Beautiful Liar

Dark Desires, Book 1

By: Zara Cox

Narrated by: Holly Chandler, Fleet Cooper

Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Previously published as Porn Star.

People call me many things: CEO, billionaire, bastard. Q.

I love women. I love sex. I love money. I love hot, wild nights with no promise of a future, because a future is one thing I don't have. I'm 28 years old. I won't live to see 30, and I don't care. Or I didn't, until her.

Nobody plans for a life like this. Some of us just end up here.

They call me Lucky, though luck has never been on my side. Before I met Q, my life was a big twisted mess. Never enough money, never anyone to trust. No way out. With Q, the shame and fear disappear. Instead I feel pure pleasure, and that's something I've never had before. But if what I've just learned is true, we'd better enjoy every second together while we can, before our time runs out.

©2016 Zara Cox (P)2016 Hachette Audio

good!

I liked the book but sometimes the sex scenes were too descriptive. I felt the Quinn mother's story left unanswered questions.

I loved it

Very talented voice actors, the interplay between the characters and perspective was amazingly done. Brilliant!

Yes, DARK DESIRES

This is really a strange book. I loved it, but it is definitely DARK. It just kills me how long it takes Quin to tell Elise, or Q to tell Lucky. I kept waiting for a slip up. Keep up my interest in the book. It is a long book, but never a dull moment. The narrators did a great job with the characters. Such mystery and suspense in just one story. Loved it!!!!! I don't know why it took me so long to start it, 'cause it didn't take me any time to finish it.

Barely different from the rest

2.5 overall.
Another white, tormented, very wealthy male with a penchant for domination and pain with his sex. At least Elise (aka Ellie) was a bit different from the usual female linked to that type of male character in the overwhelming, all-too-common type of book. She wasn't a virgin, not pristine sexually and, thus, not so new to some aspects of Q's world. The book is not full of sex like many would expect and seems to be intentionally marketed as such. There's no sex until more than 5hrs in with the exception of female masturbation, fellatio between Q & someone else & talk of f-ing. There was plenty of talk, thinking about sex.
The continuous talk of Lucky's/Ellie's/Elise's secret was warranted, though the build-up, the foreshadowing may have been overdone. But, unlikely some stories' "secret," this one was worthy of concern/worry. But the foreshadowing got old after a while. So there was a bit of back and forth between the past and present but not too much. Still, some readers don't like that type of story where the truth is revealed through replaying the past while in the present. It seemed strange that Lucky didn't require Q's health record, since he required hers. It would be natural to ask for it in light of their agreed-upon relationship. It just didn't fit. I also didn't like that the story depended on a big coincidence that wasn't impossible—especially in a large city—but very unlikely. And it was never made clear how Elise found out (I can't say about what), and things wrapped a bit too easily. Also it got too sappy at the end. It was so antithetical to Q's character.
Overall, I was less interested in the relationship between Q/Quinn Blackwood and Lucky/Ellie/Elise and more interested in their personal lives and battles unrelated to and preceding their getting together. The narrators were ok, generally. But the male narrator did especially poor versions of female characters.