LukeMoore

Pants Down in Paradise Book One

A short novella that explores the world of a working girl from the inside. Nympho Jemma, alias Ruby, works in a brothel, Paradise Gardens. A witty, sensual and insightful sex tour. Here’s a lass who enjoys touching herself and being touched. But, by her admission and background story, she is a plain nerdy chick who realises she has the attributes to be a professional: boobs, butt and a kitty! Full of straight shooting, realistic, candid situations of sexual desires and a working sex life. And the awesome part- there are other titles in the series.

Retribution

The author knows mythology and how to weave it into a creative, original storyline. A fantasy/action/ with romance elements, where Gods, Demons, and Vampires from this and different worlds collide and fight on Earth. Ka’ Azalin, the lead character, is a uniquely bold and spirited succubus bounty hunter of Thanonal and is a force to be reckoned with as she hunts an arrogant, rogue, sly God of War, aided by a vampire, David. While Ka ’Azalin is also supported by the essence powers of the Gods of her world, especially Katalina, she must avoid angering or starting a conflict with any earth Gods, especially Nephthys, Goddess of Dark Magic—a character whose complexities are explored by the author. Additionally, Ka ’Azalin has a split soul, where Torment is chained within her, and her inner demon conflicts with her appointed task. Overall, a pacy and exciting read where Ka ‘Azalin presents as an enigma, a weapon, and a sassy sensual siren. Yet she is playful and curious about the earth, particularly its fashions, feathers and technology. Highly recommended.

My Admirable Love Story.

A delightful, buoyant and uplifting read with an engaging non-Western setting. Bangalore is the location for a mature couple facing change in their lives—a story without cliché tropes. There is no love triangle or the 2D heroine who has all the answers and forget abusive parents as the cause of all. Instead, the narrative is grounded in the reality of daily Bangalore and genuine issues like job loss, health issues, and re-assessment of middle age relationships. The fact that the lead couple and narrator are middle-aged will appeal to many readers. Sheila, the Narrator, knows her faults without being self-effacing or self-indulgent. The dialogue exchanges are the author's strength. Her set pieces will resonate with a discerning reader. Overall, it’s a straightforward story, a charming gem, offered by a writer who opens her heart authentically and engagingly. You will reward yourself if you read this heartfelt narrative and embrace the supposed ordinary explored in compelling, captivating warmth.

The Second Coming

A fun romp through the Second Coming where The Son of God is a girl named Jess in the Twenty-first century. The story has a great ensemble cast of characters to enjoy, including her parents, Mary and Joe. Whilst the dysfunctional but delightful new-age apostles near steal the story; Hooli, Shirlene and Eloise. Witty, clever, and a laugh on every page. A riotous unexpected ending. The tale is best summed up in its tongue-in-cheek phrase, “an imaginally concept f....d” story.

Nude at Ninety

As good a read as the cheeky cover art. Sharp, droll prose flows with sensual titbits as Molly and her friends are spied on at a private naturist haven. Molly and company, au naturel, confront two young pervs with binoculars and a telescope. When the unexpected happens in a pants-dropping way, Molly is Nude at Ninety [not her age- she is a hot bod.] No, ninety on an aging motorbike and every high-speed mile is an exposed and stark ride. Give yourself a high-octane hour and join Molly in the fast lane.

Callisto

Callisto is quality writing as it delves straight into a Sci-Fi scene with confident, crisp, clear writing in chapter one. I like how the main character and background are introduced through an interview—yet grounded in immediate relatability, a ’76 Trans Am, clover and cracked headstones. It makes believable the world of crypto wet suits and freezer pods in a terrific chapter two that investigates the fear combining science and the unknown with humans volunteering to be experimental participants. Myranda Rae’s pacing when it goes wrong in chapter three is terrific; the sense of disquiet, the character action and reaction, the selective release of the scene detail, building and building what is being taken in by the mind and eyes of the lead character, Dr Nicole Isbel, right to the chapter cliff hanger. As the story progresses, the few survivors enter the outside world, where everything has changed. Here they are confronted by aliens. Are they rescuers, captors, or killers? Reviewed to chapter ten. Well worth reading.

Letter to a Girl

A delightful read. Builds a story around the awkwardness of first love, and the strictures of Catholicism and a Catholic college's position on same-sex relationships. The main characters are rounded and complex in their lives and feelings. The supporting cast is sketched in the central part well and are not type cast. Sister S is a gem. The teen setting is believable and with a sharp eye to cliques and teenage interests and talk and communication styles. The author uses sense descriptions to effect, particularly smell. Opinions on same-sex relationships are juxtaposed, rounding the views held by characters. Many of the story's actions and scenes are adjoining, inviting reflection by the reader on the opinions or actions. Sweet, well worth a read.

Epiphany

Take the time to read these succinct word pearls. Wordsmithing is an art, and encouragement is the message here. Yes, as stated in another review, some phrases miss the flow mark, and the grammar is often unconventional. However, on balance, these pieces ooze authentic contemplation. Find and savour, 'the map of purpose', 'droplets of motivation' and 'the torture of sharing ourselves.'
You won't regret the time spent on Epiphany, which will resonate beyond the reading time.

The Time Traveller

This tale has interesting, engaging and complex lead characters, Jonas and Melia. The exchanges between them are appealing and refreshing. Neolithic and present-day or future environments are credible and well-described. A strength of the story is the characters’ inner dialogue, the choices they face and the implications of their decisions. An adventure/romance worth delving into.

The Root of Misbelief

The Root of Misbelief is a Romance/Drama. It delivers both. There is a content warning for off-screen rape and assault. These themes are handled with sensitivity and are integral elements of the plot. The romance develops through many sweet, quirky incidents, including caring for sick chickens and building a chicken coop.

An appealing strength of the narrative is the conflicted dislike/love emotions towards each other of the leading characters, Clem and Rohan. This is counterpoised by the scheming machinations, the small-town sense of superiority, and how dare you question our family’s reputation from the Reese's. A trio of characters who drive the shadier themes of the story; Mrs Reese, her son Kristian and their relation, Sherriff Reese.

The secondary cast is exceptionally well-rounded, especially Clem's father, Charles, and Mooresville locals, Makenna and Michael. A delightful range of off-centre minor characters are terrifically sketched, too. Enjoy meeting Dr Hammond and the geriatric mayor, McGill.

A compelling narrative that questions gossip in a small town whilst exploring quality themes around the courage to fight for right and risking opening your heart.

Ten Seconds

A crafted fantasy story told in 3 chapters in a style reminding one of Ambrose Bierce’s "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Each of the ten Seconds adds flashback details. Hewori’s life and the removal of their defining 4000 feathers build an intriguing tale. As the background details clarify with the passing seconds, the plucked feathers take on significance beyond H’s impending demise within those ten seconds.

My Body is A Cage [Royalty #1]

This is an engaging story with complex characters both in their sexuality and their relationships with their bodies. You have a leading character Cyrus in a wheelchair with fibromyalgia. The body in the cage. But the novel explores other enclosures. The barriers characters create themselves, especially fears about relationships and love. Then there are the cages and walls others try to impose around sexual differences or opinions about disability in general and hereditary disability in particular. Through sensitivity and love, others seek to open cages and salve actual scars of the body or heart.
Cyrus is complex, a transitioned individual who had a child [ Yvette]. Cyrus explores a new relationship with Lance and yet is dealing with the shadow of their previous one with Tristan. And from the past emerges a custody fight for Yvette by her grandparents, which is a powerful story within the narrative.
At heart, a human-centred story with broad themes like how relationships can grow, learning to express and accept love, the complexities of a disability inside a relationship, and learning to express yourself rather than burying yourself under societal relationship compliance or seeing yourself as a burden to another in a relationship and children being more than a bloodline.
As the story states, we don’t know when love will find us, and we don’t decide whom you deserve. Everyone has baggage, and the novel explores this, yet everyone deserves to be loved: openly. Do Cyrus and Lance have the courage? Well worth reading to find out.

Whispering Springs, New Mexico

An off-beat short gem. Three stoned hippies and a combi. Their combi broken, Greg, Gia and Tracey end up in a Ghost Town, an abandoned, unmade movie set with an accident-prone past. One of the three has an accident presenting a range of choices, and the hippies choose. Lonely and aged, Hektor, who runs the by-passed servo way off the interstate, where they stopped for gas a day back, may be their only hope.

American Kingdom

A naked view of the world from the opening chapter, and soon enough, the horseshit flies. The locations and characters are engaging. The beginning is well-paced in Charleston. Molly, the lead character, has a military background revealed without halting the story flow. Nasty stuff happened in Afghanistan, and it is described in visceral detail. However, what drives the story forward are the two married characters Molly meets on a bike tour she leads. Brian and Marion, who believe that The Kingdom of God on earth is ready for action, and quoting the Bible, urge Molly to become a trooper in the army of the Lord. A different engaging read. Reviewed to chapter 25.

Do I Have Anything Worth Saying?

Yes, there is plenty said in this free verse collection. And, importantly, an affirmation that we all have a voice, even if it’s hidden. This is poetry outside the box. It rejects the box. It celebrates differences whilst acknowledging the angst on the path to self, the questioning by self and others. Here are poems that confront labels. Verses that peek inside the hidden layers of unique individuality. Stretch your mind, and delve into the questions often painted over our inner self. As one poem states, “Nobody is a clean slate.” Well worth a read.

Ecstasy

Pacy and excitement-rich writing on attraction. All the self-doubts and hopes are here. Feeling a loser when you want to kiss like a winner. The rush of a response- well, read it for yourself— this is pulsating writing.

Catching Harley

A pacy-hot romance. It is spiced with regular dollops of sexy and general humour. The supporting cast behind the leads, Harley and Erik, are well-sketched, engaging, quirky individuals in their own right. Certainly, an author who catches the rush of initial physical attraction. The backstory detail of the leads is integrated without halting the story's forward momentum. Plenty gets in between Harley and Erik, including John, her current date, and the brooding, stunning hunk of a Viking’s own complex mental baggage. Reviewed to chapter ten, where Harley weighs John, the ideal man on paper, against a guy who regularly fills her mind with pound town thoughts. A fun romance read.

The Crowned Captive

This is a top read.
A well-paced chase sequence opens the story with a powerful, twisted conversation between the hunted and the nasty pursuer.
Morana, the heroine, is introduced as an intriguing character. A village pariah due to her Fae features. Starved, scared, scorned, in the author’s own neat early summary.
The story contains strong descriptive passages, setting the action in locations like a forest, village, inn and river. Sense descriptions are a robust delight; the reader really imbibes smells, tastes, poverty, and desperation. Major and even minor characters have deft lively character sketches.
Chapter seven, The Cat and its Mouse, with its interrogation scene, is a reading treat.
The story uses crafty, well though chapter titles like Pretty Little Enigma & False Niceties and Fake Threats.
Objects with magic, like a potent pendant and potential romance, bubble broader interests in the early narrative.
There is clear ongoing character development as the story unfolds.
It is highly recommended—a pacy, enjoyable, hooked-into-a-world reading experience.

Kassidy King

Kassidy King, the cover is as stylish as the lead character. This is a PG18 content story with steamy in context, adult passages and action fights. The sensual passages are confidentially written. Kassi is complex and has done it tough. We gather this from the opening scene when she was aged nine. Her background is unfolded in snippets throughout the text. The action heats with pace as Kassi’s path crosses with the Japanese Mafia boss Kita and her plans for her independent business come under pressure. The punchy dialogue is a story highlight, as is a practical and insightful use of POV from Kassi and Kita. A feature of enjoyable writing is well-developed secondary characters like Chang, and the author has those in the novel. And love and work, can they mix? Strap yourself in for the ride with reveals, twists and turns that constantly keep you reading the unexpected. Reviewed to, chapter 22.

The Nanny Game

The Nanny Game, which could be subtitled the Nanny Contract, sees Claire Meyer in the Hamptons with twins Eloise and Margot, aged five, whom the author fleshes out as separate young personalities.
Settings display money and locate characters in the context of wealth and its power.
All characters, including two neighbouring nannies with whom Claire bonds, Lilah and Beatrice, are described clearly as they are introduced.
The story starts indicating Claire had a fantastic time over ten weeks in exotic locations and wealthy playgrounds, beginning in the Hamptons. Yet, it was not all childcare; as messy, even serious adult issues arose. And Claire has a contract in place – the confidentially clause and it looks like the billionaires Elizabeth and Brett Rylands will need it.
And in the contract, no boys and no promiscuous behaviour, yet young men and potential are all around Claire. The tutor to the twins,Ian Hunter and Brett’s older boys.
The day-to-day job with the twins is hustle, bustle and fun, and it grounds the story with some tantrums thrown in and a missing Madeline book they want to be read to them.
Reviewed to chapter 14 – where the intrigue is shaping along with the known cheating scene witnessed by Claire in chapter one. Other mysteries bubbling at this point include is Hunter, the hunk tutor, Elizabeth’s MILF boy? Was the previous Nanny dismissed, or did she leave? A story is well worth reading.

Tempting the Fates

A modern spin on the world of Olympus, the Underworld and Earth in between.
This is an engaging read. The grammar and flow are good. It's pacy and articulate. The author puts their spin on the Greek underworld as Hades seeks a new bride. The author uses the outlines of the Olympus we think we know, uses it and goes modern. Is Olympus hell and the Underworld heaven? Find out. Crisp scene setting in Olympus, the Underworld and Earth and clear character descriptions of the significant and support cast. Intrigue, backstabbing, selfishness and love drive the action. The author is having fun with the material, and we share it. There is a revealed forfeit in place to start the action. There is the possibility of love. Yes, it's complicated.- we have Hades and Zeus as players here and an ex-Queen of the Underworld roaming as a rival. There is trickery and twists galore- enjoy the read.

Insurgency

This is a short gem. It is storytelling with emotion and reflection. The Tet offensive in the Vietnam war is the pivot of a subtle girl/girl relationship in a horrid conflict. The story wends from childhood to a girl becoming an insurgent. It packages sensuality, reflections on difference and how war shapes and questions beliefs. Do we fight against? What do we fight for? Do our childhood heroes stand the test in war? Do our loves? Do yourself a favour and read Insurgency.

The Secret Ingredient

Boom! Bam! Wham! Action is aplenty in this fight game novel. You are in the right book if you want intense riveting tussles, unexpected transformations and zappy, punchy power-ups. The hero is powering up as you expect and learning from every challenge. However, they are not getting it all their way. And they have support along the way, in a clearly sketched cast as the hero experiences ups and downs in life and the arena.

The pacing is fast, and the twists occur to keep you scrolling or clicking onward. Fight characters are rounded out with their background stories. A strength of the young author is the fight scenes. Opponents are described in their glorious or nasty array of physical potential, but what they cast, well read the surprises. All the potent elements are here, especially fire, ice, and water.

The general settings and lulls between fights are not the writer's strengths. Well, that's a bit picky because, as summed up by William Blake, "energy is eternal delight,' and I suspect that in this work in progress, the secret ingredient will Boom, Bam and Wham into the reader's psyche.

If fight games are your genre, this is one worth reading. [ Reviewed to ongoing chapter 65]

The Erotic Soul Poetry

A sensual smorgasbord of hot provocative groin stirring erotic poems, yet tempered by wistful musings of our humanity and how sex positions us with ourselves and towards and inside others. Don’t deny yourself the trip through 50-plus short lyrical poems. More than a handful will resonate personally with you. Many others will stir your pulse and desire or your mind in yearning and remembering—an audible serenade of brash, playful and evocative lines in turn. The dark, intriguing lure of sexual exploration is considered in razor-sharp images. There are parodies and robot sex to explore. Don’t miss the gorgeous poem about a thong.
The collection is best summed up in some quoted gems- ‘love is so slippery when wet.’ Roll all the meanings of that through your head. The torrid lushness of ‘carnal enzymes.’ The contemplative exploration of human sexuality in Adam’s Rib ‘a love story that started before the land of time, without chocolates, sexy lingerie, roses, or sips of fine wine.’ Read and enjoy this collection because as you do, you will want to ‘just write your desires in sexual fluids on a steam showered wall.’

Light to her darkness

This narrative is dramatic and heartfelt. The opening chapters pull no punches. We have characters who loathe and threaten each other, and a child, with a twist, is the pawn. It is melodramatic in some passages. However, you can sweep through this as the story keeps a racy pace of action. Even if the abuse is not to your reading liking - there is plenty of engagement with the main characters - their complexities are being revealed. Minor characters are not well sketched yet.
If you start and think, geez, it's in your face overuse of capitalisation and the F word in dialogue,
skip to chapter10 - read the restroom scene - it's powerfully emotive and visually descriptive- with a passage like this - the reader can continue - hoping for more gems like this later in the novel.

Sonder

Sonder by S J Carter
The coined word Sonder is the catalyst for the author's poetic offerings.
[If you are unfamiliar with the word, watch the YouTube clip.]
The poems completed are concise yet lyrical and bursting with thoughts.
For example, 'where eyes lurked behind sequoias bathed in moonshine'
We all know it's unique when we want to have written the lines ourselves.
This ongoing collection has gem lines you will savour as a mental treat.