Stacia in Progress

Excerpt from 'Two Princes' by the SpindoctorsBut I know what a prince and lover ought to be I know what a prince and lover ought be4.5 stars. This is the story of The Prince of Kentucky and The King who started out as 'La Petit Prince.'My favorite of the series so far. The writing was flawless, the suspense was taken up a notch, and some of the characters' secrets were finally starting to spill out from the shadows. While I thought the poking-fun-at-romance-books segment was a bit overdone (although quite true!), the point was driven home that this story is dark, honest, raw, full of heart, and not your typical romance. I'd said in my review for the last book, The Angel, that some of the words Reisz puts on the page would serve well as an advertisement for BDSM. This book continued with more of the same message :"That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about collars and leashes and leads. When you love somebody, they own you whether you're kinky or not."I was happy to get some of the answers regarding Kingsley's and Soren's backstory, and why there was some lingering animosity between the two of them. In fact, I ended up enjoying their portion of the story much more than I enjoyed what was going on with Wes and Nora. Soren continues to become more and more human to me, which I appreciate. Nora...sigh. I keep hoping that one of these books I'm going to start warming up to this character more. However, I still feel like I know nothing about her other than she loves to write, is easy on the eyes, wears cute pajamas, has a shitty social filter, and wants to seduce the pants off every man she comes in contact with...especially the ones who are challenges. With every new man who gets added to the story, we see yet another person who wants to have her in one way or another. It's just getting old to me. I'd really love to see another woman up in this mix as a main character to balance those scales a little bit. Does such a world exist where one woman gets to keep all of her past and present lovers close, with no real outside female interference? And I'm not talking about the crazy psycho kind, I'm talking real life petty stuff.My one big complaint that has to be spoiler tagged : WTF was up with Nora talking to Wesley about the ways that she had sex with Soren WHILE THEY WERE HAVING SEX? Is that really the time to have such a conversation, while you're being penetrated by another man? And it HAPPENED MORE THAN ONCE! I'm not saying that the conversation couldn't have come up, but couldn't it have happened during a more appropriate time? Those moments made my head hurt and totally killed part of the book for me.That said, this is still my favorite book of the series. Each installment drags me deeper into the world of The Original Sinners and makes me only want to know more. This is literary erotica brought to an art form, and I'm glad that I stuck with the series and gave it a second chance after being on the fence with the first book. The effort was worth the reward.