Download Three to Play (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) fb2

The beginning of the book's description on its Kindle page says it includes: Erotic contemporary Menage a Trois Romance, M/M/F, May-December, BDSM. I'm surprised shifters weren't thrown in as well. Its setting is original and it has a promising start, but it quickly begins to feel like the author is simply tossing in one popular romance novel element after anothet so the book will appeal to as many readers as possible. This "something for everyone" quality
means no plot element is given any time to develop or to be dealt with in the manner it deserves. Overall, a very frustrating and disappointing read, especially because the story had so much potential.

The book description pretty much tells all about the story's plot. After years of hosting her own morning show, Beth is being forced out by greedy corporate management, who bring in Clint and Dustin to liven things up. Clint starts throwing his weight around right away, asking for Beth to be dumped from the morning time slot before their first week is out. The author does a good job in the first few encounters of showing the tension between Beth and Clint, but Dustin's easy-going nature plays out kind of weirdly in the trio.

And then, Dustin convinces Beth to celebrate their dual birthdays by joining him and Clint for dinner. It seems a plot device that she opts to invite them to her home, supposedly to get the home-field advantage so she can try to convince the guys to keep her on the show (she doesn't know yet that Clint has already started the process to get her booted). Somehow, dinner turns into seduction, and large bits of Clint's and Beth's animosity towards each other are tossed out as they indulge in a night of menage sex. The sex itself was fine, but not terribly exciting for how much the author had built up the tension between the characters.

A misunderstanding leads to Clint and Beth alone, indulging in Clint's BDSM tendancies, which Beth seems to share (though there was no foreshadowing of that, nor much attempt to explain afterwards). And even that was...tepid. The scene was quick, not very exciting and ultimately led to mushy vanilla sex.

Since this is a romance, it's not spoilers to say that misunderstandings are cleared up, Clint apologizes, and they live happily-ever-after as a trio, both at work, and in their home lives. There is one revelation involving Clint that's a welcome surprise, and I won't spoil that. We were given a tiny snippet of the supposedly witty banter of their morning show as a trio, but not enough to show a progression in the relationships between the three characters that would lead them to jump into bed with each other. Ultimately, the story and relationships didn't feel natural or believable to me.

And finally, the text was riddled with typoes and editing errors! It was really shoddy work, and almost kept me from buying the story after reading the sample...I only kind of regret it now.

I met Kris Cook first on Twitter and then at Authors After Dark. What a wonderfully nice gentleman. I had him sign some books for me but I didn't want to crack the spines. So I decided it was time to pick up one of his books electronically and give it a try. Three to Play started off wonderfully strong, but towards the end I started feeling it was forced.

Three to Play starts with Beth Taylor being forced to take on partners in her morning radio show. She's still top in the market but the station has new owners who want even bigger ratings. Duo Clint Moore and Dustin Lake go from station to station bringing up ratings and then moving on with a goal of making it big in New York. But when the three get on the air, the chemistry flows. Dustin instantly knows he wants Beth and even to add her to their duo making it a trio, but Clint had goals and he isn't going to let Beth get in their way of making it big.

On Beth's 40th birthday, a birthday she shares with Dustin, the three get together for dinner and a movie. Things get a little hot with both men loving Beth. But Clint is pretty much an ass. He comes back after they have left to bind Beth up to get her to confess what her ulterior motive is, but he doesn't get what he wants, he gets what he needs. But there are wheels in motion that will tumble them all in the end.

A relatively short book, it starts off strong. The tension between the three is twistingly hot to watch. But after the evening of passion, something happens to Beth that I felt I wanted to strangle a few people over. Beth is hurt by it, but in the end she goes after something she saw in Clint that she felt needed to be aired to Dustin.

There is a lot of tension, sex and betrayal to go around. While I liked the beginning, in the end, I felt disappointment.