Until Talon by Aurora Rose Reynolds

It’s inevitable that every Mayson child will find their BOOM. When Talon finds his, he walks a fine line between wanting to spend every waking moment with Mia, but also not scaring her away. Are they both up for the challenge?

What’s it About? 

When Mia Allenton’s sister calls, asking her for help after finding out her husband cheated, Mia packs up her life in Montana and moves to Tennessee to be there for her and her three girls. As Mia begins to settle in, a tornado comes through, bringing along with it Talon Mayson, a man determined to prove to her that good men do exist.

Talon knows he’s got his work cut out for him when it comes to earning Mia’s trust, but slowly her walls start to crumble, and they begin to build something beautiful. Unfortunately, someone from Talon’s past isn’t happy about him being back in Tennessee, and they’re willing to do anything to prevent him from ever being happy.

Is the Boom between Talon and Mia strong enough to weather the storm that’s coming?

First Impressions

There are three primary features to any novel in the Until series. First, we’re always dealing with a case of BOOM insta-love. As someone who isn’t always a huge fan of this trope, this series somehow succeeds in presenting it in a way that intrigues me. Every Mayson experiences “the boom”. Two, alpha man. All of the men in this series love their women, and they will do anything it takes to protect them. Three, we usually see a bit of over-the-top drama which plays second fiddle to the romance of the story, but it’s present nonetheless. This is the ninth book in the Until Her/Him series, and technically the thirteenth book when you combine it with the original Until series featuring the parents of our new generation of Maysons. By this point, you know what to expect, and there are very few surprises to the overall arch of the plot. Nevertheless, Talon’s tale of romance pulled me in more than some of the recent installments, and while not as electric as the original series, I almost felt transported to the glory days of those first stories. Yes, Talon is an alpha male who knows immediately upon first glance of Mia that she represents the boom phenomena the men in this family have been warning him about for years. What I particularly loved about this story though, was that we see how Talon was just as much of a boom for Mia as she was for him.

While Talon runs towards that link pulling them together, Mia initially wants to push away from it. All her life she’s only known men who have abandoned her or her loved ones, and she’s not ready to open herself up to that kind of hurt again. And yet, the more Talon tries to spend time with her, the more she realizes he’s unlike any other man who has come before. Her life is better when he’s around, and even though her head is telling her things might be moving too fast, her heart can recognize that the difference in him is something worth holding onto. Previous men in this series have sometimes straddled the line of appropriateness in how far they’ll go to win over their boom. When it comes to Talon, he is straightforward in relaying to Mia that he wants forever with her, but he actually does a pretty good job of letting her move their relationship along at her own pace. I think it hearkens back to the fact that Talon was also Mia’s boom, and he could see that simultaneous realization within her, even if she tried to suppress it afterwards. By allowing her to set the pace of their relationship, which was admittedly fast (though perhaps not fast enough for him), he was confident that they would ultimately end up together. Only by pushing her to move quicker could he inevitably push her away. The fact he was able to take a step back to support her as they explored this new relationship highlighted a level of restraint not common for Mayson men!  

A Sprinkle of Drama

As with any Until novel, there is always a side-story weaving in and out of the background which our main characters will have to interact with whenever they manage to put some clothes on and make their way outside of the bedroom. Surprisingly, the secondary story in this novel managed to push its way through the romance of Talon and Mia from time to time to capture our primary attention. This story involved Mia’s sister, Cece, who is trying to find her footing with her three daughters following an unexpected split from her cheating husband. As if the complicated family dynamics weren’t intriguing enough, there’s a hidden sprouting romance between Cece and her boss which also comes into the picture. This entire side-story was fascinating, and I’m not gonna lie there were times when I was hoping that Mia and Talon would just go off and snuggle for a few days so we could see more of Cece standing up to her douche of an ex, putting the happiness of their children first, and figuring out what the heck was really going on with her hunk of a boss. 

This is also where we see a sprinkle of drama come into play, and while some other readers will claim that the dramatic climax was over-the-top, I must say it felt pretty tame in comparison to some of the stuff we’ve seen presented in previous novels. Although certain aspects of Cece’s story find a resolution, things are far from being tied up all neat and pretty with a big red bow by the end of the novel. It leaves you craving a follow-up where Cece can finally find the happily ever after she and her daughters deserve. Considering how open-ended things were left at the conclusion of this book, it seems like the most logical next step to have Cece as the lead of her own story. And yet…I can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever see that come to fruition. After all, she’s not a Mayson, and the boss she’s fallen for isn’t a Mayson either, so it would be unheard of to have an Until romance featuring two non-Maysons as the lead characters. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed that we’ll get a novella somewhere along the way, or hear tell of Cece and her boss in the background of a future book. 

Series: Until Him/Her, book 9. I love that you know what you’re getting when you pick up any book in this series, and each one is an ideal beach read. Technically you can probably understand the flow of this story as a stand-alone, but it’s still fun to read in order so you can see the Mayson family continue to grow from one book to the next. 

Would I befriend the heroine? Maybe. I have a feeling most of her time would be spent with her sister and nieces, as well as with Talon. Nothing wrong with that at all, but something tells me I would be too exhausting of a friend for her. 

Would I date the hero? The fact he chose to foster a cat and her 5 kittens makes me desperate to say yes. However, the alpha side to his personality would probably intimidate me.  

Final Impressions: The earlier books might be better, but I felt this installment did a good job of breaking through the monotony of some of the more recent reads. Talon is probably one of the less intimidating of Mayson men we’ve come across, and Mia is as selfless as they come. As a couple they were meant for each other. I do wish we had seen more of a resolution to Cece’s story, and the drama of the story was on the lighter side. We’d get a brief mention here and there of intrigue, and then everything came together in a quick description of events which took place “off the page”. We don’t really see it play out firsthand, but rather the details are relayed to us after the fact. Spreading the drama out more fully across the entirety of the book would have been an exciting ride. 

Smut Level: We’ve got steam here folks. After running out of condoms following their first sexploration, Talon quickly stocks up on about 8 boxes of them. And seriously, we see them go through a decent number of that stock-pile.  

Get it on Amazon: Click Here. $4.99 Kindle Price. 243 Pages. 

Until Sage by Aurora Rose Reynolds

Sage might be adopted, but this man is a Mayson through and through. He too experiences the “boom” which clearly designates Kim as his one and only.

What’s it About?

Sage Mayson had Kimberly Cullen once, and the memory of that brief encounter has tortured him since the moment he pushed her away. He should have followed his gut, but he didn’t, and now he’s left watching the woman he wants more than anything from afar. Kimberly vowed to protect her heart from Sage, but when her sister is murdered and her world starts to fall apart, he’s the one person she finds herself leaning on. Getting a second chance is something Sage knows is rare. He’s not going to squander the one he’s been given, and he won’t take no for an answer when it comes to making Kim his. But what Sage doesn’t know is Kim has a secret that could leave them both devastated and heartbroken

First Impressions

One thing’s for sure, you need to be extremely careful with how you read the books in both the Until Him and Until Her series. In my opinion, it’s really best to go back and forth between the two and read them in the order of their release date. Not gonna lie, pretty annoying tactic, but also important as one of the main plot points of this novel was both presented and basically resolved in the novel “Until Ashlyn”. While I do enjoy having the alternate focus between the male and female children of the Mayson clan, I believe that for continuity and sanity’s sake, it would have been better to combine both of these series into one. Call it the Until Descendants or something.

Nature vs. Nurture

You know, I kind of feel bad for twins. When it comes to literary representations it seems that 9 times out of 10 we are always presented with a good twin and an evil twin. And that’s basically what we’re presented with in this novel. Not a very promising outlook in romance novel land. Kim is the good twin. She’s an upstanding citizen, successful hair stylist, and a compassionate friend. Then there’s her twin sister Kelly who is a regular visitor to a sex fetish website, and tries to date rape Sage upon first meeting. Awkwardly for Sage he didn’t know Kim was a twin, and it kind of introduced a speed bump in the road of their budding relationship when he mistakenly thought the girl he was smitten with just wanted to drug and rob him. Oh, to be a twin in a literary romance.

This twin focus introduces some of the main conflict of the story. On the one hand, Kim has an emotional struggle with herself. She wonders how different her and her sister’s lives could have been if their upbringings were reversed. While Kim was put up for adoption and raised in a loving home, Kelly remained in the arms of her drugged out and abusive mother. It presents the classic debate of nature vs. nurture, and Kim often wonders if she would have ended up as screwed up as her sister if she had remained with her mother instead.

The other point of contention which this twin story line introduces to the plot is the mix-up with Sage. When he believes that Kim was the one to attempt to drug him, he confronts her the next day and calls her a bitch, ultimately dismissing her from his life. However, while this does add a sense of “so what happens now”, Kim and Sage still have an obvious sexual attraction for one another, and we know it’s just a matter of time before the truth comes out and they’re eventually knockin boots.

Side-by-Side Series

Aside from their initial kerfuffle which delays their sexual fun time, there’s really only one other main element of drama throughout the whole book, and it’s definitely presented in a rather odd manner. When read in conjunction with the Until Her series, we find that we’ve actually already been introduced to the suspenseful plot point of the novel. As if that wasn’t enough, we even know how the whole matter comes to fruition after reading Until Ashlyn. By reading these series side-by-side, it makes this novel pretty…well…uneventful when all is said and done. Aside from taking their relationship status from on the rocks to living together not much else happens during the rest of the book. Kind of disappointing. There is one other minor issue involving Kim’s health that I thought would become a more prominent feature of the book, but it’s ultimately resolved without as much attention as I thought it deserved.

Series: Until Him, book 2.

Should you read it? This book was just ok. Definitely a letdown that the primary feature of suspense and mystery was given away in its entirety during the last book. Still a sweet read.

Smut Level: Sage experiences his “boom” when he meets Kim, and Kim too experiences some rather booming orgasms on multiple surfaces of both her and Sage’s homes.

Get it on Amazon: Click Here. $3.99 Kindle Price. Amazon Digital Services LLC. 229 Pages.

Until Jax by Aurora Rose Reynolds

This book was so freaking good! A sweet, sexy and suspenseful read.

What’s it About? 

Ellie Anthony isn’t looking for love. She isn’t even looking for a man, but when Jax Mayson insists on keeping her and her daughter safe, she’s left with no choice but to trust him. Now she just hopes she doesn’t get hurt when she falls hard for a guy who’s known for breaking hearts. Jax Mayson knows that Ellie is his BOOM the moment he sees her. When he finds out she has a daughter, he realizes he wants a family, and he will do whatever is necessary to keep both of his girls safe, even if that means facing the demons from his past.

First Impressions

Although this is technically the first novel in the spinoff Until Him series, I would highly recommend you read Until July first. There is some important carry over from the plot of that novel, and it sort of picks up where the other one left off. I even had to go back and remind myself as to what happened at the end of Until July to remember who was who. If I hadn’t previously read the other novel, I honestly think I would have been a little lost.

The Boom

Ellie is Jax’s BOOM, which is sort of a thing in the Mayson family clan. He’s 100% smitten over both Ellie, as well as her daughter. What Jax doesn’t realize at first is that Ellie’s daughter is actually the child of her brother who died in a car accident. Ellie is in fact a virgin.

So what does it mean to be the BOOM of a male Mayson? Basically, Jax is all kind of alpha caveman when it comes to Ellie. That being said, he actually manages to take things somewhat slow with Ellie sexually. He doesn’t de-flower her until well into the book, but he’s definitely claimed her for his own. I love me some alpha male, although caveman alphas can sometimes be too much for me. However, Jax manages to be so unbelievably sweet with Ellie’s daughter that you can’t help but love the guy.

The Mayson Trademark

There is some added drama to the story-line, as Jax has a psycho ex-girlfriend. He is a Mayson after all. The majority of the novel fixates on the blossoming romance between Jax and Ellie, but just when you think all is well and good, some major shit hits the fan. I’m telling ya, it’s like a trademark for any book related to the Until series. Something has to go wrong at some point!

Series: Until Him, book 1. This book sort of goes hand-in-hand with the Until Her series, whose first book is Until July. Both of these are spin-offs from the original Until series that focuses on the parents of the characters presented in these later books. Might seem a bit confusing, but all of them are great reads with sexy alpha males!

Should you read it? I would say it’s a good one to pick up if you’re looking for an alpha male with a tender side. And who doesn’t like one of those?

Smut Level: Ellie spends most of the book as a virgin, but she knows, hell we all know, that it’s only a matter of time before she and Jax do the dirty.

Get it on Amazon: Click here. $3.99 Kindle Price. Self-Published. 282 Pages.