Novel Review: Linger (Contains: Stay With Me and Songbird) by Maya Banks

Genre: Erotic Romance/Erotica

Rating (Out of 5): ~2.5

Publisher: Samhain Publishing

Spoilers?: No.

Available at: Amazon.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Love can help broken spirits soar again…

Songbird
Years ago, Greer and Taggert meant everything to Emily. Their cavalier rejection sent her into the arms of their youngest brother. Her angelic voice launches her to stardom—until tragedy shocks her into silence.

Grieving for their brother, Taggert and Greer take Emily back to Montana, determined to help her heal and find her voice again. Under the protective shield of their love, she begins to blossom. Then an old threat resurfaces. Now the men who love her face a fight for what they once threw away.

Stay With MeCatherine hopes her announcement to the two men in her life—she’s pregnant—will be the perfect start to the vacation they promised her: two weeks on a Jamaican beach. No cell phones, no emails, no business. But when they blow her off for yet another “business emergency”, she packs her bags for her long-awaited vacation—alone.

When Logan and Rhys come home to an empty house, they realize two things: One, it was a mistake to take Catherine for granted. Two, they’re not willing to just let her walk out of their lives. Getting her back will be the toughest deal they’ve ever negotiated.

Warning: Linger contains lots of knot-in-the-throat emotional scenes, hot loving, ménage a trois, multiple partners, adult language and situations and committed polyamorous relationships.

Review:

This was not quite as good as I was hoping it would be.

My copy of this (as I know there are other versions) has two stories by Maya Banks.

First, Stay With Me. This one was better than the other by far. I liked how Catherine interacted with her husbands, and I liked seeing them try to work through their problems. The two men needed to fix things, as they had made several missteps in the marriage, and I think they did a pretty good job at making up for it by the end, assuming that they did keep up with what they’d started. I liked that Catherine was firm in her thoughts, that she loved them but wasn’t going to back down. They all needed that.

This story gets a weak 3 stars on its own.

Second: Songbird. I was not as big a fan of this one, and I’m not even really sure why. It just didn’t hold my attention as well for some reason, I guess. I felt bad for the three of them, I actually understood their feelings and felt for what they had gone through. The ending was very nice, and it did get a little bit exciting before the actual ending. It just felt slow, or something. Overall, though, it logically wasn’t that bad, I don’t think. It was probably just me. I might just not have connected with the characters as well as I could have. I don't know.

On it's own, this story gets a very weak 2.5 stars, maybe even 2.

There is a lot of sex in these stories. In the first one, I rather enjoyed it. In the second one, I mostly enjoyed it. The stories would have probably been just fine without all of the sex; I actually didn't even enjoy the sex very much; it didn't make me hot, and the in the second one, I found myself wanting it to be over already. And I know that Banks usually does a much better job, so this could have just been some weaker stories of hers. Then again, it could also just be me.

I don’t think these are the best by Banks; there are definitely better ones out there. I will be reading more of her books in the future, and I'm looking forward to it.