Tuesday 15 March 2016

New Release Spotlight & Review: Best Friends With Benefits by Candy Sloane



Best Friends with Benefits
Most Likely To #1
By: Candy Sloane
Releasing March 14, 2016
Entangled Brazen

Best Friends with Benefits

Most Likely To Series


Valerie Barkin and Alec Rogers survived bullies, awful parents, and seriously shitty social standing the only way best friends can—together. But with the unexpected sexual tension suddenly flaring between them, surviving their ten-year high school reunion might be a different story…
Val hasn’t changed. She still feels like the stringy-haired band geek the popular kids teased, but Alec has definitely changed. He’s now the front man for the Grammy-winning rock band Chronic Disharmony, with the sexual reputation to match. And he’s more than willing to help Val rock the reunion.
And then it happens—a drunken game of Seven Minutes in Heaven—and their fourteen-years-long foreplay comes crashing to the forefront…changing everything.
Seven minutes turns into a weekend of mind-blowing, no-strings-attached sex. But these best friends won't be able to leave their hearts out of it forever, not when the most meaningful benefit could change their relationship for good....



Link to Follow Tour: Here


He shouldn’t want this. She was his best friend. But he couldn’t stop.
Even in the dark, he could sense her curves. Ample breasts just begging for a skimpy tank top, her ass plump in that tight little skirt and insistent for a strong squeeze, or a smack if she was being naughty.
The way her gaze locked and her breath met the speed of his own as he erased the last bit of space between them, he was sure she was naughty. Very naughty. That she would welcome the palm of his hand.
And just like that, his best friend had made him hard.
“I don’t hear anything in there,” Randy Tines yelled from outside the door.
“I think we’re supposed to be kissing,” Alec said, his cock so rigid he thought she could feel it through his pants.
“You mean each other?”
“We could just make kissing noises,” he suggested, thinking of his lips teasing along the inside of her collar, biting off button after button of her shirt and spitting them out like watermelon seeds.
Hell yeah, he wanted to kiss her, her lips and her neck and the little spot behind her knee that she had been kneading as they drove here. He knew it was crazy, he knew it was wrong, but he wanted to be the guy to fuck Mr. Peanut out of her.
“Like this?” She pressed her hand to her lips and pretended to make out with it, her eyes on him as her tongue slicked over her skin.
His stomach rumbled in pure sexual hunger. One thing was for sure—all that flute practice had been good for a lot more than music.
“That sounds completely fake,” he scoffed. Though considering the way his cock fought against the fabric of his pants, that was not entirely true.
Her bottom lip lay open against the inside of her palm.
“You think you could do better?”
He yanked her hand to his lips before she could protest, before he could consider. He kissed it lightly at first, soft and drugging, slid the tip of his tongue up to her wrist, until he hit the buttoned cuff. “Maybe it should be me.” The words spilled out against the soft-as-sin fabric.
“What?”
“Maybe I should be the one to fuck you like you deserve.”
Val didn’t reply, just breathed out more peppermint, hot peppermint against the skin of his face. Her eyes smoldered with want. It was clear she felt it, too, the heat between them, the confusing, beautiful, delicious heat.
He grabbed her forearm and drew her closer, slanting in to her chest. The shock of their bodies against each other caused them both to freeze. Not even a breath passed between them, but he knew exactly what he needed to do.
He clenched the back of her head, and his lips dipped to her neck, dripping down her skin like melting ice. Fuck, he had to taste her. He opened his mouth, and his tongue lapped at her tender skin.
“Alec,” she breathed.
“Follow my lead.” He couldn’t stop, though she certainly didn’t seem like she was asking him to. If anything, she was yielding to him. He trailed a finger down the center of her neck, playing with the top button of her shirt, pausing so he could think. Ten years. He could have gone to see her so many times. He hadn’t at first because of how they’d left things after graduation, and then because their careers got in the way and they had both gotten into the routine of being like pen pals, but maybe he had really been avoiding their attraction.
There was no avoiding it now. There was no thinking.
She needed this, and he was going to give it to her.

Candy Sloane is a new author to me and it's always fun to read a friends to lovers trope...a favourite of mine.

Valerie Barkin is a Flautist with Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra. Alec Rogers is the front man for the rock band Chronic Disharmony. They've been friends since their time at Kenmore High, keeping in touch via email, phone and FaceTime. A ten-year high school reunion brings them face to face again for a weekend that will change their lives!

Al and Val, as they were referred to at Kenmore, were always together. To outsiders they look like a misfit pair, but their mutual love of music and time spent in the school band firmly cemented their friendship. After graduation, Alec wanted Val to go with him to New York to start a new life, but she said no! Remarkably, they remained friends.

Fast-forward ten years to Al and Val's school reunion. They haven't seen each other in person since that fateful day. They meet up at the airport and make their way to their weekend venue together…late because Alec is rather tardy! On arrival, the pair is coaxed into joining the shenanigans... a drunken game of Seven Minutes in Heaven which stirs up so much lust and long-buried emotions in our protagonists!

My thoughts. Some of the sexy dialogue is a little strange( Alec has an interesting turn of phrase) and the supporting characters are a school reunion cliché...the class bully, the control freak, the popular kids etc… The plot is formulaic. Alec Rogers is supposed to be a rock god, but his appearance at his class reunion is surprisingly understated especially when his face adorns the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine. I expected more fawning from his former female classmates, rather than their presumptive opinion that Al and Val were a couple. Yet, I kept turning the pages and enjoyed Best Friends With Benefits as a quick, light-hearted read because sometimes tried and tested is just what you need. I believe there is a book to suit any mood, so if you are looking for something fun and frivolous, Best Friends With Benefits is well worth a try.

3.5 stars

***arc generously received courtesy of Entangled Publishing via NetGalley***





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Candy Sloane is a pseudonym for a Young Adult & New Adult author who needed to write some naughty books her mother couldn’t read. She lives in Portland, OR and loves Lifetime movies. She would tell you more, but this persona is a secret. 




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