Review- Gold Fever by Missy Lyons

Gold Fever
by Missy Lyons
May, 2008
Western/ erotica
Category- 32K --$5
Ebook

Buy it Phaze, Fictionwise

Taming the Wild West, or taming wild men? Neither should be left to young virgins. After Barbara Lane inherits a gold mine, she travels to California, only to find she has an unwanted partner waiting for her. Vincent is the kind of bad boy she knew to stay away from. Instinctively, Barbara knows if she stays, she won't be innocent for long.

Vincent is no gentleman, and he has no intention of changing for any woman, let alone the spitfire who moves in and makes herself at home. He isn't about to give up his whoring, or his gambling, and definitely not his bed. If Barbara wants to stay, she will have to learn to share.

What will Barbara do to win his heart? Or perhaps the question should be, what wouldn't she do...

Barbara is proper woman from the East Coast in the late 1800’s when she finds out that her father, who abandoned her and her mom when she was a baby, has left her a gold mine in California. Totally miffed that she’s saddled with this thing she knows nothing about but not having any more resources to take care of herself, she heads out there to see if she can sell it. What she hasn’t been told is that her father had a partner who still lives on the property.

Having nowhere to go, she and Vincent, her father’s partner, decide to work and live together with an uneasy set up of them both sharing a bed and the house. Both, of course, have the hots for each other and they slowly start a sexual relationship. But Vince won’t marry her so she leaves Vince and goes to the local brothel to work as she has nowhere else to go or any other way to make money. One patron wants her all to himself and asks her to marry him, which she agrees to until Vince shows up.

Ok, there were just so many things about this book that pissed me off that I really don’t know where to begin.

First, I bought this book for the potential f/f in it. There were some minor scenes that were OK, but totally written as two women getting it on for the guy’s pleasure. The only thing that saved that part for me was that the women liked it themselves as well. So, OK.

That in itself would have been the only thing that bothered me if the m/f story in this was appealing, but the m/f part of this story irked me way more on so many levels. Even the HEA ending wasn’t enough for me to get over what an ass Vincent is and what a doormat Barbara is. Both were characters that I just didn’t like really.

The good: Yes, there was some. While overall I disliked this book, the first half of it was very nice. I did really like it and it did intrigue me enough to keep reading. Barbara has some spunk and acts indignant at Vince’s advances, which I liked. After all, she considers herself a lady and knows what’s proper and what’s not. She’s sexually innocent and although she finds herself very attracted to Vince she keeps it on a respectable level as she wants to stay a “lady.”

And Vince, although the typical bachelor type man who drinks and whores around, manages to keep his hands off of Barbara and respect her space and being. So I liked him in the beginning as well. The sexual tension was nicely done for that part of the book and I thought there’s going to be a snappy, fun dance between these two. But then about half way through this book descends into “you can’t be serious” territory and I started getting agitated.

The bad and ridiculous:

Barbara wants desperately to stay respectable. She’s affronted when a local shop owner takes her for a whore and tries to sell her clothing she would need to work at Annie’s brothel. This because she has huge, gorgeous breasts. We the reader know that because her huge, large, humongous, perfect breasts are mentioned over and over throughout the book. But I digress… the breast thing will come up again when I talk about Vince.

Although Barbara wants to stay a lady and worries often about her reputation living together with a man, she decides one day that she wants to finally know what sex is and gives into Vince.

Vince, who is a breast man, stating over and over how the first thing he notices about a woman is her breasts and talks about other women's breast often comparing sizes, can’t wait to get his hands on hers. Although she’s tentative as she has no experience, he can feel that she’s about to give and he convinces her to go for it by telling her there are ways to have sex and stay a virgin. And he’s so altruistic in his motives.

He didn't want another man teaching her about love. He couldn't stand the thought of some other lucky bastard taking her virginity.

"There are ways a man can love a woman without taking her virginity. Would you let me love you like that?"

How he goes about this is by making her first time experience be an anal one. What got me here is that suddenly it’s her virginity and keeping it that makes her respectable. And not the fact that she’s having all kinds of sex, doing every nasty little thing except for vaginal sex with a man she’s not married to. As if the local “ladies and gentlemen” would excuse her behavior because she’s still a virgin. Don’t get me wrong, I’m only judging this based on what Barbara herself as a character has insisted on over and over.

Then after their first act of love, if you want to call it that, she makes the mistake of mentioning marriage. Oops.

"That must be why everyone wants to get married so badly."

He stiffened at the statement. "Marry you? Oh no, honey, I hope you know that I am not going to marry you just because I fucked you."

Oh, how honorable of him. But then instead of getting insulted, she gets doey eyed innocent and starts acting dumb about it as if that makes the fact that she’s diddling him all right for her.

He smiled. "That is a performance I wouldn't mind repeating, sugar. And you are technically still a virgin, but if you want me to correct that deficiency, I would be happy to solve that for you."

"After all that, I am still a virgin?"

"You may have lost your innocence but not your virginity, and you'll only lose that when you decide you want to give it up to me," he said smugly.

"I want to give it to the man who marries me, Vince."

"You don't always have to feel loved to be fucked, and you don't have to fuck because you love. If you ever change your mind, I will still be here, hun. And I promise I'll be as gentle as I can be and make your first time an event to remember."

I hate this asshole. And I’m starting to hate how Barbara just rolls over for him like that and has zero self respect. She was a spitfire in the beginning. But that’s what happens when a man gives you great orgasms I guess.

After weeks of non-stop virginal sex while they live together, they strike it rich by finding a hefty gold nugget, which means that Barbara can now sell her half of the mine. At this point though, Barbara really gets that Vince will never marry her and she decides she must leave him. But first, just to prove something, I don’t know what really, she wants him to take her virginity and they finally have mind blowing “real” sex, at which point she says:

"Am I ruined yet?"

Then he so lovingly says:

"Lord, I hope so. I want you ruined for all other men. I want you for me and me alone, sugar."

As he spilled his seed into her, she whispered to him, holding tightly to his back. "I belong to you, Vince. No one else but you."

Yes, he’s such a worthy man that she feels she will never love anyone else but knows he will never love her. So she decides to do the next best thing, become a whore at Annie’s brothel. And she’s a shoe-in too because of her bodacious breasts and curvy body, according to Annie.

While at the brothel, she finds that her sexual needs are much and that she enjoys the sex. She’s even turned on by Kitty, the girl who teaches her the ropes as it were. And then she gets lucky because one customer, after only the first time with her, wants her as his own, which practically means she will get married.

But then Vince shows up, all pissed off with her walking away and tries to convince her that he loves her without actually coming out and saying it, of course. First he’s incredulous that she might have slept with another man.

"Did he fuck you already then?"

"Your fiancé?" He shot her a penetrating look as she rose. "I knew I should have ruined you when I had the chance."

Nice of him to show he cares. Then he tries to say that this other man only wants her for her money, the gold nugget.

His face grew red with suppressed rage. He tried another tack. "All he wants is your gold, Barbara."

"How do you know?" she asked, keeping her voice calm.

"He doesn't know you like I do."

"He wants me. More than you do. He asked me to marry me—which is more than you ever did."

So basically, he loves her so much that he has to insult her by telling her that she can’t be loved for herself, she’s wanted for her money only.

And then finally, he tries to convince her by having sex with her, which works. OMG, of course, the almighty penis wins again. She’s in love with him and he finally manages to convince her that he loves her by having sex with her and she goes for it.

To be honest here, the very end did have me believing that Vince does love her. Yes, I felt he does, but maybe it’s just because he couldn’t have her considering how selfish he is.

But after all that horrible, insulting behavior towards Barbara, she should have made him sweat and really work for her love. And he wasn’t contrite at all. Up until the point that she takes off he basically treats her like his personal sex toy to do what he wants with. And Barbara just lets him.

In the end, this book didn’t really do it for me. I’d say that on writing alone Missy Lyons writes fairly well. But I really don’t know who the target audience is for this book because much of it read as titillation for a man, most of it in favor of the male POV. And I can’t imagine women who want to read this as a romance could get on board with liking Vince on any level.

If you take this as pure erotica, well then, this book can be a good read. But the sex alone couldn’t carry this even if it is hot. And the fact that this is set up as a romance and ends as a romantic HEA, puts this into the romance category and I have to judge it as such.

Sex rating: Orgasmic- the sex was very graphically written and being erotica, just about everything was in here. Anal, some minor girl on girl, light bondage, and titty fucking. While I give it a rating of Orgasmic for hot sex, I was a bit turned off by the assholish nature of Vince, which made the sex less of a turn on for me.

Grade: D