision of her sleeping beside me, fiery hair, wild and tangled all over her face? Can I swim in those too-big turquoise eyes and drown myself in her laughter every night?
I think the biggest question is, How can I not?’
I really cannot say enough good things about S.L.’s writing…I loved every word of it. I was compelled to read, never wanted to stop, was tortured when I had to stop…I was an obsessed woman hypnotized by this genius. I even loved the little details, like the chapter titles…something so small it can be easily overlooked some times but to me it was a build up…added to the anticipation of what was to come. I loved that it was completely from Justice’s POV because being in his brain is like a million birthday’s and Christmas’s combined but seriously, Ms. Jennings can write an amazing male POV. It wasn’t over the top, it felt real and genuine…never forced or fake…there was not one moment when I thought that this didn’t sound like a guy, which unfortunately can be a side effect of a woman writing a man’s POV but she nailed it IMO. The blend of angst and sexiness with humor and emotion just totally got me. Plus, I loved the unpredictability of this book…the fact that I never saw any of the story coming made me a hundred different shades of giddy – I was on the edge of my seat (another reason I couldn’t stop turning the pages!). There was no way to even fathom what might come out of Justice’s mouth next so trying to figure out what might happen next was just out of the question. I swear, I was holding my breath up until the very end and the entire last 10%, if I wasn’t crying then my jaw was on the ground.
‘I kiss her again just to keep my mouth from admitting that it was. The beginning of the end. The very start of the saddest goodbye in history. Because after tonight, she’ll walk away from me and go back to him, holding a piece of me in the palm of her hand. And whenever I look up at the sky at night, wondering where she is, if she’s happy, if Evan laughs at her corny jokes or smiles whenever she does, that empty space left behind within me will ache with remembrance. Because her light once filled it. She filled me in a way that nobody on this Earth could. And I’ll never feel whole again.’
So…of course...I loved the ending…I really did – it clean, simple and exactly what I could have hoped for leaving me with a peaceful smile on my face but…I’m a clinger. I always want more…and I don’t know if I could ever get enough of these two together. I know this is going to sound crazy, cause I did love that this is a standalone – it’s an amazing standalone and if S.L. never wrote about these two again I would be fine with that, but…I will gladly take a million and one books from Justice Drake’s POV if she decides to write them. And maybe a few books from Ally’s POV (just sayin’). Taint is an addictive angsty wonder with phenomenal characters and the perfect blend of sexiness, humor and emotion – hands down one of the best books I’ve read this year!
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Top reviews from other countries
Johanna
Such an interesting concept but a tiny bit disappointing in the end
Reviewed in Germany on June 17, 2014