My letter “X” selection for this year’s A To Z Challenge was X’s AND O’s by Elle Thorpe. This is book one of a five chili pepper “why choose” spicy romance. The story is told in alternating points of view from Violet, our main character, and her three love interests, X, Whip, and Levi (aka “Reaper.”)

We open with Violet showing up for her housekeeping job for a new client, only to end up the victim of a horrific serial killer, and moments away from being assaulted and carved up like a Christmas ham. Lucky for her a group of men suddenly show up and murder the guy. They let her go but not before one of the killers – the hot one, of course – declares his undying love for her. Turns out his name is X, he’s an adorable puppy dog of a guy and part of a gang of killers who are in a sort of support group. When the urge to kill strikes, they take out someone on their list of murderers, torturers, pedophiles, and serial rapists who have somehow evaded the law.

Meanwhile, Violet has a prison pen pal that she’s fallen in love with (and he with her). Levi is finally released and to Violet’s misery, turns and walks away upon their first meeting. Violet assumes this is because she is a very overweight girl, so of course, he must be disgusted. What really happened was Levi, who had no job and no prospects, didn’t feel worthy of her love until he had a life for her to share. He returns to his old biker gang, who is under new management. He also has connections to some of the members in the murder club.

Violet’s embarrassment and fury at Levi’s treatment treatment leads her to make a phone call to a man of mystery who is known for helping those who need some coaching in the bedroom. She offers to pay him to deflower her, and thus, Whip – who is also a member of the murder club – enters the picture. From there on we see various combinations of Violet and all three of the guys, individually and en masse. There’s a plot arc that carries through three books about a killer who’s targeting Violet to get at the murder club, who are also targets.

I’m giving this one three and a half stars. The characters are all a lot of fun (especially Violet’s roommate, Toby, who is a DOLL). The men all have distinct personalities and you can easily see why she’s falling for each and having trouble picking one. The spicy scenes are nuclear hot, there’s a great mix of humor, emotion, mystery, and thrills. But I had to take some points off for Violet. Yeah, she’s a big girl, but literally every time someone touched her, flirted with her, or so much as looked at her and smiled she’d spend several sentences talking about how grossly fat she was and describing in great detail her lumps, folds, creases and cellulite. I like when a BBW main character owns it but this is just plain wallowing and it really detracts from the story. Add onto that – she ends up in horrible jeopardy a few times at the hands of the mystery killer and her way of coping with the relief of escaping him is to break into tears and then have as much sex as possible to take her mind off it. It’s a convenient plot device that didn’t work for me. I did go on to read the rest of the series, though!