While I am very pleased that Rose is writing again, this is not one of my favourites. Lacy hates being a wedding photographer but she can’t bring herself to return to Pittsburgh and NASCAR circuit where she was a race photographer. When her best friend, Billy, calls and asks her for a favour her love for him and his family has her heading back to Pittsburgh. Kip Sellars, a self-destructive NASCAR rookie, is the favour but not in the way Lacy would want. Billy wants to alter public perception about Sellars while she sits out her suspension.

This is a good read in that it has a nice fast-pace and two strong and independent women with brokenness in their pasts. There were also quite a few things in it that I didn’t enjoy. Lacy is foul-mouthed and her contributions to the swear jar could pay for three college degrees. I don’t mind swearing but I really don’t like it when it’s directed at a person, particularly one you’re vaguely attracted to. It felt unnecessarily crass and course and didn’t add to either of them as characters.

The racing aspect was very much a backdrop to their anti-romance. They really didn’t like each other much or treat each other very well. The both had preconceived notions of the other and instead of it adding tension to the unravelling story it came across as judgemental with a vast lack of communication. I hope the next one will be better.

Book received from Netgalley and Bold Strokes Books for an honest review.

I received an ARC copy of this book from the Publisher via Netgalley and voluntarily leaving my review.

This is the first book by this author that I have read. Although, I have some of her earlier work on my kindle, I just haven't got around to reading it.

It was a refreshing change to actually read something that I enjoyed. I have had a bit of readers block lately.

I loved the characters of Lacy & Kip and the chemistry between them both was off the charts. I also enjoyed the secondary characters, especially little Gabby (Billy's Daughter). The storyline was good and the pacing was just about right. It would have been nice to read more about the NASCAR racing seeing as one of the main characters in the story was a racer (driver) but the story centered around the time before the racing started. It didn't take away my enjoyment of the book.

If you enjoy reading Enemies to Lovers books then I would highly recommend giving this book a read.

Dangerous Curves by Larkin Rose had the potential to be a really good story. It has all the elements that you would expect to find in a story written by Ms. Rose. You have two strong women set in a mostly all male, good-ol-boy, insular, red-neck setting (NASCAR). Both main characters are brash, in-your-face, foul mouthed, but like-able women who would fit well in this setting. I could easily see these characters hanging around or working in the racing pit. In fact, Sellars is a professional racer in the story and Lacy was at one time a photographer specializing in racing. Both characters are dealing with traumatic pasts that affect their present day lives, and both women initially dislike each other, creating the enemies-to-lovers theme Larkin Rose is so good at writing.

This sounds like a perfect Larkin Rose novel, and it should have been. Something happened though, and I’m not sure where. I believe there should have been more editing, both content and line editing. There were some sentences and phrases that I found confusing, and I can remember one place where I wasn’t sure where a certain action had happened.

I know the above sounds bad, but I actually ended up enjoying the story. For me to like a story, I have to connect with the main characters, and I did connect with Sellars and Lacy about a third of the way through. After that, I was able to put aside the bumps in the road and just enjoy the ride. I seriously considered giving this book four stars, but in the end I couldn’t ignore those road bumps and ended up giving it three.

If you are a die-hard Larkin Rose fan, you will like this story. If this is your first Larkin Rose novel, I suggest you read some of her older works first. Ms. Larkin is a very good author, and I look forward to future novels of hers.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for an honest review.
Rainbow Reflections:
https://rainbowreflections.home.blog/

An honest review thanks to NetGalley. I am a huge fan of Larkin Rose, and was so excited to see this book. I was unable to put this book down, it most definitely lived up to my expectations. Rose does a wonderful job turning dislike between two characters into passion that you cant look away from. The tragic story of Sellars past as well as the demons Lacy went through brought the two characters together as well as made them more relatable to the reader. This was an outstanding read from Rose and I cant wait for any more new work!

I wanted to like this book more. It wasn't awful, but there were a few things that I personally didn't like.

I wasn't a fan of BOTH of the main characters having a similar "sex helps me brood" personality. On that note though, while they both behaved that way they did have other personality difference that made them a bit unique from each other. I have to admit, I didn't exactly enjoy either of them. I understood why they were hurting and I don't want to downplay that, but for me personally they weren't very likeable characters.

My biggest concern though came from the perspective. There were moments when the perspective would shift from following the thoughts of one character to another so suddenly I wasn't sure who was the focus for a moment. It would just flow back and forth.

Overall I liked the subject and the tension was a bit thick, but not unpleasant.

Immediate dislike with immediate uncontrollable attraction is the basic premise of the ‘romance’ in this one.


Kip Sellers is a rookie NASCAR driver seemingly hell bent on sabotaging her career with her bad girl ways. Lacy McGowen is a former NASCAR photographer turned wedding photographer. Lacy’s best friend ropes her into giving Sellers’ image a makeover for a shitload of money.


Both girls are fighting with their own demons from the past.


There are a lot of things that didn’t make sense. Like a photographer in-charge of a makeover? It is not like Lacy is a social media marketing guru but that is the job description. A haunting accident is the reason for Sellers’ self-destructiveness – but given that kind of an accident, it would be more believable that she never drives again. But we overlook all this thinking that different people may react differently in a situation.


The romance. Or lack of it. There is a lot of description about the huge attraction and massive physical reaction that the two MCs (Lacy in particular) have towards each other. But all the emotions are limited to only the sexual.


We liked the mouthy Lacy more than the angsty Sellers. The sex is good but this wasn’t the satisfying read it could’ve been.

'ARC provided by both NetGalley and The Publisher in exchange for my unbiased review'

**'Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being good writers...Don't shortchange yourself by sending off work that isn't any good..'

1.5 stars!
'DANGEROUS CURVES' is a moderate tale of a professional race car driver (Sellars) who's trying to curtail her many inner demons but was forced by a caring friend who intern set her up with his best friend (Lacy) herself a professional photographer -- to try marketing Sellars because of her uniqueness and talent to attain a level of accomplishments that some of her male counterparts could not fathom.
Readers are made to have this belief that Sellars was both this extraordinary driver and athlete with good championship skills whenever she got on the race track or roadway -- and also tried defying many of those typical conventions and expectations from many naysayers. Her motto was 'it's not what she has accomplish -- it's what she overcome to accomplish it that sets her apart from everyone' Sellars life was also very complex. On the one hand, she had the fame,fortune and status in NASCAR circuit. On the other, and as is so often the case her personal life was less than ideal. While Lacy herself had many scars she was battling on a daily basis: an unhappy home life as a youth and a distressing incident of her past.
The many traumatic revelations from both main characters' past was a source of focus because it expose all their flaws,sexual fetishism,womanizing and family drama.
Overall, this was an inundated and undeniably sad story that had an okay premise but then ended up being just a terribly written book: unimpressive dialogue, strange & questionable P.O.Vs and no surefire chemistry.

2.50 Stars. Larkin Rose is a new author to me. For whatever reason, I never read her older books when many others lesfic readers did. I was excited to see her writing again so I could experience her newer work. The first book I read by her didn’t blow me away, but I thought it showed promise. And because of that I went into this book with reasonably high expectations. I’m bummed to say this book flat out didn’t work for me.

If you have read my reviews before you probably know I’m a character driven reader. I can forgive some poor plot points if I love or even really like the characters. This was my biggest issue with this book; I could not stand the two main characters. I can’t even tell you which one was worse, they were both so bad. And because I didn’t like either character, I just didn’t care what happened. I could not connect at all to the story and I found myself wishing the book was over.

The romance, if you could even call it a romance, was pretty poor in my opinion. You have two people who hate each other and treat each other like crap. It was basically character #1 calling character #2 a worthless loser, and character #2 calling character #1 a hooker and slut… and then they have sex together. This is so romantic I’m practically swooning here just thinking about it.

I don’t like ripping on a book, but I have to be honest that this was just blah. Maybe it was my tastes. Maybe this will work for others but it sure didn’t work for me. I think what I need to do is read some of Larkin’s back library. So many people really like her so I feel like I should give her older books a shot. I’m not ready to give up on Larkin over one disappointing book.

ARC received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t think I’ve read anything else by this author, and am reasonably sure I won’t be reading anything else. This was very nearly a DNF, only the fact that it was an ARC made me finish.

So, Sellars is a race car driver with a bad image and Lacy is a NASCAR photographer who is tasked with helping make Sellars look better.

The story starts with both characters having sex with someone else, and neither of these scenes paints either character in a good light, especially the scene with Sellars and the cop, which may have even been illegal. I almost gave up then.

The characters pretty much hate each other on sight (which I found understandable, since I didn’t like them either) and this continues for a fair portion of the book, even though they are attracted to/sleeping with each other. This is an excerpt from one of their sex scenes:

“Sellars’s insides clenched as Lacy threw her head back with a hiss. She pulled out to the knuckles and drove inside again, eager to keep Lacy in this state of mind where her tongue wasn’t sharp and her eyes didn’t despise her. She hated that the most. Lacy’s hatred floating on the surface at all times.”

I always find it hot when authors mention the word ‘hate’ in relation to how the characters feel about each other while they’re having sex. Good times.

I could have also done without the seemingly endless use of the ‘f’ word (mostly by Lacy), it was way overused. The author also uses terrible descriptors, like:

“Lacy could only stare, feeling awkward and hot. Yes. Hot. Heat was crawling across her crotch like a phantom fog.”

I’m sorry, but a phantom fog crawling across someone’s crotch doesn’t sound hot, it sounds painful.

The two characters also each have mountains of baggage/trauma to deal with and this is brought up endlessly, but is miraculously resolved towards the end of the book when they let go of their ‘demons’, but by then I’d long since given up caring.

If you like love/hate relationships, endless amounts of angst and some graphic sex scenes, then you may enjoy this more than I did. 1 star.

This author is one of my favorites, lesbian-erotic related, I read many of her books before joining GR, she was not published for a while and last year she reappeared with a book, Breaking the rules, which was ok but it not fulfilled my expectations. Now this new book is not up to what I expect from her, either, and I really do not want to think that I have her at too high a level of demand based on my feelings with her previous books.

What bothers me the most is that the story is too entangled among the demons that the protagonists, Lacy and Sellars, have to endure because of traumatic events from their past. So much aggressivity and anger throughout the book, much of it pointless. And many of that is too much explained in detailed memories from the past. There are quite less dialogues than too much extended memories.

And then, the so longed for me sexual scenes, are not complete for the most part and are too entangled with the mental demons of the protagonists. And they are few. And the end is too rushed.

So this new book, although not completely of my taste, I cannot say that it is not interesting to a certain extent. In any case, I will continue giving credit to her, maybe the next one...