Craves The Angst: NEW REVIEW! WHISKEY SOUR by Nazarea Andrews is Now Available:

"I thought the read was okay, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for."

- Craves the Angst

TITLE: Whiskey Sour
SERIES: River Street Bar #4
AUTHOR: Nazarea Andrews
AGE GROUP: Adult
GENRE: Romance
RELEASE DATE: September 27, 2018
PUBLISHER: Nazarea Andrews
PAGES: Approx. 163
COPY PROVIDED BY: Author

BOOK BLURB:
Calvin Landers is a mess.
He has a great job and a steady string of men and women in his bed, and has been in love with the same couple for so long he can't remember a time when he wasn't. Coming off fresh heartbreak, he's ready to move on, to give up on romance and sex altogether and moves in with his best friend, Davis, while he looks for something more permanent and tries to figure out what the hell he's doing with his life.

Ava Liu isn't looking for anything more than something to distract her from the book she's supposed to be translating. Something to distract her from why the hell she's in River City in the first place. But the boys who share a fence are more than a little distracting and pushy, when they realize just how much Ava needs someone--and how much they all need each other.

Sometimes life happens just when you stop looking.

REVIEWER'S NOTE: I received an eARC from the author in exchange for an honest review.

2 Stars!

The Review:

This was a short and fun read, that was told in all three POV’s, which I liked. But the book itself could have been better. I didn’t connect with the characters like I wanted to. In fact, I didn’t really understand their connection to one another. I also thought the story was choppy and disjointed and I felt I needed to have read the other books in the series to know who all these characters were because I didn't understand their place or role in the worldbuilding or their connection to the mains.

Overall, I thought the read was okay, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for.

Story/Characters...

After being dumped by his partners from their threesome relationship, Cal is ready for a change.

Davis is Cal’s best friend from his college years ... and he’s been secretly in love with him since the day Cal stumbled into his dorm room. In need of a change himself, he runs from his problems in New York to room once again with his longtime friend in the hopes to help him heal from his broken heart.

Deciding change is good, they rent a new house on a new street ... and right across the road is the reclusive Ava, whose life is restricted by the four walls in which she lives.

Together, they find a new life and new beginnings, but unhealed wounds surface and threaten their happy threesome and they have to decide if it’s worth pursuing a relationship where so much can go wrong.

I liked the idea of this book. I love M/F/M books. I think the dynamics in such a relationship are fun and interesting to read, not to mention can be sexy and super hot if written well. In my opinion, this wasn’t that kind of read. I didn’t feel there was enough time spent on the main characters to really get a grasp on them. Too much time was spent on outside relationships I didn’t understand or connect with because I hadn’t read the previous books in the series.

I wanted more get-to-know-you moments between Cal, Davis, and Ava. It was their relationship that was supposed to be the focus of this book, but we got a lot of outside focus on Cal’s last relationship and some weird interactions with Davis’s stalker that didn’t really amount to much at all. And I felt there was more to Ava’s agoraphobia than was talked about in the book, as there seemed to be a couple of instances where Davis learned something about her online, but we never got what that something was. I didn’t understand where her phobia stemmed from other than some vague references to her being scared of the outside world after a couple of incidents involving her parents and her BFF that didn’t even include her in the traumatic events. There were also a couple of times her character was annoying and indignant, not to mention, she’s a shut-in and scared of the outside world but get her on the phone or in the bedroom and she suddenly becomes a bold sex goddess? It didn’t ring true, and I just didn’t connect with Ava at all.

Cal was a firefighter and that seemed to be important for the book as the author made reference to it a lot, but we never really saw anything come from his job and the “stresses” of it. Nor did we get much insight or conflict from the references to his father being abusive and leaving him scarred, other than the reader being told of those events. Davis was a big-wig CEO of a multibillion-dollar company but he could do all his work from home on the internet, in a different state. Really? Ava’s job was the only one that made sense as she was an online translator which worked well for her shut-in status. Putting their jobs aside, I didn’t feel any connection or chemistry between these three at all and the bedroom scenes fell super flat for me. Of course, that might have been due to some of the author's word choices when she was describing their sounds during the sex. Such as “wail”, “scream”, “writhes”, “needy whine”, just to name a few. Those words conjured up images of a screaming banshee, not a sexy threesome.

I realize it’s a short story, but it didn’t have any substance and very little excitement and the climax to the story felt rushed and underdone. And I have to mention each character's voice. They all sounded the same. If their name wasn’t at the beginning of each chapter, I wouldn’t have known who was speaking. They all talked exactly the same.

The Wrap Up:

I enjoy menage stories. There’s something fascinating about them and if done right, they can be spicy and fun with interesting characters I get invested in. They can hit all the right spots for an entertaining, sexy romance. Sadly, this one didn’t hit all the right spots for me.