Review: Liv's Journey

Reviewed by Shelly
 

While doing a photo shot on the Journey ranch, former supermodel Liv Aune meets Army officer Trey Journey. At first glance these two feel the attraction, but Liv is hesitant because of her weight. Trey is a dominant who’s looking for a submissive, not a doormat, and he thinks that he might have found something in Liv.

I really didn’t understand Liv – for a 24 year-old supermodel, she’s got the biggest case of insecurity over her body and how much she eats. She used to be a size zero until a couple year prior, when one day she decided that she’s going to start eating ‘cause she’s hungry (huh?) and didn’t want to be malnourished anymore. I would assume that’s a hard decision to make, but what’s puzzling is that I didn’t understand Liv’s personal journey and the transition of her weight and its relationship to her chosen career. She’s been modeling since age twelve when her mother put her into modeling to help pay for college, except that Liv didn’t go to college (not yet anyway).

On one of their first dates, Liv says something that Trey didn’t like and thought as disrespectful – so he sends her out to the truck to wait for him. When he gets there and begins her punishment there’s an incident where someone catches them red-handed (pun intended), quickly captures the images and flees. There’s a whole blackmail story behind that. However, the conflict didn’t seem to be the photograph taken but of Liv’s ongoing ordeal with her weight and whether Trey would think she’s a ‘pig’ (she said it, I didn’t) when he sees how much she eats.

In addition to all that, Liv’s a bit of a brat and would say things that just asked for something to happen and Trey would bring it every time. I’m didn’t really understand the reason for the spankings either. Some seemed a bit harsh – there’s a scene with a looped belt that I’m not sure how that was pleasing to Liv. She and Trey did seem to have a spark and I think that he liked her quite a bit, but I didn’t like the head games that he played with her about being in the BDSM lifestyle that he’s into.

This is a short read, about 39K words so I can’t give too much away. I will say that if you like spankings in your stories, give this one a try. I’d like to read the others in the series to see who’s up next, because there were some other interesting characters, mainly Ace, Trey’s older brother who I wouldn’t mind getting to know a little bit more (if you know what I mean – insert wink).

Happy reading folks!

Rating: C

*Book provided by author for review

Click to purchase: Amazon

Liv's Journey

by Patricia Green

Release Date: March 23, 2012

Publisher: Blushing Books

Guest Post & Giveaway: Patricia Green

Why Texas? 

by Patricia Green 

Where does a book take place? Is it on a ranch, a manor, a sailing boat, a lonely stretch of desert? Is the time period current, historical, a mix (as in time-travel), the future? What is the political situation at the time of the story? How about the religious mores? What's the technology like?

All of these questions pertain to setting. They are the black velvet background on which the writer paints her portrait of Elvis. Without this kind of detail, the story will be flat and lifeless.

I start my writing process with a what if question, but having answered that, I try to put that scenario in its proper place and time. So, when I thought about the Journey Family series of books, I knew that the characters had to have Mom and apple pie values, a strong sense of family, and a tie to the land. They had to have religious convictions (but not so many that the story would be about those convictions), and they had to hail from someplace I was familiar with. "Write what you know" applies.

I've lived all over the US and in Canada. For about five years I lived in Texas. We had a house in a rural burg a bit more than an hour outside the state capital. It was a small town of about 2,000 people and had a Western, nineteenth century kind of feel to it. The people were hunters and farmers, ranchers and Main Street merchants. Even in a town of less than 2,000 folks, they had three churches. All the values I wanted my characters to have were present in that little town. It was a no-brainer for me to choose rural Texas for the setting of the Journey Family series. It started with Liv's Journey, at the fictional Journey's End ranch near Sonora, Texas, (a real town of about 4,000 souls) and in the current era. But that wasn't where it stopped.

Although I had a great time in Texas (and would love to live there again), I've also had quite a bit of experience living in some very large metropolises. And, for book two of the series, Ace-High Flush, I wanted to take a very confident and capable character (Ace Journey) out of his element in Texas and into something he was much less familiar with, Manhattan. We have the impression that Ace has been there before, but he's fairly out of place there anyway, with his cowboy hat, boots and bolero tie. Nevertheless, he's confident and capable, and when the going gets tough, he sticks with it and rides the bull the full eight seconds. Thus, I used my citified, east coast experience to flesh out the setting of the book.

Choosing a setting for a story can also set the erotic tone of the piece. Not to put too fine a point on it, I write erotic spanking romances. The story has to have a thread of domestic discipline for me to fit in well with the publisher and sub-genre I so frequently target. And the erotic part…well that's just how I write. All my romance books have a strong erotic component; the Journey Family series is no exception. So, you might ask, how does a Texas ranch work with an erotic story about domestic discipline?

Domestic discipline is spanking, standing in the corner like a naughty child, writing lines over and over again on paper (keyboarding doesn't work), and things like that. The Journey family's old-fashioned values and strong male characters were a natural for a family tradition of spanking recalcitrant women. I could easily envision a fellow with a deep Texan drawl giving a stern lecture while he smacks a heroine's behind. And there would be hot, sensual, all-consuming love between the hero and heroine—love that naturally led to erotic encounters. To me, it's incredibly sexy to imagine pillow-talk in a deep, male voice with a native Texas accent.

All six of the Journey Family books (four are available now and two more will come out this Fall) have a strong Texas component. Texas works for the Journey Family books and it was great fun to write the whole series. I feel like I got right into the heads of a traditionally-minded Texas family. Hopefully, I've shared that wonderful experience with readers.
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