Cover 7

No Holds Barred

No Holds Barred

2018

First, it must be said, the beautiful human on this cover has been living rent free in my head for a good year.

With that said, I really enjoyed this read. There is something incredibly sexy about a successful and decisive man. The family dynamics are great too. I love how close this family is even if I do find it problematic later on in the series. This book along with the next one has insta love but it's the kind of insta love where you are on some grown folks ish. It's the kind where you are grown, you know what you want and you don't see why there needs to be a “hold on, let's see where this goes” period. I appreciated it.

This series is rather formulaic. All of the brothers were born within minutes of one another, are wealthy, successful, educated and run their own businesses. I started to roll my eyes when each picked up a different language and would start speaking said language knowing no one understood it and want to save their women all. the. damn. time. All of the women are successful as well but need to be saved in one way or another and don't know how to ask for help. They also don't ever learn to communicate with their partners. Even the matriarch Valentine, having been with her husband for years, still hasn't managed a zone where she speaks her thoughts freely.

One thing I have to make mention, Stephanie Nicole Norris knows how to write billionaires. I gave up on this trope because they were just BORING. These men have all this money and don't do anything but work and have no personalities or anything at all going for them ( I'm side-eyeing you, Whitney G Billionaire stories). Not this series. They work hard and a lot but were able to prioritize time to go on vacations/escapades/traveling to save someone in a different state and what not. SNN, you restored my faith in the billionaires...
;-)!

February 8, 2022