Photo Credits: Maxx Girr
Edited by Vaishali
Title: ‘Detour'
Author: D.D. Prince Series: (Beautiful Biker #1) Genre/Themes: New Adult, Biker Romance, suspense, danger, Contemporary Romance Year of Publication: 2016 Version: e-book kindle app Review
Rating: 3.8 'Beautiful Biker' loving stars!
“Now I’ve got a question for you,” he said.
I just stared. “How come, Kitten, every eye in this place is on you, watching you, but you look at me like I’m the only man in the world?”
Deacon is amazing . Ella is amazing . This story is a burst of excitement.
‘Beautiful Biker’ by DD Prince ticked many boxes for me, keeping my heart and mind occupied while I rode the risky road of detour. Elizabelle Isabel Forker (yes that is her real name) Is just as unique and spirited as her lyrical name, and distinct enough a character that I enjoyed reading from her perspective as much as my expectation of the story kept me on my toes throughout. Ella comes from the type of family that does not have the remotest space for the word‘conservative’ in their lives. Ella’s family are quirky, eccentric, thriving in the arts but also dealing in unorthodox means, skating the line of autonomy.
‘My family are wild, loud, mismatched, and crazy and artistic people living in a jungle of wildflowers.’
Ella’s father has a wide circle of friends, and has a respectable reputation with the people in town, and so Ella grew up around versatile people, many of whom were bikers. Born to hippie parents, Ella never really felt an artistic bone in her body thrive. She is dependable, grounded, humble, hard-working and caring, but her path is yet to be determined because Ella doesn’t know where her commonplace life will take her, and whether she will have the kind of courage to take dangerous steps on hot coals.
“Sweetheart, I know you like your life to be a well-oiled machine, but let your old Dad give you some advice. Sometimes it’s good to go off course. You heard that old saying, go out on a limb; that’s where the fruit is.”
Ella isn’t outlandish like her non-conformist musician father, and she isn’t gentle like her bohemian mother, and she doesn’t perceive promise in herself like she does in her baby brother Beau. Ella isn’t sure how she was born into her family let alone how she fits into it. But sensible though Ella is, she certainly knows how to be wild, and would like nothing more than to exercise that wildness with Deacon Valentine , the new biker in town.
Deacon is a man shadowed in rumour and violent antics.
‘He was a mystery. An extremely attractive mystery.’
‘He crooks his finger I’ll just float in his direction, so strong will be the call of the beautiful biker.
Deacon is a novelty in the biker world, and one Ella has had the pleasure of meeting. He’s perilous, he’s penetrating, he's painfully intense and he’s painstakingly precarious – Ella knows that being with him would shoot her out of a cannon and as far away from ‘Boring-ville’ as possible and into the unfamiliarity of biker ethos. This tiger-eyed bad boy also seems to have a supernatural ability to save Ella whenever she finds herself in grievous hands.
‘As crazy as it might sound, that gaping hole of emptiness I’d always felt? The not knowing what about me was special or unique? Right not it felt like if I had someone like him I might have a chance of actually finding what made me happy.’
Deacon is a member of the Dominion Brotherhood – a new-to-town motorcycle crew that are staking ground and they’re here to stay. The Dominion Brotherhood have MC enemies, and now that they are in new territory, they have plenty more wishing to rival them for dominance, including the downright dirty debris of the biker world, the Jackals – some of which are Ella’s blood.
‘I’d been exposed to biker culture enough to know that MC’s were family that you chose for yourself and that there was fierce loyalty with a philosophy of living life to the fullest.’
Not sure about the extent of danger that she is subjecting herself to, Ella quite quickly finds herself in a relationship with theBeautiful Biker , not knowing much about him and his history but she knows it’s bad - gossip itself speaks as such. While Deacon has no qualms about going all in, Ella is more than cautious about the fast pace of their new relationship, and she isn’t ready to go all in. Surrounded by rumour, her own dubious scepticism, hearsay and spurious words Ella makes errors in judgement without really knowing the hurting man behind the rumour.
“I want wind and winding roads and to enjoy the ride…Haven’t had a lotta reason to laugh in the last few years and for the first time in a while I find myself wantin’ it. My girl’s gotta be there for the hard times In order to deserve the good…After you do time and live behind bars, after you lose someone to tragedy but find it in yourself to move on from that you decide what you want and you don’t want from life. I know what kinda woman I want. I know what kinda woman I don’t want. I live hard. Someone fucks me over, I fuck them back harder. No one, but no one fucks her over…I want a woman I trust, who trusts me and knows I will move goddamn mountains to keep her safe and give her everything she wants. If I can’t have that, all of that, I’m not doing it.”
Aside from their relationship troubles, the Doms and the Jackals are locked in an unending feud. The attacks against each other are becoming more gruesome and horrifically repugnant, and Deacon will do anything to keep Ella away from the worst of it because if she becomes a target he could lose her forever… and in the worst way possible, plunging into his own past of suffering and tragic loss. Deacon can’t go through something like that, not when his scars can be ripped open again and his enemies know just where it stings.
“But take my hand, kitten, and I’ll never steer you wrong.” He said it like a vow and his eyes twinkled.
‘I wanted to be worth it to him with a fierceness I didn’t know I was capable of.’
As far as storytelling goes, this spicy, dangerous tale was told well with a strong backbone that supported the story and the vivid characters. I did have issues with the pacing and content from time to time - some areas of the book could have used a fine tune and tighter editing to really bind the story together. Ella is kept in the dark about most things, and she (as a character) agrees that as little as she knows the better for her well being, but though that may be fine as a character choice, we are also left in the dark. We are privy only to Ella’s thoughts, Ella’s life and her relationships with each character, but we aren’t privy to the dark side of the biker culture (most of it occuring off-page), so in essence 'Detour' is missing a necessary component: details of biker politics and biker conduct as they take place.
“Kitten, you definitely rock my sandwich world,” he remarked.
“You rock my world in general,” I told him and that earned me another beautiful smile.’
For this reason, I think the story could have profited with another point of view, Deacon’s to be precise. Deacon’s point of view would have been warmly welcomed, not just because of the depth he adds as a significant character, but because we as an audience are left none the wiser about the biker proceedings that take place, which Deacon is a part of; so we are missing half of the story.
‘I was terrified that he wasn’t going to give me another chance. I was also paralysed with fear that if he did, my life would be scary, crazy out of my control.’
With dual narration the content would have been more varied, creating more breadth, promising the reader with the kind of content assured with the biker genre of romance. This isn’t to say that Ella’s POV was lacking in any way, it isn’t, her narration is lively, bubbly and honestly eager, but the plot felt like it had been chopped in half, offering us a safe measure of what was acceptable.
“…You keep telling me I’m moving too fast and even when you aren’t saying, it I see it in your eyes but Ella, why wait for something I want? Why deny that when life is so unpredictable?...”
I’m aware that misogynistic values often accompany biker romances, and though I wouldn’t peg the main male character as being misogynistic in the slightest, there are derogatory references made about women in the close-knit circles of biker dogma. Ella is not okay with this, and isn’t the type of female lead that will ever be accepting of such treatment, but this story is concentrated on her coming out of her comfort zone and accepting that some improper mores still exist even though she will never be one to humour them. All in all some categories of women are seen in a certain way, but notions such as cheating are explored from both men and women.
I think MC romances will always come with some kind of misogyny, and it's difficult to find books that don't propel this kind of discrimination, but If you are sensitive to such issues then perhaps give this one a miss ;)
'Why were so many women so competitive? The world would be a better place if everyone was more down-to-earth and less worried about being the prettiest or the one with the best clothes…’
Side characters don’t always have such a prominent role in stories, nor are they sometimes given much attention, but in 'Detour' they are all special in their own right; they are engaging and interesting and bring almost as much to the plot as the Both Ella and Deacon do. The side characters actually contribute to a large chunk of the story, and I wanted to get to know as many of them as I could. I love what the author did with Chris (Ella’s cousin) for example – I went from not liking him to praising him to the universe and back.
“You’re not a douchebag,” I informed him.
He let out a big barking laugh, “That might’ve been the nicest thing you ever said to me, Lezzy-belle.”
‘Detour’ had me from the first page, and I knew from Ella’s voice alone that I was going to like reading her, and therefore like her as a lead. I then met Deacon, and I knew I was going to like him, and he now proudly holds a spot in my book boyfriends library. This story is about breaking free from safety, toeing the rope of risk when it’s for someone else more than it is about your comfort. It’s about Ella crossing that line knowing that Deacon will break her fall, and walk with her in this new world as she experiences.
“You’re in this with me? You’re in this there are no limits to what I do for you. A million chances if your heart is in the right place. You fuck up, I forgive you a million times if I need to…I’ll give you all the truth you want. I will protect you. It’ll be unconditional as long as you’re only mine and have a mind to making me happy and not trying to make me be someone I’m not. I will fall deep for you and give you everything I can give you; I know I will. I’ve already started falling, Kitten.”
Deacon is an intense breath of complicated but fresh air and though not as eccentric as her family Ella is just as colourful. I love Deacon’s ability to process what has happened to him and still be as strong as he is. They both complement each other and light up each other’s lives in a way that made me want to keep reading. I shed a few tears and felt quite a lot while reading this!
'I thought before that he was the most beautiful man I’d laid eyes on and at that instant I decided I’d known nothing of the beauty he could show me until he’d shown me that smile.’
Ella is a relatable character – (drunk Ella was also amazing) - I loved her dynamic with her family, I loved her nature as a person and her relationship with her lovely younger brother Beau. Beau was cheeky and charming, and children always seem to heighten a story too, offering sunlight and mollification, and Beau definitely did this!
“I think so, too. Lella’s boyfriends need to bring me stuff when they visit. You butter me up and I talk you up to her. That’s how it works.”
“Is it?” Deacon looked like he was fighting a grin. “Beau!” I exclaimed, shocked. Beau looked at me and gave me a ‘Leave this to me’ look'
‘Detour’ by DD Prince did have its problem areas much like many books do, but the pros were stimulating enough to dwarf the negatives. I can tell that DD Prince put a lot into this book, I felt passion and force as I read through it, and it’s a story that offers it’s characters a special kind of glow. Traversing the unsavoury rudiments of biker culture and darker themes in general, this story focuses on the rising tension between MC’s and the promised retribution from both sides, which makes for a tension-filled story with lots of drama, both personal and political. But above that it’s about a 23-year-old girl who is surrounded by people who cross the lines of principle and into autonomous jeopardy. About Ella who took a ‘detour’ from mediocre fear and a standard life when she hopped on the back of her tiger’s motorcycle and decided that a detour – though daunting - was the best decision she’d ever made.
“…I will never ever make you regret taking that road away from predictable with me.”
I gave this book 3.8 stars -
Trigger Warning: Violence, rape, gang rape, attempted rape, blackmail, swearing, kinky sex, themes of toxic relationships, alcoholism, paedophilia, and drug dealing. There are also threats of abuse and conversations about grievous harm and sexual assault in the past tense. Some of the biker’s in the MC believe in infidelity so there is cheating too. In this story there is also the definite presence of unconventional family values, some of which are toxic.
This book also refers to the dark side of porn, when the fantasy of porn crosses into reality, and makes you think about what you are watching as well as the consequences of gang rape culture in the porn business. There are some heavy topics integrated in this book so I wouldn’t read it if the triggers are difficult subjects for you. Even I found some instances of assault a bit difficult to stomach.
My Rating System:
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★ - 1 star: I did not like the book ★★ - 2 stars: The book was okay ★★★ - 3 stars: It was a good, solid read ★★★★ - 4 stars: A great book ★★★★★ - 5: A phenomenal read
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Other books by D.D. Prince
● 'Alphahole' by D.D. Prince
● 'Hot Alpha Alien Husbands' - D.D. Prince writes as Scarlett Starkleigh _____________________________________________________________________ CategoriesAll Leave a comment and let's talk about 'Detour'
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