Danger Bangs | 6.16.23
Mortal peril is no excuse to keep your clothes on!
During at least one sex scene in the following books, the characters are in active peril. Sometimes they think they will die soon after they get down and dirty, sometimes they’re coming (eyyy) immediately out of a situation where they almost died. It’s great (for us, not for them). Let’s do this!
The Duke In Question by Amalie Howard. Lady Bronwyn Chase might be a brave patriot, or she might be a war criminal. It’s honestly 50/50, and Valentine Medford, the Duke of Thornbury, is having trouble figuring her out. They happen to both be on a boat to America at the same time, and he’s on the lookout for a spy, but what he finds instead is the younger sister of his good friend the Duke of Ashton (the hero of book 2 of this series). And when it turns out that the mysterious spy and the beautiful woman he can’t touch are one and the same… things are about to get double complicated.
Bronwyn is idealistic and determined to make the world better for everyone, beyond her privileged white and titled world, though she wouldn’t mind if in making the world better she got to do daring and exciting things. Valentine is jaded and tired and suspicious of absolutely everyone yet somehow continues to let Bronwyn get the better of him because she’s much more clever than he gives her credit for, and he gives her an awful lot of credit.
These two are so funny. Their danger bangs take place when they’re coming out of a crisis, like being chased by gunmen through the woods or subduing a would-be assassin. They literally tie up a guy and then have sex in the next room over before calling the authorities. The adrenaline and near-death experiences are what get them off. I’m obsessed with them.
Rating: 4.5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Whiteout by Adriana Anders. Though I read this book in mid 2022, it was released the winter of 2020, and the fact that it’s about a potential deadly pandemic that our characters have to fight (often to the death) to keep from getting out was… topical to say the least!
Angel Smith is a cook who ran off to Antarctica to keep the residents of a scientific research station fed when her life imploded. But enough time has passed that she’s ready to get back to things, and finally, it’s her last day on the frozen tundra. Or, it’s supposed to be. She happens to be in the right place at the right time, IE, not on the plane out of town, when the research station is attacked by mercenaries, and now she’s stuck on the remote continent with the remote glaciologist Ford Cooper. Realizing what the mercenaries seem to want are some ice cores Ford had unearthed that contain a prehistoric virus, they take those, as many resources as they can carry, and set off across the tundra for another station, hoping that they make it to safety before the mercenaries catch them or they run out of food.
This was my first true romantic suspense, and holy shit, the tension. And I mean that in every sense of the word. I kept reading sections out loud to my husband, and though I knew there would be a HEA, there were still long swaths of this book where I was sure Angel and Ford weren’t going to make it. That’s good storytelling right there, folks.
Rating: 4.5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
The Hostage Bargain by Annika Martin. I need to pause before going into the plot of this book, because it is bananas. I enjoyed reading it a lot, but it is not even on the same plane of existence as the other books I’ve included in this roundup. It needs to be evaluated on its own merits, because it is going for a fundamentally different kind of experience. This is also the first of a five book series about the same romantic unit (we’ll get to why I’m saying that in a second) and definitely feels more at home with a “wacky erotica” label than romance, though they’re also romantic. Let’s just get into it and you’ll see what I mean, I just want you to know that the 4.25 stars I gave it are accurate, and also a very different 4.25 stars I give to most other books I review for this newsletter.
Melinda lives in a tiny town and works at the local bank as a teller, and she hates her life. The bank she works for is owned by a local rich guy who is a terrible person and also responsible for the deaths of her parents a few years earlier, leading her and her younger sisters to run their farm by themselves. Melinda is an adrenaline junkie, and always imagined getting to escape her provincial life for bigger and more exciting things. Duty has forced her to stick close to home, however.
Until one day, her bank is robbed, and three handsome bank robbers take her as their hostage. First, though, she helps them rob the bank, because fuck the guy that owns it, while pretending for the cameras and her coworkers that she’s terrified (when in fact she’s never been more turned on). They’ve never taken a hostage before, but a timing issue occurs and they need her to get a clean getaway, intending to dump her on the side of the road, safe and sound, once they’re clear. She convinces them to let her stick around for one more job, as long as that one more job is robbing the same bank owner guy (because, again, fuck that guy). The bank robbers introduce themselves as Zeus, Thor, and Odin, and she gives herself a new name for her new adventure as well; Isis.
There’s a whole conspiracy around why these guys, who used to be a doctor and two soldiers, are now bankrobbers, and why despite their obvious attraction to Isis they can’t keep her with them even though she really wants to join the crew for good (though by the end of book 1 it’s clear they’re keeping her). The conspiracy and their background is explored over the course of the series, as is the deep romantic (and even deeper sexual) relationship between our now four outlaws. They get married at one point? I’ll be honest I don’t know how to talk about this book/the series as a whole without just telling you absolutely everything that happens, because everything is bonkers. I loved it. I devoured the full series in like two days. Maybe I’ll do like a bonus podcast at some point. Do you want me to recap this series out loud? Tell me in the comments!
Rating: 4.25/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Next week, I’ll be recommending more books about Hollywood and makin’ movies! Check out the first roundup of Hollywood love stories here.
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!