Heavy Metal Heart

<i>2 stars</i><br><blockquote> <b> <i>“That’s for you, Green Eyes.”</i> </b> </blockquote><br><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1393786172i/8763129._SY540_.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br>I enjoy all kinds of stories, I loved the demon rocker concept but the story didn't work for me. It was instantaneous similar to most paranormal stories, knowing they are the one, but this was just different, the demons receive their life power from the energy of the crowd, they get back what they give and if they are lucky they find their one Muse, the one person who they can live with to feed their needs more than any crowd out there. Thus is the story of Trevor and Misty. <br><blockquote> <b> <i>“You are—” a Muse, temptress, goddess, sinner, savior, lover, “something this world hasn’t seen.”</i> </b> </blockquote><br>But you cannot have a paranormal read without the bad guys, and so we are introduced to the Philosophers, they hated everything they represented and have been hunting these demons for thousands and thousands of years. Now that Trevor has found his Muse she is now targeted by the Philosophers who are hell bent on tearing them apart, knowing that without her he would die.<br><br>The beginning sucked me in but after a certain point, I just tuned out and towards the end I was skimming just to read through the dialogue because I still had to know how it all ended. The writing was good, detailed but the story wasn’t for me. It was my own personal preference with no fault to the author. This was an impulse buy after someone recommended the second book to me; I probably will still give it a go at a later point, but not just yet.<br>

I have to say I had mixed feeling about this novel, the story itself was excellent, the characters were done well but at times I felt Misty was out of character (which was somewhat on purpose) but while I enjoyed the story it was overdone sexually.<br /><br />I expect these books to be sexually pervasive but I am not a fan of sexual scenes that do nothing but add pages to the book and that was the feeling I got from about half of the scenes in this novel (not to mention they were overly long, as if the writer was practicing how to write them).<br /><br />Since I am done with what I did not like sexually, I did enjoy the plot and storyline concerning the "world" and the action scenes. The romance suffered a bit from an almost "instant" love with pretty much no romance at all. I always feel that a writer who uses the "MINE!" type instant romance should at least make it realistic at some point but it fell short in that aspect. That is not to say it was not there, it was just done with touches of "can't live without him/her" romantically with no real reason to make them feel that way, especially from Misty's viewpoint.<br /><br />There is a physical reason for that which kind of means they REALLY can't live without each other which clouds the romance (or lack thereof) but does add a bit of depth to the story.<br /><br />Would have liked to see a bit of interaction with her best friend after she had hooked up with the rock star of her dreams but the author cheated out of that bit of enjoyment IMHO.<br /><br /><b>Bottom Line:</b> Great reading, great action, overdone sexually, light on any real romance. the plot and action of this urban fantasy makes this a good book to read, if you are looking for actual romance, this is not the place. I loved the rock star backdrop also and hope to see a bit more in a future book but hopefully the author will work the romance a bit and make the sexual scenes add to the story instead of just adding pages. Barely 4 Stars (like 3.8 rounded) mainly for the urban fantasy plot, it could have been 5 Stars with a bit more effort than the author gave us.

Reviewed for Sara at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="http://www.HarlequinJunkie.com">www.HarlequinJunkie.com</a><br /><br />Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley<br /><br />Wow, check out that cover!!! It looks SUPER hot, right? Well, it IS super hot but it gets a little weird. And by now, if you hear ME saying that something is weird, I'm hoping you know that I'm serious...<br /><br />This is going to be a slightly shorter review because this was a relatively short book. 132 pages, according to Goodreads.com. But I didn't feel slighted. It had a mostly complete story and all of the requisite hot scenes!!<br /><br />I liked the hero, Trevor Sand, and I liked the heroine, Misty, as well. Trevor is a pretty easy character to get to know... He's a rock star. Period. He's slept with the countless women and has drunk all the liquor you can imagine. The only difference is that he's not human. And so begins my confusion. So Trevor is a satyr... you know, half man, half goat? Well, half SOMETHING with hairy legs. Ok, like, hairy legs that are hairier than the usual hairy legs, ok? Oh and cloven feet. He's also some kind of demon. Are satyrs demons? I didn't think so but this one is. And he's also something called an elemental. All you need to know is that he can change the composition of his body... stone, wood, fire, etc. How or why is he all three of these things? I have no idea and if it was explained in the book, I missed it. Misty seems like your average girl...working in Hollywood for a post-production FX company, which she hates doing. I'm pretty sure she wants to make her own movies? Or does she want to make her own art? I don't know, all I do know is that she thinks her job sucks. <br /><br />Next thing you know, bing, bang, boom, she's at one of Trevor's shows and he sees her in the crowd, yadda yadda yadda. Trevor and Misty are SUPER hot together. The Sexy Time is phenomenal. In fact, it's the stellar Sexy Time that earned this book 3 instead of 2 stars. Very descriptive, super explicit, a little dirty... everything you want in your sex scenes. Unfortunately, it doesn't end there...<br /><br />They go on to figure out that Misty is Trevor's Muse and now these other beings want to kill them. Fights ensue and there you go. The problem is that what I've just described is maybe a 50 page book, give or take. The rest of the 80-something pages devolves into some kind of freaky deeky poetry slam stuff. I mean, there's some song lyrics tossed in every few pages... Trevor and Misty go on what I swear was a psychedelic-mushroom-tranced-out-trip across a field of grass and trees. I shit you not, I could not describe it even if you paid me to. I have no idea what happened. In fact, for a while, I was worried that I was stoned in some kind of Kindle osmosis weed transfer! But since that is highly unlikely, I'm guessing that the author is a poet at heart and wanted to impart some poetry into his erotic romance.<br /><br />Overall, this was an interesting book. Again, the Sexy Time was awesome! But if you like a narrative attached to the sex, tread lightly with this one. Honestly, I think Wiccans would really dig this because it seemed to me that there was serious respect for Mother Nature in this book. I don't mean that as any kind of insult, in any way. What I'm trying to say is that this book is not a simple rock star erotic novella. Not even close. If that's what you're looking for, you may want to keep moving on down the road. But if you like trippy prose or poetry with your erotic romance, you should probably pick this book up. It just wasn't for me.

Book provided by the publisher.<br /><br />2.5/3 stars<br /><br />This started out really well. The plot was interesting and the characters were strong.<br /><br />Unfortunately I was disappointed by the way it progressed. The timeline for the whole book is over one night and apart from feeling that the story was rushed I didnt feel convinsed by the characters relationship, its hard to believe someone can overcome their feelings of fear at seeing a demon to be willing to spend their life with them an hour or so later. It just wasn't realistic.<br /><br />Another thing I was confused about was Trevor. Hes supposed to be a demon yet he only showed it twice, there was no story there, no reason for it. He didnt fight as a demon, he fought as an elemental. I think there's a confusion here as to what they are supposed to be. To me an elemental is spiritual, as the name suggests, one with the elements and his character shows this throughout the book by drawing energy to keep himself alive. So why was the demon part added? A demon and elemental, to me, completely contradict each other. <br /><br />This is the first book I've read by this author and I'm willing to try the second in the series to see if the questions and confusion I have will be cleared up, at least I hope so.

Wasn't for me!!!

I didn't like the book, Misty had no depth she was a flat name on the paper. I found myself often lost in the writing, wondering what I just read, the language if you will was confusing. yes it was written in English but I also think maybe some of it was in Demon speak. every other page was either the beginning of a terrible song or the beginning of a sex scene.

Yeah I paid actual money for this. It wasn't terrible; I just have no idea what I read.

Heavy Metal Heart by Nico Rosso This book was given to me for an honest review.<br /> <br /> So this book started out just the way I like it, the first sentence had the word "f*cking" in it and there ya go. I may have been a little hooked from there. But seriously, I was all into how this book first starts out. You get to meet rock star hellion Trevor Sands. He was just oh so yummy right from the start, all I was waiting on was to find out he had tattoos and I would soon be sending out wedding invitations. Get ready to check your mail ladies and gentlemen, he has tattoos! You slowly start to learn through little hints and actions that he isn't your ordinary everyday cocky rock star but he's a demon. I loved how the author brought in some things from Greek mythology to tell a little about his background throughout the book. Let's just say he is a special guy with some special friends who has been around for thousands of years. And although he may be considered a legend, there were still legends told to them. As legend put it, there was a Muse created for every demon. Once this Muse was found the demon could only feed from them and they would become just like the demon and use the elements for their advantage. But in all those years none had found the one and just agreed it was all a story told around a fire. That is until Misty walks into one of his surprise concerts, totally throwing his world into a tailspin. Now Misty was just your everyday person trying to live day to day in a world that she feels she has never really lived in. That is until the day she decides to take a step outside the box and finally live for one night. After years of obsessing over Trevor and feeling like he wrote his songs for her, she finally goes to his show. And there she learns it was the best decision she has ever made. After a night of demons, wild sex, turmning fist into stone, fighting things that you thought never existed and learning you are way more than you ever thought, she realizes she can never go back to a life she once thought she was living to the fullest.<br /> <br /> So as you can tell I may be crushing a little on Trevor, I really did like him. He was cocky, tattooed, growly and the man had horns. Plus he talked like a man who hasn't slept in days lol. I loved the ramblings that came from his mouth sometimes. Sadly though as the story went on, he got on my nerves. He became very repetitive, he seemed to say the exact same thing but made it look different by twisting the words around. Ehh. The same went for Misty, I liked her at first but then she just drove me nuts. She went from being somewhat unbelieving of the situation to being all "Rah! Rah!" about it in a matter of minutes. She just became so fake all of a sudden. Is it bad that I was kind of hoping when that thing jumped out of the window with her, it decide to eat her? What's sad is I seemed to like her best friend Kim more than her. Now that girl was hilarious. But the things that really grabbed a hold of me were the sex and the cussing. The first time these two were together, whew it was just hot. Like mouth watering, grab me some ice and lets go sit in front of an air conditioner hot. Grrrrrr. The other time, it was so so. Yeah, that is correct, they only had sex two times. I mean that's not terrible but I just expected more from a demon and his Muse lol<br /> <br /> Overall I thought the story was ok. I liked the characters at first, later on I kind of hoped they got eaten by the bad guys and their dog. And the story started off great but again it just kind of went bye bye for me. These guys just seemed to perfect, everything worked out to quickly. to easily. Yeah they were down and you may think they were about to lose but it lasted for about 5 seconds then everything was peachy. There just wasn't enough action to the action. And the bad guys were kind of blah. I mean a smoke cage and a smoke blade? Ehhh I just couldn't see it working against a demon. There wasn't enough shock and awe for me. Now I will say the writing was interesting, at times I felt like I should be listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon while watching the Wizard of Oz. It was very trippy lol. Maybe someone channeled Edgar Allen Poe. And of course the weird side of me liked it. I also liked the songs that Trevor sang. So hot sex, odd interesting writing, so so characters and so so story led me to the book being a 3 ringer.<br /> <br />My song for this book: Change by Deftones.

Originally published at <a href="http://wp.me/p3gHJx-529" rel="nofollow noopener">Reading Reality</a><br /><br />This is for everyone who has ever been told that rock music is the devil’s music. Or possibly for everyone whose parents ever shouted something like that through the bass beat thumping through the house while they were still teenagers living at home.<br /><br />Heavy Metal Heart has that spirit of defiance rock and roll defiance blasting through its storyline, and if you love rock, that back beat carries you through the sense that this paranormal romance happens awfully fast.<br /><br />But then, rock stars burn hot and burn out fast. Unless they really are demons.<br /><br />Trevor Sand is a rock and roll superstar. This time around. In other times and in other places he’s played every kind of music that there is, from opera to harpsichord to beating skins stretched over wood frames. In this time and place, rock and roll is what brings in enough energy to feed his hunger. Trevor is a demon. He calls himself that. Terminology is slippery. Call him an elemental if it works for you.<br /><br />Trevor and the boys in his band have walked the Earth for millennia. They were called up by the intense energy of humans first celebrating their ability to survive and conquer the world around them. As long as humans lose themselves in revelry, Trevor and his kind are immortal.<br /><br />There’s one hitch. Actually two. Rationality hems in the natural order of things. It is natural for humans to let loose now and again. Teenagers are meant to rebel; Friday nights are meant for going out and partying. But there is a group set against Trevor and his fellow demons, the Philosophers. The Philosophers are the gloom and doom party. Complete with real doom.<br /><br />Then there’s the girl of Trevor’s dreams. Every great artist has a muse. Make that muse with a capital M. Just as Shakespeare wrote poems to his ‘dark lady’, Trevor has been been penning songs to his woman with ‘green eyes’. But for a demon, once he finds his Muse, she becomes the only way he can feed his hunger for energy. Once he’s found her, if she dies, he dies.<br /><br />She’ll save him, but she’ll also make him vulnerable. Sounds like love.<br /><br />Misty Grant has been dreaming of Trevor Sands for years, since the first time she heard his music. For one night, she decides to walk on the wild side by going to his impromptu concert and introducing herself, no matter how far out of her comfort zone she has to step.<br /><br />She has no idea…<br /><br />Escape Rating B: This is a story of two counter-poised myths. One is that the need of human beings to celebrate, to create, to make joyful noise and song is so powerful that its very nature became embodied in elemental spirits that feed from the energy humans give off when they “live it up”. The Roman god Bacchus loved riotous, drunken festivals, he even gave his name to them; bacchanalia. What if he was based on a something that lived off the energy created by those revels?<br /><br />Rock and roll isn’t the first time that music has been seen to be a demon’s playground, either. People initially thought the waltz was quite shocking (read almost any Regency romance to get a flavor for this); never mind Mozart’s behavior.<br /><br />The other myth is the one about every great artist having one perfect Muse who inspires him (or her), combining more than a bit with the fated-mate trope for good effect in this instance. An awful lot of girls dream of being picked out of a crowd by a rock star, in this particular bit of wish fulfillment, the rock star has also been dreaming of this one, particular woman. It makes the concept work this time.<br /><br />Although Trevor is the demon, the story hinges on Misty’s transformation from ordinary human to extraordinary. It’s not just because she has the most awesome one-night-stand with a rock god, but because she was always meant to be more. She just has to keep deciding, over and over, that she wants everything that that “more” means, the bad as well as the good.<br /><br />If you’d like to try a story that combines the immortal rock and roll of Jeri Smith-Ready’s WVMP series and the hot sex of Olivia Cunning’s Sinners on Tour series, let Heavy Metal Heart have another little piece of your heart.

Originally posted on The Book Tart <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="http://thebooktart.com/book-review/the-queen-of-tarts-review-of-nico-rossos-heavy-metal-heart/">http://thebooktart.com/book-review/th...</a><br /><br />The rock star and the average human woman… That’s a good fantasy. :) It’s even more wickedly fun in Nico Rosso’s Heavy Metal Heart when the rock star is NOT human. In fact Trevor and his band mates were born out of human’s revelry when people first celebrated life. They exist on the feedback of the crowds enjoying their concerts and are nearly immortal. I enjoyed the world building and liked this take on a supernatural hero.<br /><br />In paranormal romance the love at first sight works, especially when it’s fated love. Trevor, has been seeking his Muse and finds her in Misty. She’s a relatable woman working her butt off in L.A. doing special effects. The music of Trevor has been a lifeline in her daily grind. She decides she’s going to break out of her rut and go to a concert in the middle of the week to hear him live. (Side note: There’s a great girl friend chat about what to wear that I adore!) When she gets to the show the connection between them was immediate and I was impressed at her spunk. She decides to go after what she wants.<br /><br />This romance is HOT! The word choices and some of the scenes bumped it into erotic romance territory for me. There’s even a groupie party at the bands hotel. But this is the rock star fantasy and I went with it. I loved the heat between Trevor and Misty and the emotion. They were both yearning for more in their lives.<br /><br />Trevor felt the strength of their connection before Misty and well… how he reveals that he’s not exactly human scares the pants on her! Then they have to deal with fated love, ancient enemies, and the fact that Misty just powered up! She’s been changed by their relationship and I thought it was empowering how she stepped up and took control of her destiny.<br /><br /><br />A few of my fav lines…<br /><br />♥ Trevor leaned close to the mic, his lips almost touching it. The room took a breath with him, quieting. They waited, balanced on the edge of his guitar string. They’d come along on wherever this journey was heading. But he only sang to the woman:<br /><br /> <br /><br />♥ “Don’t disappear,” he insisted. “I’ll find you. Even in the night. You’re burning too bright.”<br />Gathering her senses, she grabbed the front of his shirt. “Find me. Right now.”<br /><br /> <br /><br />♥ “Do you want it?”<br /><br />“Forever.” Eyes dead serious.<br /><br />“Because I’m your Muse?”<br /><br />“Because you’re Misty.”<br /><br /> <br /><br />I read this story in just two sittings. It’s a quick read and only covers one night in Trevor and Misty’s life. But what a night! I enjoyed it and just held on for the ride. If you’re in the mood for a hot paranormal romance that’s equally naughty and poetic then pick up Heavy Metal Heart and rock out!<br /><br /> <br /><br />The Queen of Tarts<br /><br />♦ eARC provided for review for my honest opinion.