Bind Blog Tour: Review & "Hey Bestie! The Secret to Creating Heroines You Want as a Best Friend" by Sierra Cartwright

Bind by Sierra Cartwright

Published: 5th May 2016 (paperback)

Publisher: Totally Bond

Pages: 320

Available in Paperback and on Kindle

Order now from Amazon

Blurb

Only one man can help her. Is she willing to pay his price?
Faced with the potentially overwhelming loss of her family's fortune, Lara Bertrand turns to the one man who can help her, the gorgeous and powerful Connor Donovan.
She knows he's dangerous to her on every level. Only desperation would drive her to make such a risky proposition. After all, she knows all about his ruthless nature and relentless determination to succeed.
When the classy, elegant Lara walks into his office with an outrageous proposal, Connor is stunned and more than a little intrigued. Ever since he first met her, he's been attracted to the cool beauty, but she's more than kept her distance.
Connor is absolutely willing to help her out. For a price. He not only wants her hand in marriage, but also her total submissive surrender...

Review
Bind by Sierra Cartwright is the first novel in her new trilogy The Donovan Dynasty. This first book focuses on Conner Donovan, the CEO of Donavan Worldwide and his relationship with Lara Bertrand CFO of Bertrand Holdings Inc.

Lara is a woman who knows exactly what she wants and usually how to get it. In order to save her family business from financial ruin as her father’s business practices become more and more lack lustre Lara knows she needs a like-minded soul on the board of directors. Enter Conner Donovan, someone who has already shown an interest in parts of the business and Lara decides the man to help save her business.

As Lara makes her proposal to Conner, that they be married, in name only so he can join the board and help her out vote her father’s decisions she doesn’t expect the answer she gets. Yes he’ll marry her but in return Lara must surrender herself to him completely and in doing so she will experience things she’s never even dreamed of. Will Lara put her heart on the line and surrender to Conner to save the business or will she find another way?

As someone who doesn’t tend to read too many BDSM novels I wasn’t sure what to expect with Bind. I like my novels to have a believable plotline and relatable characters and not just sex scenes, something I’ve found lacking in other novels of this genre. In Bind I think Sierra Cartwright has balanced these two factors perfectly. I found the plotline convincing, the characters relatable and the chemistry between them sizzling which made for some scorching sex scenes.

I loved the dynamic between Conner and Lara, they’re both very intelligent, work well as a team and as a couple they are hot, hot, hot! I loved how connected they seemed to be. Conner had wanted a completely submissive partner in the bedroom but in the boardroom he seemed just as happy to let Lara take the lead.

I also loved their relationships with other people which I felt were very genuine. My favourite relationship was between Lara and Erin, Conner’s sister. These two savvy business women have known each other a long time and bounce business ideas off each other as well as relationship advice, so it was good when Erin didn’t instantly side with her brother when Lara mentions quarrels the two have and I just loved her phrase “chicks before dicks”.

I really enjoyed reading Bind, it had everything I wanted in an erotic fiction novel and has left me eager to continue on with this trilogy and find out what brothers Cade and Nathan have in store for us. I’d give Bind five out of five.

Thank you to the publishers for sending me a copy to review and for asking me to be part of the blog tour.

And now over to Sierra

Thanks for hosting me on your blog. I love your clean, inviting layout. 

Hey, Bestie! The Secret to Creating Heroines You Want as Your Best Friend

by Sierra Cartwright

There has never been a time in my life that I didn’t write. I penned my first book when I was nine, and my mum was my first editor. She corrected “babby” to baby and “haven” to heaven. I don’t know if my spelling improved, but from there, I moved onto longer works and handwrote a Star Trek fanfic at age thirteen. I also drank my first-ever pot of coffee on the night I stayed up until three a.m. to finish the first draft. Both are habits I’ve yet to break.

I wrote nine full-length novels before I eventually sold a book to Harlequin/Silhouette. Back then, there was massive competition for each slot, something like a thousand or two thousand
submissions for each that was accepted.

 The good thing about the years of rejection was the fact I honed my craft. I went to seminar after seminar, including one from Robert McKee and another from Donald Mass. I entered competitions, participated in critique groups that actually used red Sharpies to mark-up manuscripts, attended monthly writers’ meetings. I devoured all the books on writing that I could get my hands on. And I studied characterization.

Perhaps the most important lesson I learned was from my agent at the time, Irene Goodman. She was talking to me about heroines, and she said, “Think about the friend you’d like to have.The sassy one. The one who says outrageous things. The one who isn’t afraid to say the F- word.” (Irene, however, used the real word. It was unexpected and shocking.)

I came away from that conversation feeling as if I’d been gifted with The Secret about how to create my heroines, and I changed my approach. Rather than just looking at pictures for my character board, I began to consider the traits I want in my bestie.

I want her to be courageous, in a way I wished I was, confident, in a way I aspire to. And she needs to be flawed. No one wants to be friends with someone who is absolutely perfect—how boring and intimidating. We want to hang-out with someone who is real, who makes us laugh, who we can share our secrets with. We want them to eat ice cream with us when we go through a breakup, sneak a latte into the hospital ward after surgery, or drink a little too much on girls’ night out. I endeavor to create heroines who are admirable as well as fun, interesting and have a huge heart. And by seeing her interact with her friends, we see what type of person she is. So, it’s a good bet that my heroines will all have some they can call, “Bestie.”

 On the surface, Lara Bertrand, the heroine of Bind, my latest mass-market release, has it all. She’s the daughter of a successful businessman, educated, intelligent, beautiful.

But she’s hiding a secret. Her family’s business is teetering on failure. And no matter what she suggests, her father won’t listen to her. Connor Donovan, the devastatingly handsome CEO of Donovan Worldwide, has made a play for part of her family’s business, and the businesswoman in her thinks they should agree.

Lara takes drastic measures. She approaches Connor and proposes. To her, the arrangement is logical. He’ll get a seat on the board, meaning he’ll be able to bypass her father and takeover certain divisions. The problem is, this means she will be betraying her beloved father.

Lara is speechless when Connor says he’ll help her, but only if it’s a real marriage. And he will expect her to be his sexual submissive.

Of course, it’s a post-Fifty Shades of Grey world, so Lara has an idea of what that might mean.But she has no idea what it means to her, especially when he obliterates all her expectations and gives her shattering orgasms. She’d assumed it meant one thing, and it turns out that his oh-so sexy attention feeds a hunger she hadn’t known existed.

She changes, evolves, becomes a different person because of her experiences with Connor. One thing doesn’t change, though. I would still like to go out for dinner and a glass of wine with Lara and her friend, Erin.

Oh, hey. Would you like to join us? I’m buying the first round.