Retro Review: American Queen by Sierra Simone

I should probably call it quits on this author.

American Queen by Sierra Simone

Released October 2016

Romance  |  Goodreads   |  Amazon

Source:  Overdrive Borrow

It starts with a stolen kiss under an English sky, and it ends with a walk down the aisle. It starts with the President sending his best friend to woo me on his behalf, and it ends with my heart split in two. It starts with buried secrets and dangerous desires…and ends with the three of us bound together with a hateful love sharper than any barbed wire.

My name is Greer Galloway, and I serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States.

This is the story of an American Queen.

My 2 Cents For Free!

This author likes to jam a lot of stuff into her books and into her heroines and this story is no exception. She also likes to set up preposterous plot lines and run with them. I said this about her book Priest but it totally fits here too:

“This story is not based on any sort of reality. If you know that going in you’ll likely be okay. But I make no guarantees.”

Unfortunately, for me at least, I had a hard time doing that. I simply could not suspend my disbelief enough to get past the fact that this book is about a 3-way relationship featuring the President of the United States. Yessirree, you read that right. And, as if that weren’t weird and disturbing enough, one of the members of this lusty triangle just so happens to be the Vice President. I kid you not. Seriously, though, any other position of power would’ve worked better for me at this point in time than those two. Granted this book was written before an over-stuffed, pumpkin head took over the US but it is very unfortunate that every time someone says Mr. President or Mr. Vice President that it's those two that pop into my head.

Ok, say you can throw reality out the window better than I, what you’ll find here is a story about three people who lust-love each other but for many reasons aren’t open and clear about their feelings which causes no end of angst and punishing kisses and eventually much kinky sex. The third caught up in this mess is Greer. She is the most beautiful girl in the world and that’s all there really is to her. She is submissive, a little naïve, she adores edgy sex, and she's a little bit of a door-mat when it comes to dealing with certain people (her bitchy cousin, especially). She wasn’t my most favorite heroine and I’ll leave it at that.

I listened to this book as an unabridged audiobook. I may not have finished it otherwise. Narrator Stephanie Rose is great as Greer. There’s a slight sexy innocence to her voice that works well here. She voices the guys decently if a little robotically here and there but she’s not too bad. I’ve definitely heard much worse!

Also thrown into this convoluted sexy stew for reasons unknown, we have several things that left me shaking my head:

*A man named Merlin who can apparently see the future!

*An otherwise virginal heroine who at 15 starts writing super porny letters to a soldier she kissed once.

*Greer’s cousin makes a major pass at Greer’s man (one of them, anyway) and it’s all but ignored.

*There is sex with a half-sister (this happens off-screen so don’t get too excited!)

*A past marriage that happens out of the blue and makes no sense at all to me.

*And then there’s the killing blow: We have ourselves a genuine and terribly frustrating cliff-hanger!

People LOVE this book so much that writing this review makes me feel like a crab. But at least my cat loves me. 

2 1/2 out of 5