Return To Me By Shannon McKenna

Return to Me is a decent book that somehow failed to grab my interest. It was too easy to put down. Part of the problem is the emphasis is on the romance instead of balancing the romance with the suspense plot. I also had the suspense plot figured out very early on, so there wasn't much to hold my interest. While Simon and El tried to figure out their relationship (El loved him and he figured he was bad for her), they had sex. Lots of sex. LONG sex scenes that went over many pages. I found myself skimming the sex scenes to get back to the meat of the story, which was would Simon quit being a douche to El and would they figure out where Gus hid the evidence he alluded to in his email? Can anyone tell me why neither Simon nor El never sat down and tried to figure out what Gus meant when he wrote that Simon's mother (who was dead) was guarding the evidence? It seemed crazy to me that they never considered looking for it.

Although I felt like the sex scenes were fairly well written, I was pulled out of them by the things Simon said. The author puts words in this tough guys mouth that no man would ever say. I would say the sex scenes, while not erotica, certainly qualify as romantica instead of mainstream romantic love scenes. I'm finding that these types of love scenes are not my favorite. I enjoy hot sex scenes, but there is a certain style of language I don't find sexy. Mass Market Paperback A boring story with a non-existent mystery. No build of tension around the villain's transparent intentions, which could have saved the fact that the reader knows who the villain is from the get-go, but the characters don't.

The book reads like it was written with a teenager's understanding of how 30-somethings act and speak (they speak of love like inexperienced teenagers; someone uses Not without any irony; the supposed town slut is called a tramp by several people), and the one-dimensional secondary characters who make up family and townspeople have 18th century values (oh noes: the unwed hero is staying in the heroine's home which has been converted to a B'n'B! Something untoward MUST be going on).

The hero can only articulate how sweet and beautiful the heroine is, and the BIG conflict between them is that the cliched hero isn't a stickin' around kinda guy. (But wait, then they have magic, condom-free sex, and he starts to feel differently)! That's when I quit. Mass Market Paperback I wanted a fast read to occupy me in the last days of November and so I grabbed this book. I haven't been to fond of McKenna's books I've read but this one ended up being better than the ones I tried before.

Seventeen years after bad boy Simon Riley sped out of town Ellen Kent has finally got her life together. She's very busy running her successful bed and breakfast in Oregon's LaRue River Valley. And she's engaged - to a man who doesn't exactly make her knees weak with lust, but so much the better. It's time for a quiet home with a family, dog hair on the sofa, all the trappings, even if she has to retool her emotional wiring to a much lower wattage to get it. After all, passion - of the pants at the ankles, lips in serious lock, hands roaming frantically on the way down the hall - well, it's just an unrealistic fantasy...like the man pulling up to her door on his motorcycle...

Simon swore he'd never come back to this backwater town where trouble followed at his heels. The only good thing about the place had been El Kent, who had been his friend despite his rep. Now, he's back to investigate his uncle's sudden death and face the demons of his past. But he hadn't counted on El's lush, sensual beauty, the innocent seductiveness of her every gesture. She has no business marrying that lacklustre clown of a fiance. What she needs is a serious wake-up call, the kind that starts at the mouth and leads down to complete abandonment and total ecstasy. He never expects his strategy to backfire and leave him so hungry for more...But Simon has done more than stir El's passions and his own. His very presence has brought danger into her life, and they will have to learn to trust each other if they want to survive...

I think things started a bit too fast between El and Simon and he starts chasing her even thinking he might not stay and that will hurt her. But once they were in a relationship I actually enjoyed it because while he is still rough she seems to became stronger, although a hard man Simon didn't seem as cavemen as McKenna's previous heroes. And there was a mystery regarding his uncle that I quite enjoyed even if I felt it could have been better explored, we knew who the bad guy was but it was interesting to find out the real story as the action progresses.

I had a bit of problem with El and Simon as characters because after a while it seemed they were taking a bit to long to solve their problems and when something happens near the end and Simon is accused by the cops the first thing he thinks of was running away and leaving El behind. That was what he had done all those years back and I was very annoyed that the same was going to happen all over again.

By this time I was more interested in the secondary couple's love story than El and Simon. Brad and specially Cora were really interesting people with a past story and lot to catch up with and make up to (specially Brad) and McKenna really creates some sizzling scenes between these 2. I wish she had given them more space.

Grade: B- Mass Market Paperback Yet again another book by Shannon McKenna that I loved. This book grabbed me from the very beginning and kept me interested all the way through. The heat level was good for me and the hero was absolutely yummy. The heroine had eye's only for the hero and stuck by her man no matter what. The action was really good and the bad guy was completely crazy.
Thanks Kris for the rec :) Mass Market Paperback 2,5-3 de 5 estrellas
Sí, pero no. Está claro que no le cojo el punto a esta autora.
Prometía. De verdad que prometía muchísimo la trama de suspense, peeerooooo... Generalmente no tengo problema con las escenas de sexo en las novelas, lo único que pido es que casen en la trama, que lo pida la escena que está contando, y aquí no sucede. Es sexo, sexo, sexo porque sí, para rellenar o yo que sé y me aburrí; de hecho, algunas me las salté.
Hubo personajes secundarios que me resultaron más creíbles que los protagonistas. Con él tuve la sensación de que era un veleta histérico y con ella tuve la sensación de que sus actos no avalaban sus palabras.
En fin, le doy un 5 ramplón por la ambientación, sino estaría a un tris de suspender. Mass Market Paperback

Read ☆ eBook, ePUB or Kindle PDF Î Shannon McKenna

When the only man Ellen Kent has ever loved, famous photojournalist Simon Riley, returns home to investigate his uncle's mysterious death, their long-ago passion is reignited, but someone is determined to keep them apart. Reprint. Return To Me

Hubo una época donde devoré los libros de Shannon Mckenna, y en mi convalecencia (?) estoy abierta a todas las posibilidades, así que buscando en mi Kindle encontré este ebook, agregado hace bastante.
Siempre digo que cuando la pareja principal es opacada por otras historias secundarias y esos personajes te interesan más, entonces la novela pierde su atractivo. Me ocurrió exactamente eso; prefería a la pareja de Cora y Brad, y eso es un mal síntoma.
La historia es sexo, sexo, sexo, mezclado con los histerismos del héroe atormentado pero no en el buen sentido (si es que lo hay xD), este tipo tira más a emo con sus cabellos largos y ropa de motero. La mitad de la novela estuve pensando cuándo iba a bañarse y me ALEGRABA cuando la autora hacía que se duchara aunque tuviera que soportar otra escena de sexo tórrido bajo el agua.
En síntesis, el héroe prometía sexo del bueno y se quedó como Grey, que le dijo en la película a Ana te voy a cog3r duro y bleh, unos tristes chirlos y ya está.
Las escenas se repiten bastante: ella sucumbe, él lo disfruta, se aleja, discuten así muy cliché-mente como en una sit-com y el ciclo vuelve a comenzar.
Le pongo tres estrellas porque es una lectura ligera después de tanta oscuridad que estuve leyendo (Pennies de Pepper Winters, nada más deprimente para leer en un post-operatorio) y me hacía falta. Mass Market Paperback I am pretty easy on erotic romance books. These are my escape, and as long as I find myself transported I am willing to overlook many things. This book was bad in so many ways that even I, with my low expectations and profound wish to be entertained, found little to like. I will list my 5 biggest complaints.

1. The lead characters were terrible. Simon is an asshole of the highest order, and El is boring, weak, without pride, a terrible business person, and has no desire to know anything other than how to make good pies and please her man. I love baked goods and sex, but that alone does not make me a person worth learning about.

2. The sex was good. The characters were awful. Is there anything less the stuff of fantasy than people you don't like having great sex?

3. There seemed to be a message that empowered woman must flaunt their sexuality in the most obvious ways, and that women who don't walk around in corsets and Daisy Dukes are shriveled souls who are ignoring their inner strength. Yuck.

4. The language used during sexy times is really off-putting. I won't provide a lot of detail, but I will leave you with the two phrases that most squicked me out girl juice and dick drool. 'Nuff said.

5. The secondary characters are laughable. Mousy employee, BMOC who is a victim of his own act, defensive trailer park slut, deranged psychopathic pyromaniac, low-IQ evil henchmen, tight-ass rich lady political wife, corrupt sheriff. All these tropes and more. Yawn.

You don't want to read this, trust me. Mass Market Paperback Shannon Mckenna is about the only non-pnr, rom/suspense writer I read anymore. (well aside from Pamela Clare!) Thank God I haven’t made it thru her entire backlist yet because I hear her latest couple releases haven’t been as hot- (which tends to happen in a long series).

However, Return to Me, I’m happy to report, I thoroughly enjoyed!

Though its not part of her McCloud Brothers series, it has all the hallmarks of a good McKenna read- a lost soul alpha hero, a heroine who knows and loves him to the depth of her being, sexy heat and a bad guy that won’t stop till both are dead. (The bad guy part is really just background noise as far as I’m concerned, but you’ll have this with alot of romantic suspense now-a-days.)

Successful photojournalist Simon Riley has loved El Kent for a very long time. He never thought he’d see her again after the town wrote him off all those years ago as the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who would never amount to nothing, but when his uncle turns up dead from an apparent suicide he must go back to face the demons of the past… and the one woman whom he could never forget. Little does Simon know that someone in town is out to make sure those demons stay buried- even if they have to kill to do it.

As I mentioned above this book delivers on numerous levels- long lost love is an easy hook for me and the author sure knows how to maintain scintillating chemistry between her characters. I love that in a romance novel. The only drawback for me was the worn psycho killer plot and that character’s obvious motivations. Still, if you like romantic suspense with an over the top heat factor, you can’t get much better than a Shannon Mckenna novel- and this one is no exception.

4 out of 5 from me.
Mass Market Paperback reviewed at the passionate reader

http://thepassionatereader.blogspot.c...

Sometimes—in fact, lots of times--I just want a down and dirty bad boy hero who sweeps into town, throws the good girl over his shoulders and drags her off to a happy ending. This bad boy does and then gets the nice girl story has been done many times by Shannon McKenna, sometimes well (think Extreme Danger) and, unfortunately for this reviewer, sometimes terribly. It’s hard to find much to like about Ms. McKenna’s overblown Return to Me.

The hero, Simon, is a self-absorbed jerk whose behavior between the sheets is so aggressive it’s kinda gross. The woman he’s burning for, Ellen, he deflowered and then dumped seventeen years ago. But Ellen, an enabler if ever I’ve seen one, just lets him right back into her heart and other parts. I wish I could tell you why Ellen is such a pushover for Simon and his constantly feeling sorry for himself ways, but I can’t because Ms. McKenna hasn’t bothered to develop Ellen or Simon into in-depth characters.

Nor has she produced a coherent plot. As best I could tell, Simon left town after being accused of burning down a barn—we know he wasn’t really isn’t a bad guy because he did try to save the horses. Ellen stayed in town—and I mean stayed in town, it’s as if she has never been anywhere other than LaRue—and became the controlling owner of a bed and breakfast. We are supposed to think she’s sweet—as opposed to stupid--because she has an assistant who is terrible at all things bed-and-breakfasty but Ellen keeps her on, smiling benevolently when, yet again, Missy burns the muffins. Simon has come back to town because his uncle Gus shot himself and something about that just doesn’t feel right to Simon. That doesn’t stop him from constantly ruing that he’s returned to LaRue. (He feels he is brings bad luck to the entire town—yes, it really is all about him!) There’s a psycho villain who has disgusting flashbacks to Vietnam where he learned to enjoy setting others on fire. There’s an uptight guy, Brad, who was engaged to Ellen but really should be with Cora, a woman whose reputation he ruined. (Cora and Brad are actually much more interesting a couple than Simon and Ellen although that isn’t saying much.)

There’s lots and lots of sex and none of it’s very sexy. Both characters are described routinely as gorgeous, hot, and desirable, but given that neither of them were anyone I would ever want to meet, I found page after page of them moaning into each other’s mouth just plain out dull. Plus, the idea of this couple reproducing is so appalling, I kept worrying that one of the bazillions of condoms—Simon is a lot like the Energizer Bunny--they were using might fail. When Ellen and Simon aren’t in the sack, they spend way too much time feeling sorry for themselves. Ellen doubts herself for being with Simon, Simon doubts himself for being with Ellen. Halfway through the tale, I doubted myself for buying this book.

By the time I got to the incredibly bizarre scene where Simon and Ellen, escaping someone or something—it’s all a blur—, find themselves in a hidden grove filled with huge animal statues made by Simon’s dead mother, I gave up. I flipped to the end and was unhappy to see they appeared to having unprotected sex and planning a family. Hopefully, they and their progeny will never leave LaRue. Mass Market Paperback What an utterly fantastic book! I wasn't sure what to expect from it since it was a book I randomly picked up the library. It just looked interesting, and since I love romantic suspense (and that's what it was labeled as) I thought, what the hell, why not? And I ended up loving the book, even though it was completely not what I expected.

Return To Me is best described as a thoroughly primal, raw, passionate, story. It's extremely erotic. It might not be the most sophisticated story in terms of language, style, and plot, but it more than makes up for it with bold sexuality, strong characters, and an interesting storyline. Though the book is classified as a romantic suspense, it is not on the level on your typical book of that genre. The suspense plot is subtle, more of a background aspect, and there's not a lot of guess-work involved. The story is more focused on the characters themselves, but it works for the book.

Simon is the typical tortured, bad boy hero and I was instantly fascinated by him. He's so internally conflicted about what he wants, what he deserves, and the demons from his past, but yet he doesn't lost that Alpha male personality. I just wanted to give him a big hug. Ellen is the polar opposite...the shy, wealthy, good girl. It's one of my favorite dynamics in romance books. The depth of the characters is fairly thorough. There were a few points I thought could have been better explored, but for the most they had nice dimension. They had a powerful chemistry together, but were constantly fighting themselves over preconceptions, deservedness, and a host of other issues. Their relationship was very push-pull. I was rooting for them from the beginning.

The book - though I adored it - isn't for everyone. With such a strong, in-your-face sexuality throughout the entire story, there are a lot of people who won't care for it. There's nothing pretty or tame about the sex in the book. It's down and dirty and raw, but passionate at the same time. It's one of the things I loved most about the story. I've always wanted to read a romance book with a high level of eroticism but yet a complete romance. It's just not something you tend to find in the mainstream. Sex is more pretty and mild in those and more about the romance, which is fine most of the time. There's a lot of erotica on the 'net, but those are generally just gratuitous sex with no romance or just a smidge. So it was exciting to find a book with a bold sexuality and yet a wonderful romance to go with it. But with that said, like I stated previously, Return To Me won't appeal to everyone. If you like your sex on the vanilla side and sporadically occurring, then you'll hate the book so DON'T READ IT!, but if you like some chocolate with your sex you'll love it as much as much as I did.

So...fantastic book in my opinion. I can't read to go find more of McKenna's stories. Mass Market Paperback