I’m going to make this easy for you. This was probably the best book I’ve read so far in 2015. There- I said it. This book completely ate my brain! I’ve been a Kele Moon fan for what seems like forever and I LOVE the Battered Hearts series so much- it’s not even funny.
I remember reading the first book (Defying the Odds) in that series and someone on GR said (in a nutshell) “Oh you just wait, it gets better with the next book”. AND IT DID! To this day, Starcrossed is one of my all-time favorite books. I have a signed copy of it on my bookshelf that I stare at lovingly. 😉
So- about The Slayer. The main thing I loved about this book was that Ms. Moon completely took her time to tell Chuito and Alaine’s story. No corners were cut in telling their story and I was totally enveloped into their world and their story. I’ve always used Starcrossed as the bar for which all I measured all of Ms. Moon’s books. At some point in this one, I freaked out because it was THAT GOOD. You know that feeling you get when you realize that you’re reading a book that just blows you away and that you just cannot put it down? Yeah, that was me and this book.
Ms. Moon goes all the way back to the beginning of Chuito’s Alaine’s relationship/friendship and I really appreciated the dense history she provides for them. Chu and Alaine’s relationship is somewhat complicated by Chu- more than anything. Chu is punishing himself by being in Garnet and Alaine represents everything he feels he does not deserve. It’s obvious that Chu and Alaine love each other very much but Chu holds himself at arms length from Alaine. Until they cannot deny it anymore and then you have to wonder how in the world they will make it all work. How will they combine their two worlds? Chu, a former gangbanger/MMA fighter and Alaine a preacher’s daughter…
Alaine is a GREAT female MC. She broke away from her family and is living her life by her own rules. I loved her fortitude and her unrelenting belief in the goodness of Chuito. She is drawn to him immediately, she sees him as a man who needs care and and is worthy of love. They create a world of their own in their apartments and they grow from friends to so much more. As they bonded over eating together and hanging out. Not to mention THE DANCING. OMG, the dancing is as sexy as the sexytimes and let’s face it, Ms. Moon can set the page on fire.
Can we just talk about TINO and NOVA?!!! ( We meet Tino and Nova in Starcrossed)
Holy shit. I love these guys. LOVE. We get a massively huge bromance with Chu and Tino and I loved their relationship. We are also treated to learning a lot about Tino, his motivation, his role in the Moretti family etc.
Due the book going back a few years, we get appearances from the whole Garnet crew and we get some behind the scenes stuff from previous books that I enjoyed.
NOVA. While I’m on pins and needles about Tino’s book (coming next) I don’t think I can adequately express how bad I want Nova’s book. I can’t even quantify it. In fact, I don’t want to think about how long I have to wait for it.
OH!!! DO NOT MISS THE DICTIONARIES!!! These are narrated by Chu and Tino and are not to be missed.
So yeah. I loved it.
“It’s a new dance. I don’t know the steps.”
“No steps. You always need rules,” Chuito complained. “Just listen to the music. Close your eyes.”
“They’re closed. I’m listening.”
“Listen to the drums. That’s the part you listen to. Feel it.”
“I’m feeling it.”
“No. Feel it like a heartbeat. Like life. You want it to be a love song, hear the sex in it. Hold me like I hold you.” He jerked her tighter against him as he said it, forcing her breasts to crush against his chest and her dress to ride higher up on her thighs. “Like you need me.”
Alaine sucked in a hard breath and ran her hand up from his shoulder to his neck. The lust made her languid against her will, and when he moved this time, she followed because she didn’t have a choice.
“You’re not supposed to think when you dance. Supposed to just feel. To move the way I tell you to move.” He ran his hand up her back, pushing at the center of it until she arched into him, allowing her head to fall back and forcing her hips tightly against his. “Yeah, like that.
Better. I step hard. You step—”
“Soft,” she finished for him.
“That’s right. Follow my hand. Hard, soft, together we fit.” He loosened his hold on her waist, and she stepped back to the beat and then allowed him to pull her into his arms again. They did it a few times, the push and pull, stepping away from the heat and moving back together like they needed each other to keep breathing. Then he pulled her to the right and stepped to the left at the same time. When he used his hold on her waist to force her back, she stepped so that her feet were between his. He fit the two of them back together like a puzzle piece again, with his leg pressed so intimately between her thighs it was making her ache. She arched her hips on instinct, and he hummed in approval. “Bueno, asi mismo. Move them like
God made you to move them. That’s good, mami.”
Before now, they’d been dancing salsa, not this hybrid, more sensual form of moving that felt like a guilty pleasure. The beat was the same, the steps were sometimes the same, but this was so much more intimate. A tease. A candy-coated sin that wasn’t a sin because it was labeled dancing instead.
Alaine loved it.
She let herself be completely soft in his arms, moving where he wanted her to move, because it felt so damn good to let go of everything else and just be with Chuito. All she had to do was feel the drums throbbing and listen to the erotic, lulling sound of a man singing in Spanish about dancing with his woman.
All night.
They danced until the sun came up.
Purchase:
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