Reviewed by Vicki

 TITLE: Stealing Serenity

AUTHOR: Tami Veldura

PUBLISHER: Bottom Drawer Publications

LENGTH: 25,000 words

BLURB:

Serenity, a photograph worth four million dollars, was sold at auction to an anonymous bidder, and stealing it will represent the largest payday Daniel will have ever had. To make that happen, he poses as a photography curator to attract the attention of Kearin, the auction house owner.

Kearin takes Daniel under his wing to work in the non-profit branch of his business, but it’s a cover for his desire to see Daniel naked, bound, and needy for the camera. Kearin has a client interested in a very specific portfolio—filling the request would put him at the top of his field.

Daniel thinks he can use the modeling to get closer to Serenity. What he doesn’t expect is to fall for Kearin’s brand of intensity instead. So does he go for the photograph or Kearin’s heart? He wouldn’t call himself a master thief if he couldn’t steal both.

REVIEW:

This was a very interesting story for me…. I am not familiar with Tami Veldura’s books, so I was curious to see how I would like this book. For the most part I liked it.

Daniel is an art thief, working on a big scam, to steal a multi-million dollar photograph. The problem is he doesn’t know who owns the photo at the moment. He knows who handled the sale, and gets a job at that company. He’s pretty sneaky, not only knowing how to play different roles as needed to find the art he is planning on stealing, but he also is quite adept at breaking in to houses, offices, and computers. He uses these skills to get close to Kearin, in hopes of finding who he sold Serenity, the photograph to.

Kearin was a bit harder to pin down, the story is from Daniels perspective so we only know what Daniel knows about Kearin. We know he owns a business, a house, and drives a nice car. He is a photographer himself, Daniel eventually finds out he likes to tie men up and take naughty pictures of them.

Daniel gets close to Kearin, both at his business, and he gets an invite to pose for Kearin. Daniel is intrigued by the bondage photos he has seen taken by Kearin, does a little surfing to check out what it’s all about, and decides he might like to try this. Not only as a way to work his potential theft, but as a naughty bit of fun… and off we go.

This is a short story, so it moves pretty quick and doesn’t have much of a background to it. I was basically ok with the plot, I just told myself not to look too deeply and just accept it for what it was. I did question what exactly Kearin’s business was all about and why a photograph would be worth millions of dollars. It was a bit vague in those areas. What I really liked about this book was the building of the sexual tension between Daniel and Kearin. It builds as they work together, but really kicks in when Kearin does some very elaborate Shibari knotwork on Daniel and takes some lovely photos of him. He is just a bit of a Dom, telling Daniel not to touch himself, and giving a few light orders. It really is all about bondage, it’s not much of a BDSM novel.

I’m going to give somewhat of a spoiler here, but it kinda bugged me so I need to mention it. I may not have read it if I had known. So this tension between them builds and builds, toward a big beautiful climax that never happens! They NEVER have sex. The story builds, the tension builds, then bam! It’s over. A fairly easy and uneventful ending, with no freaking sex! It just ended. I was really enjoying it, there is an issue with Daniel and bondage, Kearin seems to be a decent man and possibly a good Dom, I was waiting anxiously for the big payout and it never comes. I liked 95% of the book, but I think it really was not ended well at all. I soooo wanted the sex to happen, I’m quite disappointed actually.

Overall it was a fairly enjoyable book, I liked the characters, I liked the plot (just don’t look too deep), I liked the bondage (you get the “B” of BDSM but not much else), but the lack of sex was a problem for me! I totally would have rated it higher if they had some SEX! I read romance novels for the romance, certainly, and they don’t have to have graphic, erotic sex scenes, but I need to have the characters have sex at some point in the story.

RATING:

BUY LINKS:

Bottom Drawer Publications

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