Review- Lovestruck by KT Grant

Lovestruck
by KT Grant
June 1, 2010
Contemporary/ Lesbian
53K words
Ebook- Noble Romance pub

Buy it Noble Romance

CEO hotel mogul Barbara Jennings has three months to decide whether to close her Manhattan hotel or cut costs by firing some of her employees. She meets her much-younger employee, Jennifer Caffey and is instantly smitten. Now Barbara has another mission, and that is to seduce the innocent Jenny.

Jenny is also attracted to the powerful and beautiful Barbara, but has never really had a steamy love affair with another woman. Unwittingly, she allows herself to be swept away by her passion for this older woman who may ruin her life.

Lovestruck is one of those cute, fresh, contemporary love stories that was nicely written and a lot of fun to read.

This is the first novel of from this author, and I commend her on starting out with a genre that’s not exactly leading in the must read charts. She did a great job, not only in her writing style but in capturing sweet romance in all of its elements.

Barbara and Jenny are two characters who really stand out and are very much their own person. What I liked especially was that the dynamics between both women kept shifting, which gave it a kick that’s hard to achieve in a love story between two women.

Barbara, at first, is the dominant one. She’s much older than Jenny and she’s a powerful, rich CEO of a major hotel chain who’s used to getting what she wants. She’s immediately smitten by Jenny and wastes no time in seducing her even though Jenny is younger, and her employee. It would seem then that this is how it will be between her and Jenny, Barbara controlling the relationship. But Jenny shows Barbara that Barbara is more vulnerable and not as in control as she thinks.

At first I was a bit worried about how things would go between these two. Jenny does act a bit childish at times and there is a stark contrast between Barbara’s maturity and Jenny’s youth in their initial interactions both sexually and outside of that. However, as things progress, Jenny steps up to the plate and makes it clear that she won’t be coddled, nor will she be taken advantage of because of the disparity in their ages, life experience or social status.

This made both women a bit more complex and well rounded as characters, which I felt made this story. The only complaint I did have about how the women interact is that Barbara calls Jenny kiddo and kid all the time. I felt that even though it’s clear that Barbara has full on fallen for Jenny and thinks of her as her equal, the use of kiddo kept giving it the feel of an older sister type thing. It didn’t cloud the feeling of the actual type of relationship they had, but that was one thing about how they interacted that bothered me a bit.

Outside of that, all of the characters come across as genuine and real and it had the feel of hanging out with your best buddies.

The story itself was not farfetched and I could see it actually happening. And the writing flow was just right, with clean dialogue that was snappy and natural at the same time.

For those who want to know, there’s lots and lots of steamy sex. Depending on your mood or preference in reading erotic sex, it could be a bit over the top, especially in the beginning where it seemed fairly non-stop. However, the requisite romantic and relationship foil enters in soon and there was a nice period of time getting to know the characters and getting more story development. The timing of it was just right.

And speaking of the foil, Ms Grant kept it at the perfect balance so that it was clear that these two really want each other, but not so angsty that you’re like OK already, let them get together. Moreover, it didn’t come across as contrived, but a perfectly reasonable reason for some problem in two people getting together.

All in all, this was a juicy, light read and sweet love story. I’m quite impressed with Ms Grant’s first published book and look forward to some more. I definitely recommend Lovestruck for a satisfying, erotic romance.

Heat level 5- F/f, dildo, minor anal. Graphically written, frequent sexual scenarios.

Grade: B+