Combo Chồng Xứ Lạ (Bộ 3 Cuốn) tải xuống LIT miễn phí

Line Architects _architects — Six stars. So glad a friend recommended this one. Both the title and the publisher's description of this book left me cold---I didn't care about the music industry. But that industry is just the starting point. Every chapter features the points of view of different characters, and all the stories interlock. The end is set in the near future, which is thought-provoking, and yeah, I guess at the end the writing is what's called postmodern, but I liked most of it. This is a modern-day masterpiece.

Fritz Helm _8839 — This second installment starts off well and in keeping with the author's description (claim?) that SotT is an action series. We're taken into a heist-in-progress and into the opening chapter where Simon and his team are debriefed on their next case. Following their fuckfest weekend, Simon is back at work and Jeremy has taken off for parts unknown. When Simon and his team hit on the fact that the thief they are after is strikingly similar to Jeremy, Simon calls his intermittent lover and offers him a consultancy job on the team, to the horror and objection of his team members who, of course, don't know their boss is sleeping (now and then) with the 'enemy'. I enjoyed the first half of Double Down and, to my surprise, found that the incessant bantering between the members, despite the childish overtones, did not irritate me. Nonetheless, I would have liked to have it cut down by half because I found the time spent on this slowed the book down considerably. If this series is meant to be an action-oriented one, Double Down would have been that if some of the banter had been left out in favor of more action sequences. There's a lot of build-up towards catching the copycat thief then a surprisingly anti-climactic end. However, there's an explanation for that though you'll have to wade through all the banter between everyone, and especially between Simon and Dorothy Langridge when they meet in the Arboretum, in order not to miss it. The repartees between this hard-nosed CIA operative and Simon are good but that post-op secret meeting they had was one instance when the bantering needed to have been dispensed with. The info divulged here was significant and I was exasperated to have to read through the relevant chapters twice and some portions more than twice just to mentally filter out the extraneous banter to get to the relevant stuff. There's also important things going on in Jeremy that I wanted to dwell on (the copycat thief was someone significant in his past) but this, too, was overwhelmed by the noise that just never let up from page to page! Anyway, the suspense kicks in from the time Simon and Langridge meet and the following chapters - until our guys get to NYC - are the best part of the book. MAJOR WARNING!!!MAJOR WARNING!!!MAJOR WARNING!!! There is a Lacuna that occurs in the middle of Chapter 13. Read this, by all means, but do NOT read the author's comment at the end of this lacuna as it contains a major spoiler. I don't normally mind spoilers but this was one that I wish I didn't come across. It was totally unnecessary of the author to give that info away and I can only put it down to her uncontrollable need to justify and defend her decision not to write the sex scenes into the main story that she didn't realize this particular spoiler served no purpose. Anyway, back to the book... After the meeting at the Arboretum, and the suspense sequences following, the book switches focus over to Jeremy and Simon. Simon has descended into a deep funk following the events of the last chapter and spends days holed up in his apartment, not really eating or sleeping and not bathing either. As we, the reader has come to expect, Jeremy turns up to rescue Simon from his depression and from here the book changes from an action-romance to straight-up contemporary romance but minus the sex! It got really long here and while I can understand the need, perhaps, to show a side of their relationship that isn't all 'flash-bang-ka-boom-fuck', it was just way too long. Jeremy whisks Simon off to New York after Simon is suspended pending an investigation into the recent incident (to understate it) and while Jeremy succeeds in lifting the cloud of depression off Simon, their relationship has taken several steps back instead of forward. This would have added some depth to the love that's developing (albeit grudgingly and unacknowledged probably till death do us part!) between the two men but it was too frickin' long and when they part ways after that long no-sex weekend, it's the Epilogue! ...and it's an epilogue that would have been better off as part of the next book as it is all about Nate and so made the last portion of the story terribly disjointed. I would have preferred that Double Down ended with more insight into Simon and Jeremy's relationship. After all, I'd been made to read through 100 reader-pages of their NY trip, more bantering, withholding of natural relations (or should that be 'unnatural'?) because, you know - stuff is happening inside the two men that they don't want to talk about. So yeah, 100 pages of Jeremy and Simon in NY after the mission but no sex. So that's enough to get me grumbling and muttering so when it all ends with this odd little epilogue, I am not a happy fan. Having started Book 3 and read the opening chapter, I'll say that a better ending would be Jeremy and Simon saying goodbye, leaving their tenuous affair on a cliffhanger. Instead, I was pulled out of the story by this non sequitur of an epilogue. Again, the weak part of the book is that the sex scenes were side stories you have to get out of the book to read. I didn't, don't and can't, buy the author's rationalization that leaving those scenes out improved the book. It was a dumb idea. IMO, they would have made the series so much better. As it is, the series suffers from being undecided whether it's an action story or a light, contemporary MM romance despite the author's claim to the former. There's not enough action to make it an action series and leaving out the sex scenes made the sexual chemistry between Jeremy and Simon pointless. If the bantering had been sacrificed instead, I'd have gotten more action sequences and if the sex scenes were left in, that would have heightened the tension all round. I would have had a ball watching Simon struggle - and fail - to handle keeping Jeremy at arm's (cock's) length, getting extremely twitchy because of he can't and Jeremy, irrepressible as always, continuing to bait Simon - and winning. Every damn time. I am sufficiently exasperated this time to give what could easily have been a strong 5 stars a mere 3. Not because Double Down is bad but because I'm annoyed with the author. She explains (somewhere) that she loves banter. I enjoy that, too, but in this case, M. Chandler was being indulgent and as a result, spoilt what would have been a great follow-up to The Morning Star. 3 stars from me but I still highly recommend that you read it to the end and then go on to Book 3. I've been assured that the plot gets better and the team members become more three-dimensional.