This was trying to retcon the Regency era, and not in any way more palatable than A Lady Awakened.
Once again I had very basic problems with digestingThis was trying to retcon the Regency era, and not in any way more palatable than A Lady Awakened.
Once again I had very basic problems with digesting the prose. Apparently I am not the target audience, I do like sparse, but I want elegant instead of dry.
The other problem is how the author tried to milk Regency stereotypes to come up with a halfway "modern" narrative, with characters she apparently believes are more comprehensible to modern readers and sensitivities. Unfortunately that's not at all what I read HR for. I want the mores and habits of former times, and I need an author to be playing intelligently with what is possible.
There were women of the Regency era who rode sidesaddle, raced as jockeys in thoroughbred races, travelled to the far and near east, and became queens of their own empires. Others crucially supported their mates and husbands, who were fighting the good causes. Others yet travelled to war areas and worked as nurses under very atrocious conditions for women.
It is really not as if there weren't hundreds if not thousands of lifestories of women of these eras which would make worthwhile novelisations! Yet Grant again resorts to inflicting modern mores and morals on the reader, which--quite frankly--means that this was my last foray into her books.
Twice bitten...
Merged review:
This was trying to retcon the Regency era, and not in any way more palatable than A Lady Awakened.
Once again I had very basic problems with digesting the prose. Apparently I am not the target audience, I do like sparse, but I want elegant instead of dry.
The other problem is how the author tried to milk Regency stereotypes to come up with a halfway "modern" narrative, with characters she apparently believes are more comprehensible to modern readers and sensitivities. Unfortunately that's not at all what I read HR for. I want the mores and habits of former times, and I need an author to be playing intelligently with what is possible.
There were women of the Regency era who rode sidesaddle, raced as jockeys in thoroughbred races, travelled to the far and near east, and became queens of their own empires. Others crucially supported their mates and husbands, who were fighting the good causes. Others yet travelled to war areas and worked as nurses under very atrocious conditions for women.
It is really not as if there weren't hundreds if not thousands of lifestories of women of these eras which would make worthwhile novelisations! Yet Grant again resorts to inflicting modern mores and morals on the reader, which--quite frankly--means that this was my last foray into her books.
My second attempt at reading an Addison Cain novel...
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Oookay, this was just as bad as the first one I tried. Horrid, stream of consciousness-sty
My second attempt at reading an Addison Cain novel...
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Oookay, this was just as bad as the first one I tried. Horrid, stream of consciousness-style prose without descriptions, settings, any sort of world-building, nothing. Just a haphazard recounting of action sequences with "explained" behaviour. Nothing is shown, no emotions anywhere, no lust, pain, fear, nothing. About as interesting as listening to the weather report of two weeks ago. Well, not even that, as that would be more structured.
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Yep. THAT is how erotic this BS was. I have to say, that I'm kinky enough to love knotting. But fuck me sideways, it would really be helpful, Ms Cain, if you knew a few facts about knotting in animals in the first place. Seriously.
I read until 24% and skimmed to roughly 70% when I gave up after being bored to distraction. The horrible meh prose never changed, by now I think I have to acknowledge that this is Ms Cain's writing style. What I do not understand are all these readers swooning over how "filthy" and "dark" this is. It didn't even tickle me, and I don't think I'm the harshest of all sadists out there.
I think I'll give it a while before I try strike #3. If ever....more
Yes, indeed, I *saw* the word "escort" in the title.
To my defense, I keep reading escort books in the hope of - one day - finding one which ac
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Yes, indeed, I *saw* the word "escort" in the title.
To my defense, I keep reading escort books in the hope of - one day - finding one which acknowledges what it means to be a prostitute, what it entails, what it does to people and how it changes and harms them. Because it - invariably - does so, even those who protest. It's par for the course, just as nearly all army veterans suffered the consequences of having to kill people. This is very basic psychology. There are things which, when done, will alter the psychology, the mind and heart of someone. Always.
Yes, even if the escorts are male and gay or bisexual. The number of prostitutes who manage to survive this occupation and are not in some way negatively impacted by it is so minuscule, that the medical profession calls it neglectable.
So of course, strike one against this book was that the author didn't even try to build either a layered character or a character impacted by what he does in typical manner (splintered personality, drug or alcohol abuse, problems with one's self image, problems relating to others etc. pp.). Instead we get the completely gung-ho sex-crazed idiot straight out of gay porn/porn to whom sex of any kind is just peachy, even if he has to do it for money. Rut as rut can. The author forgets that this sort of thing is not necessarily either sex-positive, or erotic.
Strike two is the representation of bisexuality. I'm so absolutely TIRED of how bi/pan-sexual people are represented in both erotica and erotic romances. Being bi/pan does not mean one has to behave like a rabid animal in heat, fucking everything which can't manage to jump up a tree fast enough. It also doesn't mean, someone automatically has the ethics of a porn actor. Yet here again we get a book which works on that premise, and sorry, but I've really had enough.
Strike three was the author's language and manner of describing sex and kink. This potentially might work for a gay/bi MALE audience, though Christopher Pierce e.g. is as over the top and far more funny and readable than Edwards, but it sure as hell didn't work for me. The sex was emotionless, loveless, unerotic and mostly sordid (and it takes a lot to make me say sth like this!), most of the described kink was downright ugly and not in any understanding or friendly way. Which to me is the worst kind of kink shaming ever. A lot of the language is not what I find even vaguely erotic either, and the descriptions of female anatomy are curiously off...putting. The latter may be a cultural phenomenon, because I dislike most sexual texts written by Americans for some reason. In this case though, the distaste was particularly marked.
I didn't stay for the rest of the story, I gave up halfway through. It was life time I spent in a manner disgusting me, time I can't get back, so there.
I often rate and wait, because it tends to show me which authors have "
Review to follow when I have shed the treacle.
----- Lots of spoilers ahead! -----
I often rate and wait, because it tends to show me which authors have "street teams" or "fan girls". Hibbert appears to have one or both, as they descended on this book like worker bees doing their best to repair the "harm" done by an honest (aka not premeditated positive) rating or review. As this rarely is noticed by time-pressed readers who check ratings before buying, it needs to be clearly stated. If within 24 hours of a negative review/rating twelve (!) 4 and 5 star ratings "happen", and only one single other normal looking review, on a book which at this time has only 83 ratings all put together, then I tend to believe appearances. It's a common enough pattern with authors placing a lot of import on marketing and business practice. Others name this pattern for what it is: shilling. Look at it and form your own verdict, but be aware of it.
With that we come to the story itself.
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Okay, this book came with solid recommendations as a sex-positive, interracial romance from two people whose verdicts I tend to value highly, which is why I read it. Now, after the deed, I wonder whether we actually read the same book - or what else may have happened.
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Let's start with saying that by now, after the umpteenth romance featuring either clinical depression, or PTSD due rape, or shell-shock or some other form of mental illness of that type, I am absolutely tired of reading of it as the cause for romantic complications or problems. For one thing, but very rarely are these illnesses depicted realistically, for another, I loathe when magic genitals then cure them, and lastly, the way they usually get written is utterly boring. This book was no different in this aspect than any other abusing mental illness to facilitate tropes.
What happened to people just falling in love? Without issues?
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Next, I remember having a quite heated discussion with one of the people recommending this WIP about the use of words like "caramel", "chocolate" or "olive" for skin tone. As a writer, though Caucasian myself, I argued that of course such comparisons invoke a taste and along with that an emotion and that this is something I want to do, especially in an erotic context. Now call me bowled over when I now find a PoC writer using these expressions several times and said reviewer doesn't complain. Either it is okay for a PoC writer to do so, and not for a Caucasian writer, which would be utter hypocrisy, or I made a point? Heh. I don't know which, but I am amused. I still do not mind the use of edible comparisons for skin tone.
Unfortunately that was about the last moment I was amused with this book. Next I learned that not just the FMC is suffering from PTSD and is clinically depressed to boot, the MMC is also clinically depressed. A fine twosome! Good grief, how dreary.
From there on Eros entered the picture and things went sharply downhill. I don't know why people think this book and this style of writing is in any way, shape or form erotic...
Let me state that something which is skeevy when you apply it to a penis, is exactly as skeevy when you do it with a clitoris. I'm an equal opportunities girl, meaning that what is good for the gander is always also good for the goose!
At that point, her brain powered down completely to accommodate for all the extra blood her other body parts were demanding. And by ‘other body parts’ she meant her clit, which might as well be a bloody landmine. One touch and she’d explode.
I already find this offensive when written about a guy, because while erections take place unvoluntarily, they - as a rule - do not mean your brain is out of the equation. The very idea reduces men - when applied to penes - to brutes, and it isn't in the slightest more of a compliment when applied to women. On the contrary! It reduces people to their genitals and objectifies them, and unfortunately this isn't the last time this book does just that.
The heroine, Aria, ogles the hero (Nic), drools over him, objectifies him at every turn, in short she behaves towards him exactly the way that feminists have been fighting against men behaving towards women. I say it again, just because it is a woman doing this to a man instead of the other way around, doesn't mean it is acceptable, amusing or sex-positive behaviour. On the contrary, this is as close to rape culture as a twin. Or as fellow writer Eric Plume put it:
"In all seriousness though, I do wish more writers would realize that "sex positive" does not equate out to "would fuck anything that will hold still long enough". For a variety of reasons that is not sex positivity, that's just letting society's conventions about sex define one's choices, just in a different way."
He nails one of my main problems with the entire book. It reads like straight, skeevy gender-inversion: everything which especially feminist women loathe in patriarchal men is what the heroine of this book does to the male hero and is how she herself behaves. The farther I read the more I came to loathe Aria, whose behaviour was getting more unacceptable by the chapter.
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This wasn't helped by the fact that practically all of the sex, including the sex toy scenes, read like porn I watched in the past. There was no passion, no emotion and above all no love or falling in love involved, it all was pure lust. As such - so sorry - it leaves me disinterested. Two rutting animals? And rutting to scripts I know from porn movies? I didn't experience even a flicker of emotion digging through an endless amount of coarse, vulgar, mechanic sex scenes.
And, oh, the assumptions of the author: that women as a rule are excited by or love potty-mouthed MCs for instance. I sure as hell don't enjoy vulgar language, it is not a taboo, it is just the sign of lacking education. By the way, the heroine is written as actually being proud of her lack of education. That was a new one for me! My respect for Aria was non-existant at that point, especially as the author did her very best to paint Nic also being an idiot with an IQ of less than room temperature. Neither of them subverted this by behaving intelligently later, either.
Or the assumption that women in general like being eaten out, always come like a train from being eaten out, or love deep throating men. Hello? Roughly half of all women prefer vaginal orgasms to clitoral ones, at least a third dislike oral sex and the absolute majority of women do not consider BJs per se something which turns them on. Most try their damndest to avoid having to give them and no woman has a clit in her throat either. Now think hard how erotic sex scenes are which mostly consist of such stuff...
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What stayed with me in the end was the fact that this book had lots and lots of sex directly written down from porn flicks, and a couple which never felt like falling in love. They both were just horny and acted upon their lust without the slightest attempt at sophistication, emotion or aestheticism. It was as erotic as watching two snails fornicate.
So where is the bloody romance?
Ha!
Yes, for good measure Hibbert threw in a few typical romance tropes after roughly 80% of the book. E.g. the Big Misunderstanding, which was completely contrived (I mean, how stupid is Aria? She asked for that job!). Next came something which I really hate: Aria and Jen decide that Nic will have to grovel. What for? For Aria's utter stupidity? For the fact that she prostituted* herself? And last but not least the HEA of a marriage with children lasting already 25 years in a soppy epilogue so sweet it gave me caries. None of this convinced me Aria and Nic fell in love in the course of the book.
* I wished authors would realise that every time their characters exchange sexual behaviour against money or favours these characters prostitute themselves and turn the other into a punter or a pimp. For more than 300,000 £? That's prostitution all right, don't kid yourself! Which adds a particular level of ickiness to this book, as no one even seems to reflect on that fact. And prostitution, so sorry, is for this reader the opposite of sex-positivity.
Then, I personally do not like tattoos. But to each their own. However, describing the hero getting "a stick-and-poke" without any input and under decidedly negative circumstances (the alcohol level in his blood alone should have meant abstaining) just convinces me he is too stupid for his own good. Which makes him less of a prize, except for his money. Which is very materialistic, right?
Lastly, the author claims that her story contains subverted biphobia. I disagree.
Yes, she has bisexual characters. Yes, one character gets aggressed and talked about for sleeping with both men and women. Yes, that snitch gets a kick in the shin. But the author shouldn't think she acquired any laurels by that, because at the same time she portrayed bisexual people as so randy for anything which moves as to fuck everybody without cause or discern - just because.
As if being bisexual is some mental illness which turns people into sexaddicts incapable of keeping their vaginas and penes in their trousers for a few moments a day. In short, she portrays bisexual people as the sleazos and debauched lechers they already are in the opinion of heteronormative people anyway.
So a huge thank you for absolutely nothing!...more
1.5* rounded down. I would have liked to give this 2 stars, but - quite simply - this wasn't an okay read.
Firstly, regardless of how you package it, f1.5* rounded down. I would have liked to give this 2 stars, but - quite simply - this wasn't an okay read.
Firstly, regardless of how you package it, fucking against money is prostitution. I'd expect at the very least to have that topic raised and dealt with in a story where a woman sells herself.
Then, this was all based on the sex. Exclusively. These two men fucked women together because it turned them on, and Jules (how skeevy is it for the author to have the same name as the MC?!) or rather Julianne wants to be fucked by both, because the sex is allegedly hot. Or so she says.
Unfortunately I didn't find the sex hot at all. For one thing the scenes were extremely samey, without any emotion, and very, very repetitive. After the third or fourth I started skipping. They also were very "slot A into tab B and tab C into slot D", very mechanical.
Aaaaaaaaaaaand, for all the allegedly physically correct fucking in this book, you got very little - or rather NONE AT ALL - sex described as it would play out between a real triangle. It is pretty clear that the author watched porn as the sole source of research and information. But porn actors fucking despite the pain and without the slightest consideration for the others in the fray are not at all how real people act and behave, or feel. None of the typical physiological reactions to having two penes inside the same woman at the same time were described, not for the men, not for the woman.
Also, not once did the author show the inevitable aftermath of the amount and violence of the fucking she describes. Not even a bit, we don't even see mentioned how Jules walks a bit straddle-legged or has some discomfort sitting down or taking a leak the day after.
As a love story towards a HEA this was also ridiculous. The most cogent and necessary discussions a triangle would engage in are lacking, none of the real dynamics of living poly are touched, all is hung up on instalust instead of actual love.
... even the slightest bit erotic. No, not even darkly erotic. ... any sort of BDSM I would recognise. ... even the tiniest bit intelligen This wasn't...
... even the slightest bit erotic. No, not even darkly erotic. ... any sort of BDSM I would recognise. ... even the tiniest bit intelligent or intriguing. ... well-written in any shape, way or form. ... interesting as a story. And the characters sucked.
This was...
... totally superfluous. ... US-centric in a bad way. ... so boring I started to skimread. ... an exercise in futility like so many lately written dark erotica. ... a typical cliffhanger geared to rake in the dough from readers too stupid to notice the spiel....more
This book contains the practically exact plot of "Pretty Woman", including all its characters, down to a friend of the hero who givLots of spoilers!!!
This book contains the practically exact plot of "Pretty Woman", including all its characters, down to a friend of the hero who gives Pretty Woman's Philipp Stuckey, and a fellow escort of the heroine who is the Kit De Luca-lookalike. Only in this book "Stuckey/Cole" gets married to "Kit De Luca/Jenny" after turning on "Vivian/Audrey". Of course "Edward/James" and "Vivian/Audrey" also marry.
Spliced into this is a double rendition of the vicious (murderous) stepmother from the original Cinderella-story Pretty Woman was based on. Of course we get the golden-hearted whore trope, rich people are all mean, grasping and emotionally stunted, and the whole fucking mess ends with a double marriage and oodles of children.
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I'll not even start on how terminally squicky the author's verbiage and mindset around escorting was, because the story per se is just utterly stupid and childish....more
Sex against money is prostitution, however much you try to rename it. Katie is a prostitute, her sugar daddies are her johns.
So, ifGood grief!
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Sex against money is prostitution, however much you try to rename it. Katie is a prostitute, her sugar daddies are her johns.
So, if I take it from there, this is the absolutely inane story of the daughter of a billionaire, who'd rather prostitute herself than ask her quite acceptable father to help her set up in business, which shows you just how intelligent and adult she is. She gets into catfights with her bratty halfsister, fucks two men who are trying out porn bullshit on her, nearly splitting her vagina in the process, wants ponies and a stable like a pre-schooler, and ends up (view spoiler)[having their baby just to cure one of her lovers' attachment problems (hide spoiler)] in one of the most idiotic HEAs I have read in a long while. Oh, and a horse whisperer also gets rolled into this ridiculous mess.
No, none of the sex was hot. Mainly because it was practically re-told, extreme porn off redtube with two guys and one woman, right up to the wild slapping of dicks on thighs, mounds and faces (something I haven't seen or experienced outside porn, ever) and two dicks to an overstretched cunt. That's not exciting as a video, already, it's not exciting and erotic as a narrated version either. And if I see the porn flick roll before my eyes while reading, then I know exactly where the author got her "inspiration".
I can only rate how much I enjoyed it, and I didn't. Neither as a satire, nor as erotica, nor as a literary smoke grenade. I feel sorry for everyone who paid money for this, but - fuck - there's sure a lot of words in these books.
What I however can't forgive the author is that, even though allegedly being in the lifestyle, she writes something which paints BDSM as even worse than the non-con and negativity in "Fifty Shades of Grey". She paints it being abuse, and this despite protests to the opposite. Considering that she states "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a story of consensual BDSM I'm not even that astonished....more
I can only rate how much I enjoyed it, and I didn't. Neither as a satire, nor as erotica, nor as a literary smoke grenade. I feel sorry for everyone who paid money for this, but - fuck - there's sure a lot of words in these books.
What I however can't forgive the author is that, even though allegedly being in the lifestyle, she writes something which paints BDSM as even worse than the non-con and negativity in "Fifty Shades of Grey". She paints it being abuse, and this despite protests to the opposite. Considering that she states "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a story of consensual BDSM I'm not even that astonished....more
Quite possibly this series was intended to be an intellectual and elaborate spoof of Fifty Shades of Grey. I wouldn't put it past the author, who undoQuite possibly this series was intended to be an intellectual and elaborate spoof of Fifty Shades of Grey. I wouldn't put it past the author, who undoubtedly is of the college-educated kind, to have aimed for that goal. Alas, even if that was the intent, there is always the huge difference between trying and doing. In this case the attempt fell right into the chasm between the two: which is on the nose, full facial.
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These three books are almost beat for beat a retelling of the FSoG series, except for it being written as if a postmodernistic literature prof had a baby with the Harvard phone book, raised by Foucault on a mix of Thorazine and milk toast. I seriously commend everyone who managed to read this bore without skimming or falling asleep.
Again, possibly that was the intent of this series. I can only rate how much I enjoyed it, and I didn't. Neither as a satire, nor as erotica, nor as a literary smoke grenade. I feel sorry for everyone who paid money for this, but - fuck - there's sure a lot of words in these books.
I might - very cautiously - mention that neither the Semperoper, nor Schloss Pillnitz, the Frauenkirche, the Residenzschloss, the Zwinger, nor finally the reconstructed or repaired baroque and rococo city centre are anything to be sneezed at:
[image] author: Geolina163 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
And beautiful, Bohemian Prague is also not a cesspool of abduction and sex trafficking. I've visited both cities, and the treatment they were given in these books is... highly curious. But this I might forgive an author, who either never travelled there, or has picked places as per old prejudices.
What I however can't forgive is that, even though allegedly being in the lifestyle, she writes something which paints BDSM as even worse than the non-con and negativity in "Fifty Shades of Grey". She paints it being abuse, and this despite protests to the opposite. Considering that she states "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a story of consensual BDSM I'm not even that astonished....more
Allegedly educated, allegedly modern woman turns into a prostitute at her first job interview. Lets herself be tied, handled and fucked by two men. JuAllegedly educated, allegedly modern woman turns into a prostitute at her first job interview. Lets herself be tied, handled and fucked by two men. Just like that. Ouch. Very bad attempt at an FSoG retell. Very. Ouch.
Steelwhisper
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