This is well-edited, but else reads like straight out of a lad magazine, the Hustler or the Playboy. Everything is male-1.5* rounded down for content.
This is well-edited, but else reads like straight out of a lad magazine, the Hustler or the Playboy. Everything is male-centric, everything and everyone just serves the "lads" in evidence. Women are there to be played with, quite against their will or even knowledge, to be fucked and fucked with, moved about between men as they see fit.
And this unfortunately not as in a fantasy setting which would allow female readers to dissociate and enjoy this, nope. This setting and presentation here is exactly how current patriarchal laddish culture and male privilege come across and work in reality.
It's a male's wet dream of which boxes he wants to stash women in and what to do with them, and not in a sexy way. A lot like the perfect Blonde joke. In fact, that's how the women come across. I'm sure there are people out there who'll love reading this, but there's absolutely no reason why I should like it. This had my skin crawling in a not so good way.
A note to the US readers:
While it is quite acceptable for a sixth-form girl to have an adult lover in the UK in reality (because the UK has a general AoC of 16), this still means that the girls written about in this erotica story are between 16 and 19 years of age. Meaning they could be "minors" and they could be "barely legal", both of which--in conjunction with erotica, non-con and porn--are quite illegal with most publishers and retailers, or simply to own depending on where you live.
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Merged review:
1.5* rounded down for content.
This is well-edited, but else reads like straight out of a lad magazine, the Hustler or the Playboy. Everything is male-centric, everything and everyone just serves the "lads" in evidence. Women are there to be played with, quite against their will or even knowledge, to be fucked and fucked with, moved about between men as they see fit.
And this unfortunately not as in a fantasy setting which would allow female readers to dissociate and enjoy this, nope. This setting and presentation here is exactly how current patriarchal laddish culture and male privilege come across and work in reality.
It's a male's wet dream of which boxes he wants to stash women in and what to do with them, and not in a sexy way. A lot like the perfect Blonde joke. In fact, that's how the women come across. I'm sure there are people out there who'll love reading this, but there's absolutely no reason why I should like it. This had my skin crawling in a not so good way.
A note to the US readers:
While it is quite acceptable for a sixth-form girl to have an adult lover in the UK in reality (because the UK has a general AoC of 16), this still means that the girls written about in this erotica story are between 16 and 19 years of age. Meaning they could be "minors" and they could be "barely legal", both of which--in conjunction with erotica, non-con and porn--are quite illegal with most publishers and retailers, or simply to own depending on where you live.
When the narrative drops utterly boring and stereotypical descriptive bits on the first few pages...
looks like a model--her greTrite. Boring. Facile.
When the narrative drops utterly boring and stereotypical descriptive bits on the first few pages...
looks like a model--her green eyes--her full lips--sexy suits--long hair--long nails--cleavage--sculpted jaw line--sexy blue eyes--broad shoulders--sculpted abs--bulging muscles--puckered nipples--moist panties--pulled in lower lips
...and the two protagonists practically fall into each other nipples and cock erect, slotting together at the drop of a hat, I can't bring myself to finish such a trite mess.
Erotic? Nope. Not even interesting.
Merged review:
Trite. Boring. Facile.
When the narrative drops utterly boring and stereotypical descriptive bits on the first few pages...
looks like a model--her green eyes--her full lips--sexy suits--long hair--long nails--cleavage--sculpted jaw line--sexy blue eyes--broad shoulders--sculpted abs--bulging muscles--puckered nipples--moist panties--pulled in lower lips
...and the two protagonists practically fall into each other nipples and cock erect, slotting together at the drop of a hat, I can't bring myself to finish such a trite mess.
I'm very sorry, but if you expect me to delve into the personality of someone mentally ill, please at least make their inner dialogueThank God for KU!
I'm very sorry, but if you expect me to delve into the personality of someone mentally ill, please at least make their inner dialogue and world interesting. I mean, as interesting as "Dexter", or maybe "His".
Reading about Loretta was as tedious as watching paint dry.
I held out until 15%, then couldn't keep going. One reason for that, apart from the lacklustre characters, was the fact that unfortunately the prose came across as if written by AI, a bad translation, or possibly someone to whom English is a second language....more
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.
I wanted to like this, wanted to read it, but after it suffered right from the beginning onwards from the same disease so many romances have, this wasI wanted to like this, wanted to read it, but after it suffered right from the beginning onwards from the same disease so many romances have, this was a short foray into cozy mysteries.
I am talking about the heroine totally lacking any self-respect and self-assuredness. The typical klutzy heroine, who stumbles through her life. Who is envious of other women who have a better grip on their lives. Yada, yada. There's little which can turn me off faster, because this typically wins the coconut of obnoxious writing.
Not just that, the author reduces a fabulous island setting to the coffee-shop and more talk about technical aspects of coffee and coffee-making than I cared to read about. And I love coffee. No rec for this one.
I'm afraid I can't anymore with books leaving me with the feeling they are m/m written exclusively for the delectation of het women, and kink w[image]
I'm afraid I can't anymore with books leaving me with the feeling they are m/m written exclusively for the delectation of het women, and kink written by non-kinksters for the sake of turning on non-kinksters. The bell of falsehoods this rings is a tad too large for my taste. I don't even get majorly exasperated anymore, I'm simply terribly bored....more
This is my second attempt at reading the currently trending genre of "reverse harem", which apparently now gets perforce blended into high scho [image]
This is my second attempt at reading the currently trending genre of "reverse harem", which apparently now gets perforce blended into high school/boarding school settings and "bully" romance. So I was intrigued enough to try reading a few books.
Good grief. I shouldn't have bothered.
Apart from the fact, that the writing is extremely poor, and apart from the fact, that this author seems to have a major problem writing ethnicities without coming across as having prejudices, and apart from the fact, that there's no real story or plot, I came away with one major question:
Why do so many women find ANY of this even remotely sexy or attractive?
I can't wrap my brain around this.
Now, the least of what I expected was that the unsympathetic guys would get their comeuppance. Nope. We are supposed to root for them. Actually we are supposed to find boys sexy who tell us, that they are manwhores and fuck just about any pussy, whether tight or loose.
Hello author? I mean, apart from the fact there are no "tight" vs "loose" pussies unless someone suffers from one or the other disease, why the hell should anyone find such an arsehole sexy? Why all that misogyny? As a woman you get to meet a variety of such idiots IRL, why would anyone put them on a pedestal in romance novels?
What is this preoccupation with skeevy idiots who harm and bully others about?
Whatever.
Someone rec me a couple of romances which have adorable guys I can dream of, rather than men that I want to drown in vats of sulphuric acid....more
I don't even understand why she thinks what she thinks. Money isn't a gendered thing and over millennia it were women who firmly held the purse stringI don't even understand why she thinks what she thinks. Money isn't a gendered thing and over millennia it were women who firmly held the purse strings....more
Warnings in frontmatter: graphic torture, forced incest, rape
This is allegedly the apex of everything "dark romance/erotica". So horrib1.5* rounded up
Warnings in frontmatter: graphic torture, forced incest, rape
This is allegedly the apex of everything "dark romance/erotica". So horrible, that the daring reader will piss and puke from shock while reading the first chapter.
Welp.
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(view spoiler)[Let me get this immediately out of the way. Anyone who watched Dexter or the Hannibal movies without problems, will find this book mildly amusing. Not titillating. Amusing. It's silly, and the entire torture stuff is so over the top and so clinically described, that there was zero eroticised pain or torture in it.
In consequence I didn't consider it dark. Not even dark grey. Of course, it then also didn't scratch the itch I read dark erotica for. Like the vast, vast majority of so-called "dark erotica", which commonly are just very inept splatter fests (at best) or inept physiology (at worst). Truly dark erotic stories I still can count off my own two hands. That's how rare they are.
Back to the book. It was a fast read, and the gimmick was genuinely amusing, even though it sort of was obvious 2 chapters in. It also was typically North American in background (European tales of the devil tend to be far darker), kind of a reverse dark Cinderfella story. I rounded up because I actually finished this (as opposed to the majority of dark erotica/romance I don't finish, because they bore me).
A dark erotic story this is not, though. (hide spoiler)]
And as an added warning: of course this also is no BDSM....more
I don't usually do US-type superheroes. I'm the original Moebius, Bilal and Caza-girl and can't abide facile superhero/supervillain-stories. But. But I don't usually do US-type superheroes. I'm the original Moebius, Bilal and Caza-girl and can't abide facile superhero/supervillain-stories. But. But everyone was so gushy about this book, that I gave it a try. Thank God I could return...
Colour me astonished when I realised that I loathed this thing for totally different reasons. This is so offensively woke and in the least acceptable to me manner, this tries so effingly hard to cater to my LGBT-self, second-guesses my preferences and convictions in such outrageously offensive mannerisms, that it soured on me very quickly.
Or in other words:
This was written so as to suck donkeyballs off a specific demographic that it was painful to watch. This tries so utterly hard to sidle up to a certain audience, that it felt greasy and foul. Like someone staring at you with a salesman smile, but there's rotten meat between the teeth.
One thing is sure, this author knows how to engender a completely useless hype, and even prices that stupid thing so high, sh
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What did I think?
One thing is sure, this author knows how to engender a completely useless hype, and even prices that stupid thing so high, she probably earns herself a packet with it. Exploiting fellow authors the while, of course. And insofar - well done indeed! (I hope people grasp that this was a cynical statement?)
That said, I couldn't get anything out of this. Firstly, it was so firmly US-centric that it doesn't make much sense to anyone coming from or preferring a different culture. With that I do not at all mean the interracial aspects of her writing and suggestions, I mean the fact that she uses Disney and Grey's Anatomy (of all things!) to make her points on tropes and clichés she has cheekily renamed "Ultimate Fantasies" as a means to hard-sell her booklet.
Secondly, the author is completely unaware of the actual European background (and folktale truths) behind the Disney versions of "The Beauty and the Beast" or "Cinderella" and the likes. She also seems to think that people in general like US movies and TV, and what the US culture stands for these days. Which means she reaches conclusions which - for a large part of the world - aren't exactly correct.
Lastly - the core of this book tries to sell me tropes such as "Bully Romance", alphaholes, abductions, toxic masculinity, Edward Cullen (and the entire Twilight stuff) as well as the trash of FSoG as the revelation on making money and writing fabulous books. I mean, bloody hell! These are the tropes I do my damndest best to AVOID!
Yes, I was aware of the fact that such pulpy trash still sells. No, that doesn't mean even more authors should write it. It means even less that you end up with good fiction of ANY kind if you seek out very tired, misogynist bullshit and incorporate it into whatever project is on your mind.
And for roughly 70% of this allegedly so enlightening book I was grumbling "will-ya come to the point already?", because that was how much hot air was pumped into it to fluff it up to sell-worthy proportions. As a side note - I gained weight simply by the repetition of the word "butter".
So no, I can't recommend this. There's certainly not anything in this which would tell you anything new or noteworthy....more
Steelwhisper
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