Colters' Woman Winner!!

First, let me say, that every time I've typed in the title of this book, I've typed in "Colter's Woman" then had to go back and change it to "Colters' Woman". Apparently that apostrophe likes to mess with my head....

Anyhoo, there were less than 10 entries in my Silly Little Giveaway, so we wrote down the names on paper and I let my middle child pick the winner ('cause 8-year-olds luuvvvv that kind of thing). And here to announce the winners are the Colter Brothers:

SusiSunshine!!!!

Congratulations! Please send me your mailing address (my e-mail is in my profile) and I'll get it out to you - I have to be honest though, I'm not going anywhere near the post office before Christmas, so expect it sometime in the New Year!

Colters' Woman by Maya Banks

I'd read what I remembered to be great reviews about this book, so when I saw it on the shelf I grabbed it! Oh. My. God. I don't even know where to begin...Let me just say up front this review is going to be all over the place. The placemnt of the apostrophe in the title should have been my first clue.

Let me start by saying I like Maya Banks' work. I really liked Be With Me and her Sweet series is awesome! Colters' Woman? Not so much. From page one, you have to drop your disbelief at the front door and pick it up on your way out. I spent almost the whole book thinking "that would never happen" or "WTF?"

The book starts with Adam Coulter, the oldest of three brothers, going out in the snow to get the mail and he sees a woman passed out in the ditch. He rushes over and picks her up to get her inside and immediately gets a hard-on. (My first thought is what kind of guy gets a hard-on for an unconscious woman? But I digress....) He gets her in the house, strips off her clothes, and puts her in the tub to warm up. Then, after she wakes up, and he's got her out of the tub and she's asleep, he sneaks in and gets into bed with her and gets her off with his hands. She thinks to herself WTF and then just as quickly she's okay with it.

Holly is on the run from her husband. She left him on their wedding day after she saw him murder someone. He's looking for her and she's running scared.

Here's the thing with the brothers: Adam is the oldest, kind of Alpha (I guess), Ethan is the middle brother, he's sweet, and Ryan is the youngest, he's an Iraq war vet with some low-grade PTSD. They've been looking for a woman to share. Yes, share. As in BROTHERS HAVING SEX WITH THE SAME WOMAN AT THE SAME TIME. Apparently their fathers had one wife and their grandfathers had one wife. I think I would have been okay with the brothers having sex with her one at a time (which they did) but they also had sex with her at the same time. They didn't care who went where - one would get off inside her and the next one would literally stick it in...mouth, vag, ass; she was like a living blow up doll. And did I mention they're BROTHERS!? I think I also forgot to mention that Holly is a virgin, and her first sexual encounter is with the three brothers.

Oh yeah, back to the plotline - The brothers talk Holly into being "theirs" and she agrees to it (pretty quickly) and they want to help her get a divorce from her husband. She tells the husband if he doesn't leave her alone she'll tell the authorities about the man she saw him kill. Holly thinks it's okay and she can be with the Coulters, but her ex-husband hires someone to kill her. That part of the storyline was pretty good.

I did like seeing Holly go from a scared little girl to a more confident woman as the story progressed. And Ryan's changes as she helps with his war memories is sweet but brief. I think I would have liked this book more if it was about three friends and not brothers. The ending was sweet but too quick.

Be With Me by Maya Banks

This was my first Maya Banks book. I liked it. I had heard good things about Ms. Banks, but I was leery going into it - the blurb said it was a story about one woman and three best friends....that seemed like a lot of people to me, but Ms. Banks made it work!

Reggie Fallon is a cop. She's also the Mayor's daughter. When she comes across a murder scene the killer is still there and he tries to kill Reggie. He almost succeeds, but back up arrives and he gets away.

When Reggie wakes up in the hospital, her three best friends from childhood are there - Hutch Bishop, Cam Douglas, and Sawyer Pritchard. They'd remained best friends until about a year ago, when one night of passion between the four of them had her running away from them. She couldn't handle the truth of what they had done and had managed to avoid them for the past year.

When they heard she'd been hurt, they brought her back to recuperate in the home they had built for her. They explained what they wanted, a relationship between the four of them, and she fought it. How could that possibly work? What would people say? Hutch, Cam, and Sawyer convinced her to think about it. They all loved her and didn't want to give her up. They knew she loved them too, and they would never make her pick.

Her first day in their home there was a break-in. Then her car exploded right after she'd gotten out of it. And the men's childhood home (they were foster children who lived together with an adoptive mother) was attacked. Were these attacks aimed at her? Or someone close to her?

The guys were very protective of Reggie, and she in turn was protective of them. Watching their relationships with Reggie grow, individually and as a group, was interesting (and steamy!). I will say the killer was not who I thought it was, and the final showdown was good. And when Reggie and the guys had to decide if this relationship was what they all really wanted, their decision-making process was, erm...unique.

This book was hard to put down and I am definitely going to read more books by this author!