ARC-Review: TROPICAL SIN by Lexxie Couper

September 5, 2011

ARC-Review: TROPICAL SIN by Lexxie Couper

1:00 PM |

Tomorrow will be the release day for the third Bandicoot Cove book. This means today there's another Bandicoot Cove Experience (a feature on the Blog beween August 19th and and September 21st with Previews, ARC-reviews and Guestposts from the authors Vivian Arend, Lexxie Couper and Jess Dee) post; an ARC-Review for this third book: TROPICAL SIN by Lexxie Couper.

Coming up next:

Lexxie Couper’s Guestpost – Wednesday September 7th
Preview of ISLAND IDYLL byJess Dee – Monday September 16th

It doesn’t take just a rock star to rock your world. Sometimes, it takes a best friend as well.

McKenzie Wood is Australia’s most notorious tabloid journalist. Trouble is, she’s not altogether happy in that position. It’s time to grow up and use her degree for serious work. When she spies rumor-shrouded rock star, Nick Blackthorne, a man far more sexy than he has a right to be, at the island resort, Bandicoot Cove, McKenzie knows this is her ticket out of the tabloid world. She just needs a little unorthodox help from her BFF, Aidan Rogers.

Aidan Rogers has been in love with McKenzie for sixteen years. Of course, he’s never told her that, which he has to admit, is pretty damn pathetic. But when it comes to McKenzie, he is a prisoner of his heart. It isn’t easy telling your best friend you’re madly, irrevocably in love with her and want to do sinfully, seriously non-friend like things to her. Especially when she’s never shown an iota of sexual interest in you.

Nick Blackthorne has his own secrets. Having spent the last two months in Germany, Nick jumps at his agent’s offer to spend some “unfamous” time at a new resort in his home country. Nick is surprised to find his creative muse stirred—and stirred greatly—by a very sexy couple he spies at Bandicoot Cove and it’s not long before all he can think about it all three of them. Together.
When three bodies move together as one, the music becomes a smoldering beat that rivals the tropical heat on the island. But will it be enough to save three souls? Or will it be just a sinner’s lament?

Warning: One plus one plus one equals OMG sex, are-you-freaking-kidding-me orgasms and some serious mind-blowing climaxes. And in amongst all this, two people discover they’re meant to be together and another finds the music of his soul once again.

Title: TROPICAL SIN
Author: Lexxie Couper
Series: Bandicoot Cove, book 3
Genre: Contemporary Erotic Romance
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Year of release: 2011, September 6
Format: eBook
Source: received an e-ARC from author for review

First line:
“Holy shit!” McKenzie Wood grabbed at her best friend’s sleeve, almost yanking Aidan off his seat and into her lap.
Memorable Scenes:
- the song lyrics that come to Nick when he first sees Mac and Aidan > Wow! Fabulous scene!
- Nick asking for the threesome, asking them for just one day > so poignant it made my heart ache for Nick's need of intimacy
- Nick's performance > I have no words, I totally choked up at that scene

McKenzie 'Mac’ Wood is a journalist. She is working for a tabloid but wants to pursue a more serious path in journalism. She thinks she can do that by writing an exposé on Nick Blackthorne's (who happens to be at the soft opening of her friend’s resort) sexual tendencies. Mac is outspoken and incorrigible. Growing up with 6 brothers she’s used to banter and roughhousing with males and she has few inhibitions.

Aidan Rogers is a firefighter and Mack's best friend. He has been in love with her since forever but it takes a near-death experience and a famous rock star to convince him to admit it and finally fess up to Mac that he has more than friendly feelings for her.

I absolutely love the friends-to-lovers trope and especially when at first one of the main characters is all "why do I want to do my BFF all of a sudden?" and the other has had a crush on his BFF forever but doesn't dare tell her because he's afraid there's no reciprocation.

And just when Aidan and Mack decide to give in to the inevitable, there's Nick, desperate to be a part of the intense and strong intimacy between these two people who are so much in tune with each other. In the end there was an unexpected turn to the romance and won't say much about it as it could be a spoiler.

One thing was a tiny bit out of sync and that was the fact that Nick was such a larger than life character that there were times I had the feeling he took over from Aidan and Mack who should've been the main characters to focus on seeing how the story developed. This being said, I don’t think I minded it that much because Nick caught my attention the minute he sauntered onto the scene. All I want to say to Lexxie Couper is: somebody had better be getting his own story ;) (Meanwhile I’ve been informed that this story I’m yearning for is coming in April 2012…YAY)

In Lexxie Couper I have found another unabashed author of erotic romance. She tells it like it is and doesn't beat around the bush. She has this raw, carnal edge to her writing that pulls you in and makes you read on breathlessly.

TROPICAL SIN is a novella filled with heat, humor and unrequited love turning into a wonderful match of soul mates. If you need something to heat up a cold night, just read TROPICAL SIN and central heating will not be necessary!

Favorite Quotes*:
“Yeah, yeah, yeah—” she rolled her eyes, “—funny bastard, aren’t you? The last time anyone saw Nick Blackthorne, he was supposedly checking into a sex rehab clinic in Germany for being an addict.”
Aidan cocked an eyebrow. “Sex addict? The guy’s a bloody rock star. The biggest rock star this country has produced. Isn’t he meant to have sex with just about everything in a dress that throws herself at him?”

Aidan let out a sharp breath, turning back to their table and reaching for his beer. “McKenzie,” he said, his voice level, “we are at the soft opening of your friend’s resort. If you go all tabloid-journalist and stalk a guest, Kylie will kill you. Then I will have to explain to Mason why I let his twin sister get killed. And then Mason will probably try to punch me.”

She’d met him in her second year of high school when his family had moved to Newcastle. The minute he’d walked into the science lab, towering over just about every boy in the class, and the teacher as well, she’d smiled. It had nothing to do with the way he looked—which even at fourteen she knew was pretty damn good. She’d smiled because his eyes said, there’s mischief to be had. Who wants in?

It wasn’t the fact he was here, at the soft opening of the resort, that made him happy, nor the fact he was walking around without a minder or bodyguard or groupie to be seen. It was simply because the woman laughing behind him had a delightfully throaty, infectious laugh.
He stopped himself from shooting a look over his shoulder, concentrating instead on finding the correct passageway that would lead him to the Oasis Bar. He was a touch jetlagged and needed something more than coffee to wake up.
A touch? You’ve been on one plane or the other for the last three days. You’re more than jetlagged, you’re jet-fucking-dragged-through-the-turbines stoned.

His prick twitched in his jeans and he scowled, turning away from the young lovers. There was a time he’d have walked straight on up to them and suggested something far more depraved than either could probably imagine. Something very dirty and very enjoyable. That time had passed, however.

McKenzie’s head swam. Hot fingers of raw sensations threaded through her, twisting and turning through the center of her heat as Aidan made love to her mouth.

“I haven’t heard music, lyrics, for a long time. Too long to remember.” He let out a ragged sigh. “I haven’t felt alive for a long time either. I’ve been dead inside for so long I’d forgotten what it was like to feel anything . But the second I heard McKenzie laugh—” he closed his eyes for a moment, an expression of sheer rapture crossing his face, “—the second I saw her in your arms…”

He stared at the man on the verge of sexual implosion, and—a mere heartbeat from destruction himself—felt McKenzie’s sex contract. (Nick)

What happened after Nick Blackthorne left their lives and it was just the two of them again? Aidan the fiery and Mack the journo? What happened then?
What happens if Nick doesn’t want to leave, Rogers? What happens if he decides he wants McKenzie for himself? What do you do then? How do you compete with the world’s biggest rock star with a dick the size of a rhino’s?

She kissed him back, her tongue mating with his, fierce and demanding and ferocious. Everything McKenzie-ish. And everything McKenzie-ish was everything he loved.

Love. Such a raw, inescapable, ungovernable emotion. Complicated and fraught with great moments of absolute terror, love was the single most wonderful gift a person could experience.