Let’s talk about Bennett Ryan.

In honor of the release of Beautiful, I want to talk about my favorite romance series. As I previously discussed, I kind of dove head first into reading romance smut, and once I made my way around to actually paying for books, one of the very first purchases I made was Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren. If you haven’t read this yet, you need to follow that link to Amazon right now and one-click it. Trust me. I actually first saw this book when I was shopping in Target (side note: did you guys know Target has all kinds of dirty books now?!), while I was still naive about the amount of written dirty romance that existed in the world. I read the blurb on the back, and I was sold.

See, I already knew I liked “office romance” type stories,  because a few of my favorite stories on Literotica, Flowers for Jill, My New Boss, and Write Me What to Do. Add in the dose of enemies-to-lovers (my favorite theme) and I was dying to read it.

I read it all in one day.

At that time, this was not a common occurrence for me (it’s practically routine for me now), but I just Could. Not. Put. It. Down.

I loved the story, loved the writing, and LOVED the characters. Bennett Ryan is still to this day my favorite book boyfriend.

I mean, come on.

Recently, I decided I wanted to re-read the entire series- all 9 books (now 10), 4 (now 5) novels and 5 novellas- so that it would be fresh in my mind when the final novel, Beautiful, is released in a few weeks. I told myself that I would start with Beautiful Bastard (obviously) and then I would pace them until the release date. I should have known better. I finished the entire series within a week [Side note: I meant to publish this over a week ago, but fell into the rabbit hole of reading the Rock Chick series and am just now getting fresh air again] .There’s just something about Christina Lauren’s humor that always leaves me wanting more. Anyway, I will probably review each and every novel and novella separately on this blog, but for now, let’s just talk about Bennett Ryan (and Chloe Mills).

Where it all started.

For the last 15 years or so, I have struggled with depression and anxiety. There have been periods when one or both are dormant, but there have also been periods when one or both has put me at a really low point. Throughout my life, I have found several things to ebb the depression (food, TV, sex, etc.). Basically, I become obsessive with something and it distracts my brain enough to stop the debilitating thoughts. This is not always the most productive or healthy method, but it is what my life has been. I am telling you this background because last Christmas, I was at an especially low point. Having been there before, and recognizing the signs, I anticipated the worst.

As you can maybe tell from this blog, I have a pretty healthy sex drive, and I think about sex a lot. One night during this depressive episode, I was bored and decided I wanted to read something dirty. Instead of the rational and easy choice of getting on Amazon and buying a dirty book (I really don’t know why this didn’t even cross my mind), I went on an old site that I used to frequent as a teen, Literotica. I started reading a story, and quickly became obsessed. [Note: in case anyone is interested, I will be doing a post on my favorite stories read on that site].

This spiraled since then, expanding on to many, many books on my kindle, a lot on Wattpad, and a few other sources. Throughout these past 10 months, I have basically only read “romance” stories (see here to find out how I define romance). It has not only helped me deal with my mental struggles, but also has helped me find new kinks (hellllloooo BDSM) that I never really knew I had.

So now, I am using this blog to document all of the stories and books that I read, taking note of my thoughts and overall impressions from each. I have read so much that I want a catalog (of sorts) that I can reference, and hopefully it will come in handy to someone else looking for good recommendations.

Join me on this journey, won’t you?