More praise for Beyond the Rules

I just lo-oh-ved this amazing review of Beyond the Rules. So I had to share:

5 out of 5 stars!

Beyond the Rules-SM

5 stars

This review is going to be in three parts because it deserves lots of attention from all aspects. Tanner, Zar, and Aiden understand this concept well.

First, let me begin by applauding the author on the polish of Beyond The Rules. In nearly every technical aspect, this piece was clean. No plot holes, no glaring grammatical errors, no unanswered questions, no word echoes. Truly a very well written manuscript. However, in all honesty, there may have been tiny issues that were completely overlooked because…

The second point: holy hotness Batman! Ms. del Mar obviously was challenged to write as steamy of a piece as possible and then exceeded every expectation. While there were certainly tender and loving scenes, there were also incredibly desperate and heady encounters that left me reaching for the nearest cold drink. As much as I loved every highly charged and well depicted sexual encounter, I was just as appreciative for the sweet moments, both from the guys and from Nina. She is truly more than just their own sex kitten; she heals them each in very different ways and they her.

Finally, the suspense! Often a book with this kind of themes is simply erotica (and there is exactly zero wrong with that!) but Beyond The Rules manages to offer an intriguing and interesting plot full of mystery that had me often holding my breath and swallowing past a lump of fear.

This is very well-done, and I am thrilled to offer the very first 5 star NetGalley review from this reader.

https://www.3bookbabes.com/beyond-the-rules-book-review/

Thanks to 3bookbabes.com for this awesome review. I’m so honored! And thanks also to all of you wonderful readers who take the time to read and review my novels.  A.

Beyond the Rules Teaser 1 for good

Amazon

Praise for Beyond The Rules: 5+++ Stars!

I’m so pleased to share this amazing pre-release review of Beyond the Rules:

“When Anna del Mar decides to write a novel of romantic suspense that includes a menage a quatre, polyamory, and BDSM, she pulls out all the stops, and this third novel in her At the Brink series starts off with a bang and doesn’t let go until the very end. I give it 5++++ stars!

Nina Leon is a hacker, and she’s beyond good at what she does–so good, in fact, that she hacked an elusive international terrorist, someone the government has been trying to do for years, and, as the novel opens, she’s on the run for her life, flying a small Cessna to Montana so that she can try to deliver her findings to the hacker’s hacker, known only as Ulysses. She was almost caught and killed when she first picked up her rented plane, which took a couple of bullets, causing her to crash land in a small mountain meadow, approximately 15 miles short of her goal. She manages to drag herself outside before her plane blows up–rescuing herself, her phone and her laptop, all essentials, as you’ll son learn.

When she’s greeted by a tall, gorgeous hunk on an ATV, she thinks they’ve already found her, but no, he’s most definitely not the enemy, he’s Tanner Vazquez, and he’s soon joined by two more alpha males, Tanner’s friends, Aidan Black and Balthazar “Zar” Flint . She soon discovers that Tanner is no enemy, he’s her rescuer, and he, Zar and Aidan are a trio of ex-SEALs, who formed a pact while in battle overseas–they’ve agreed to share everything, their lives, their home, their talents, their skills, and now that she’s impressed them by flying a plane without ever having taken a lesson (she learned to fly via a computer flight simulator), and put herself in harm’s way by trying to protect Tanner from his rapidly approaching friends, who she believes are the enemy, sharing “everything” will soon come to include her.

This is not a novel for the faint of heart, nor are all of these ex-SEALs going to be easy to understand or deal with, but as Nina heals from the wounds she incurred when she crashed, she gets to know and admire Tanner and Aidan–Zar is the more elusive and dominant of the trio. The men are certainly attracted to her looks, her intelligence, her hacking skills, her bravery, and once they learn that she’s also sexual adventurous, they set out to make her theirs in every way.

Written in alternating points of view, we slowly get to know and understand these men and the situation that brought them all together. We learn Nina’s backstory too, and she’s most definitely a worthy foil and a challenge to these three alpha SEALs, but her hacking skills set her apart from any other woman these men have ever known.

While Beyond the Rules is as hot and incendiary an erotic novel as I’ve ever encountered, it’s also a well-written, emotional, deeply moving, alternative lifestyle love story and an exciting action thriller as well, so prepare yourselves for a sexually explicit read, containing secrets and lies and both graphic sex and violence, that also addresses issues like self-sacrifice, loss, wounded warriors with PTSD and even suicide. It’s a novel I found utterly impossible to put down, and although, as I stated earlier, it’s not for the fain of heart, it’s one heck of an exciting and gripping read, and I highly recommend it.”

Donna Respher, Reviewer, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2084108814

I want to thank this kind reviewer for her time, read, and review. I write for readers like her.

Beyond the Rules-SM

Amazon

 

 

 

First early review for Beyond the Rules is up on NetGalley

Beyond the Rules-SM

Early release reviews for Beyond the Rules are beginning to hit NetGalley as we speak. As usual, I always share the very first official review for a new release here. So drum roll, please. And the first review for Beyond the Rules is…

5 out of 5 stars!

“I really enjoy this series… I really enjoy Anna del Mar’s work. She is the rare erotica author that not only has really hot, steamy sex scenes but she has a compelling, believable story with fully realized characters. Loved all the characters and their diversity as well as their compatibility. I just couldn’t put the story down.”

https://www.netgalley.com/book/118501/review/21683

I want to thank librarian and NetGalley reviewer Pam Steinken for giving Beyond the Rules its first official review. It’s a huge relief for me as an author to lead this launch with such an amazing review. More wonderful NetGalley reviews are going up on the website in the next few days.

It sounds totally cliché, but reviews are the best ways of spreading the word about a new novel and to support the authors we love to read. So thanks to all of you who post reviews of my novels. I really appreciate your time, read, and review.

Beyond the Rules Teaser 1 for good

Click here for more about Beyond the Rules

 

Why I Wrote About Alaska

The Stranger Final Cover Small

How an essentially tropical gal like me ends up writing a novel set in Alaska is a story in itself. I hate the cold. I love the beach. My definition of an adventure is going to the zoo. How then did I muster the mojo—not to mention the confidence—to get hooked on Alaska?

I blame my children for starting all of this. They were the ones who insisted we travel to Alaska. They are the same pair who dragged me out to raft the Colorado River and forced me to learn how to ski, an inexplicably adventuresome duo, given that my husband and I prefer a kinder sort of travel.

To be fair, I’d been to Alaska before. We’d been on a comfortable, lovely cruise, where the park rangers announced the sights over the ship’s loudspeaker, narrating the passage. “On the port side, you’ll see a group of seals basking on the ice. On the starboard side, there’s a pod of whales bubble-net feeding in the sound.” It was wonderful, posh and relaxing and I my motto during that first cruise was see Alaska from your bed.

Fast-forward a few years, and all of the sudden my daughter was a park ranger and my son was volunteering at the Denali Kennels, caring for sled dogs as big as horses and as powerful as motorcycles. He lived in a nice, new tidy cabin with a dry sink. Hint. That means no running water. You fill in the blanks.

By then, we had learned that Alaska had a lot to offer. This tropical gal had acquired a few extra items of gear that made the rigors of the weather bearable. The fall had become my favorite season in Alaska, when the tourists are gone, the mosquitoes disappear, and Denali begins to peek out of the clouds that envelop the mountain through most of the summer. Most importantly, I’d been dazzled, surprised and seduced by the wildlife and the vast landscape that challenged my eyes, opened my mind and dared my imagination. Yeah. I was hooked.

Sure, I read, researched, googled and interviewed. But the truth about Alaska is that the place cannot be properly understood without the experience. It’s all about the feel. So off we went, to experience the magic, the most important research of all.

Traveling in Alaska is an education in itself. The main form of transportation away from the cities entails tiny single engine planes, mechanical mavericks that land wherever, however. For a woman who hates flying, those little planes? Terror.

But I learned to appreciate a place where there are no roads to your destination, no schedules but those you carve out of the weather by relying on the skills of strangers. And then it hit. I was a writer. I mean, really. How can a writer fall in love with Alaska and not write about the affair?

From my personal, life-transforming travels through Alaska, The Stranger, was born. The Stranger is the second book of my Wounded Warrior Series, following on the heels of my Amazon bestseller, The Asset. The Stranger features Summer Silva and Seth Erickson, fire and ice, a most unlikely pair. I like to say that fiery Summer’s character benefited from all of my Alaskan misadventures—believe me, there were plenty of those and they weren’t always pretty or dignified—while icy Seth is Alaska in the flesh.

As you can probably tell, I had a lot of fun researching The Stranger. It all made it into the story. So come along in the journey. I’m happy to share. You can visit Alaska from the comfort of your reader and laugh, cry, and feel along with Summer and Seth as they fight their demons and turn their lust into forever love. And if you fall in love with Alaska, well, believe me. I understand.

Alaskan aurora

Amazing Denali Rescue

Wow. This amazing rescue in the vicinity of Denali could’ve passed for a scene right out The Stranger. Kudos to those incredible rangers!

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Denali National Park mountaineering ranger Frank Preston was gearing up to rescue a mountain climber sick on North America’s tallest mountain when a second call for help arrived.
oaoa.com

Diverse Read-A-Likes

Hello there!

Looking for a great read this weekend?

This incredible list of diverse reads was originally prepared for the RT BookLovers Convention 2017 Librarians and Booksellers by the amazing Frannie Strober Cassano, who has one of the coolest jobs in the world. She is an adult reference and romance librarian. Talk about a dream job…for me! :)

Frannie first stumbled into the romance section of her local drugstore as a teen, and then found herself back there during the Fifty Shades of Grey “phenomenon”. You can find her gleefully discussing book boyfriends, tropes, and Happily Ever Afters over at her Reference Desk or on Twitter. I’m so grateful that she’s allowed me to share her amazing list with you.

So, without further delay, here’s Frannie’s list:

If you love Eloisa James’s When Beauty Tamed the Beast, then you’ll love Suleikha Snyder’s Bollywood and the Beast (Here’s why: Fairy Tale)

If you love Beth Kery’s Make Me series, then you’ll love Alisha Rai’s Glutton for Pleasure (Here’s why: Intense Connections Between MCs, Erotica)

If you love Nico Rosso’s One Minute to Midnight, then you’ll love Anna del Mar’s At the Brink (Here’s why: Navy SEAL/PTSD)

If you love Dorothy Clark’s His Substitute Wife (LoveInspired), then you’ll love Beverly Jenkins’s Night Song (Here’s why: Western)

If you love All I Want for Christmas Is a Duke by Valerie Bowman, Tiffany Clare, Vivienne Lorret, Ashlyn Macnamara; then you’ll love Burning Bright by Megan Hart, Jennifer Gracen, Stacey Agdern, and KK Hendin (Here’s why: Anthology, Holiday)

If you love Megan Frampton’s Why Do Dukes Fall In Love?, then you’ll love Cat Sebastian’s The Lawrence Browne Affair (Here’s why: Boss/Secretary, Historical)

If you love Opal Carew’s Nailed, then you’ll love Damon Suede’s Hot Head (Here’s why: Occupational Romance, Business Deals, Erotica)

If you love Joanne Rock’s Secret Baby Scandal, then you’ll love Farrah Rochon’s Field of Pleasure (Here’s why: Sports, Football)

If you love Shana Galen’s Love and Let Spy, then you’ll love Alyssa Cole’s An Extraordinary Union (Here’s why: Spy, Historical)

If you love Sherry Thomas’s Private Arrangements, then you’ll love Heidi Cullinan’s Lonely Hearts (Here’s why: Angst)

If you love Gina Conkle’s To Find a Viking Treasure, then you’ll love Jeannie Lin’s The Sword Dancer (Here’s why: Historical Era)

If you love Susan Mallery’s Only Mine, then you’ll love K.M. Jackson’s Insert Groom Here (Here’s why: Reality TV, Series)

If you love Alexa Riley’s Curvy, then you’ll love Rebekah Weatherspoon’s So Sweet (and the Sugar Baby Novella Series) (Here’s why: Curvy Heroine, Billionaire Hero, Erotica)

You can find Frannie in Twitter @NBPLRomance.

Happy Reading!

Reading girl