Review- The Collettes: Luna by Dahlia Rose

The Collettes: Luna
by Dahlia Rose
June 2008
Paranormal/ Lesbian/ Interracial
Novella- 26K- $3.00
Ebook

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Part Two of The Collettes.

The Saga of the vampire sisters continues. Sola completed her quest for the first part of the Lazarus amulet with success. Now it is Luna Collette's turn to find her part of destiny. Her ally comes in the form of the daughter of their enemy, Creve.

Georgina Matthews, aptly nicknamed George, is a spitfire and vampire hunter who now she seeks revenge for the death of her father. When these two women meet, more than sparks of anger fly, but an attraction forms that they cannot deny. Will Luna be able to convince George that her life is meshed with the undead to save mankind? Will George be able to become something she has been taught to hate? A creature of the night, a hunter, and a drinker of blood.

The Collettes: Luna was such fun, fun book for me. It’s a vampire paranormal with lots of action that had an interesting comic book/fantasy feel to it. This is the second book in a series of three and I hadn’t read the first one, but it reads as a stand alone except for the end, which leaves off that more is to come.

The Collettes are three vampire sisters who were born as undead, an unusual occurrence as most vampires are made from humans. They are each looking for their specific piece that when put together forms the Lazarus amulet, an amulet that will allow them to walk in daylight and give them more powers. Each sister has a special power though and Luna hasn’t found hers yet to her dismay, since it’s needed to find her piece of the amulet.

Carthos, a powerful vampire who has minions of sub vampire beings that he created, is also looking for the amulet so that he can rule the world of both vamps and humans. And he’s a cruel, sadistic person who gets off on torturing both humans and vamps. The Collettes are trying to get to the amulet before him so they can keep him from destroying the world.

George is the daughter of a vampire hunter who was killed during a battle with them. She’s also been brought up to believe that all vampires are the enemy. When she gets word that her father was killed by the Collette sisters, she goes after them for revenge by first finding Luna and fighting her. Luna could have easily killed her being all super human and all but didn’t. When George touches her though, Luna starts turning into a bat and she realizes that George is the key to her special power. Both Luna and George find themselves getting turned on as well to the shock of both of them. Luna must now convince George that she needs to become a vampire to help them fight of Carthos.

These days, I’m always shocked when I come across a book that I go into just hoping it’s readable and it turns out to be not only entertaining but nicely written. Sad, but true. The Collettes: Luna starts out with action and stays on an engagingly adventurous course until the end. I read it in a couple of hours, which is rare for me.

The relationship between Luna and George is very sweet. Luna has suffered for centuries, even almost being burned at the stake a couple hundred years ago because of her relationship with a woman. She’s a bit jaded and feels that a true, long lasting love relationship with a woman can’t be; that being different precludes her from that kind of happiness, although she longs for it.

George falls for Luna straight away and sticks with her, showing her that she’s not about to walk out on Luna and that true love can happen for people like them if Luna would only be open to it. They are very cute and loving with each other and that part of the story was very satisfying.

The world building in this story is also very well done considering it’s a shorter book. Even though it’s second book of the series, it’s all explained so that I never once felt lost or didn’t understand how it all works. And it’s rather creative as well, using some of the norm in the vampiric/ paranormal genre, but also having a unique twist, keeping it from being ho-hum, yet another vampire story.

What I really wished was that this story would have been way more developed because my curiosity was piqued and I think a lot of little details could have made it better even though as is, it’s a good story. I’m sure I’ll get the third book just to see what happens even though it won’t be a f/f story.

All in all The Collettes: Luna was good find, not only for a f/f story but also in the world of the paranormal where vampire stories are a dime a dozen and many don’t stand out. I wish that Dahlia Rose would write more f/f as that part of the story was so gratifying to me.

Sex grade: Orgasmic- Vanilla girl on girl and very sweet.

Grade: B+

Review- Writing Skin by Adriana Kraft

Writing Skin
by Adriana Kraft
May 1, 2009
Contemporary/ Erotica/ Ménage f/f/m/ Interracial
360 pgs. - $ 6.99
Ebook

Buy it eXtasy Books

What would it be like to be romanced by not one but two potential partners, simultaneously?

Luci Parker has finally achieved the career of her dreams as an erotic author – but the only romance in her life these days is in the books she writes. Long attracted to both men and women, Luci despairs of ever finding just one person to settle down with. Owners of a South Side Chicago bookstore, Chai and Frank Ferguson eagerly devour Luci's books as fast as she can write them, and now they wonder if she might be the woman they've been looking for.

Frank is deeply in love with Chai but knows she'll never be complete without a woman to love as well. Can he match the passion of not one but two exquisite and complicated women at the same time? Will Luci even want him? And if Chai truly falls in love with Luci, will there be room for him?

I follow a GLBT promo blog and this book came up on it recently. Even though I seek out this type of book, I hadn’t heard of the author/s before, so I was very excited because this type of story is exactly what I want to read and it’s so hard to find. Writing Skin is about three people, two women and a man, who want to have a committed threesome for the long haul.

Luci is an erotic romance writer who is bisexual. She’s single at the moment having lost her last love, a woman, because this woman wanted kids and marriage. She’s attracted men equally, but for some reason they don’t love her and every relationship she’s had with a man has gone sour after they had sex.

Chai and Frank are a sexually open couple who like to experiment and experience different types of relationships. They are very happily married and love each other deeply. Chai is bisexual though and she would like express her need and love for a woman by bringing another woman to their relationship, which Frank is open to.

Both Chai and Frank have read Luci’s books and have used her sexual scenarios for titillation in their own relationship and feel that she might be the one they can share their life with. When Luci meets Chai she’s immediately attracted and agrees to try a relationship with them.

This isn’t an easy review for me to write because I had many mixed feelings about this story and it hit me more on an intellectual level, making me think a lot. I’ll do my best though.

The Plot: The main points of this story are Chai and Frank trying to seduce Luci to be their partner, and Luci needing to work out some personal issues to go along with it. That’s it. Most of what is going on here is lots of sex between the characters, relationship discussion, and Chai taking Luci on shamanic spiritual journeys to help her find out what her problem is so she can be open to her and Frank.

There’s also a strong, pervasive spiritual element/ theme to this story as well, which I feel some readers might be good with if they are into that kind of thing. It didn’t work for me although I got that the authors were trying to instill that this threesome is spiritually sanctioned by the universe, making it special and fated to all three.

The characters: Luci is younger than Chai and Frank, who are in their 40’s and it’s mostly from her POV that this story is told. She’s rather innocent and passive on some levels as she lets Chai push her spiritual agenda on her when she had no spiritual leanings to begin with and felt nothing wrong with herself before meeting Chai and Frank. At other times though, she’s very aggressive and assertive, especially during sex. She’s also very clear that she’s not going to join Chai and Frank until she’s good and ready, which I rather liked.

Chai is a shark. Or that’s how I experienced her. I really felt that she wants Luci and pushes for that, but there was a certain calculated-ness about her and how she went about it even though she's very spiritual. I felt her to be the main controller in the relationship dynamics between all of them even though Luci is the one who will decide whether or not to be with them.

She also practices shamanic rituals and seems to not do anything or make any decision until she consults the spirit guides. Because of this, I couldn’t feel who she is really and I wished she would have let her hair down, gone wild, shown her vulnerability and not been in control all the time because I think she's a very complex character.

Frank was barely a blip on this map. He’s a really nice guy but I didn’t feel anything about him, what makes his blood boil, gets his juices flowing. He’s just so accommodating and easy going and it felt more like he’s just there to comfort and service the women. I appreciated though, that he wasn’t a man who was in this for the “ooh, two hot women to service me” angle.

The Relationship/romance: Here I had some mixed feelings. What I liked was the intent of Chai and Frank to share their lives with another woman in a permanent situation. It was set up in a very respectful manor, meaning that all parties were to be in agreement about everything and that everything should be above board. The authors addressed several issues that can come up with a threesome, like jealousy as the characters discuss this and how to deal with it and I liked that.

Chai and Frank are very clear with Luci right from the beginning that to start, no two would have sex without the third present. These three are getting to know each other and agreed upon boundaries was a good start, I thought.

Another good point for me was that I felt the characters all felt very comfortable about expressing what they want sexually without judgment. It was very freeing for me to read that.

What went wrong for me here though was that everyone was so polite and respectful to each other that I felt the passion and raw emotion of love sex was choked to death. Kind of like if you’d say to your partner, “may I fuck you,” “Yes you may, I’d like that very much”, “thank you.” There’s no intensity or fire in that and sometimes too many rules and conditions stop the organic energy flow of a relationship.

I think the authors were really trying to set up a threesome in a way that IRL might be a good way to go about it, but this threesome relationship was overly talked out and intellectualized. I wanted to feel that these characters would die without each other and that never happened.

As far as the sex went, this is erotica and there were plenty of graphically written sexual scenarios. However, some of the expressions were off putting. Mainly many descriptions of female juice being copious and abundant.

‘"That a girl." Chai stroked relentlessly, strumming her until Luci squealed her name. "Look at you. You’re gushing for me." Chai quickly withdrew her finger and covered Luci’s flow with her mouth gulping in her essence.’

I’ve never been with a woman on that level so I don’t know, but by those descriptions and wording it’d be like guzzling a whole gallon of liquid, which is not something I want to imagine.

You might think with the criticisms I offered in this review that I wouldn’t read any more of Adriana Kraft’s books. You’d be wrong. I will get more of Adriana Kraft's books because even with those issues, I still felt that the authors were trying very hard to make this a beautiful, erotic romance that readers would love to use as titillation or foreplay as they express in their biography.

They do write very erotic sex, which did get me going a few times. But as a female reader, I need more of an emotional and passionate connection between the characters to get really juiced, even in erotica, and the heavy spiritual elements in this book got in the way of that. Maybe it was just this book that missed the mark for me but I’ll keep trying though because I really want this type of story and I wish authors like Adriana Kraft to keep writing it.

Sex rating: Orgasmic because there are many really graphic sexual scenarios. f/f, f/f/m, strap-on anal with man and DP with strap-on, anal, and toys.

Grade: C

Review- Sapphistocated by Alessia Brio, Jolie du Pre, Beth Wylde & Yeva Wiest

Sapphistocated
by Alessia Brio, Jolie du Pre, Beth Wylde & Yeva Wiest
February 2009
Contemporary/ Lesbian/ erotica
Novel- 61K
Anthology
Ebook

Buy it Phaze- $6 Amazon

Four rising stars of women's erotica come together in this sometimes funny, sometimes heartwarming, and totally engaging collection of stories about women who love women.

Double Decker by Alessia Brio: Tess is determined to win the big Karaoke contest at the Double Decker bar, and the heart of the woman organizing it. Will her evening end on a high note?

I Know What I Want by Jolie du Pre: Allie is an up and coming model who catches the eye of a wealthy, dominating woman. While the attentions and money from "special" modeling sessions are nice, Allie wants more...but how much is enough?

Better With Age by Beth Wylde: After nearly twenty years, Olivia runs into her first love, Aleesha. While time seems to fade as they reunite, Olivia isn't sure passion could possibly have survived. It takes a surprising discovery at home to convince her to find out for certain if she's gotten better with age.

Drawn by Yeva Wiest: Manga artist Sydney loves 'em thin and leaves 'em shortly afterward, so why is she obsessing over the big, beautiful daughter of her publisher? As her Yuri artwork torments her and friends advise her, Sydney struggles with these new feelings and learns that where love and passion are concerned, she doesn't have to draw the line at any particular size.

I’ve read a few anthologies now from Alessia Brio and to date, I haven’t been disappointed. There are always some very interesting and unique stories in them and Sapphistocated is no different. In this book, four authors whose names I’ve come to recognize as well known in f/f, lesbian romance and erotica, but not had the chance to read yet, are represented and it was a great chance to get a taste of each author’s writing.

What I liked with this book was the variety in stories. Each had a different flavor and ranged from very sweet, with characters who are soft and real, to gritty, in your face type characters who learn something about themselves. All the stories were well written and definitely grabbed my attention.

Double Decker by Alessia Brio- Tess is a very confident woman. She has her days, but then she has her SOL days, sex on legs days in which everything just falls into place. She’s participating in a karaoke contest in which the prize is a weekend trip to a resort and she really wants to win. It’s a quarterly contest held in a dyke bar, the Double Decker, and she knows she has a good chance to win. And she’s lucky because it just also happens to be an SOL day for her as well. She always manages to find someone to go home with after these karaoke contests, but on this night there is only one woman she wants. But that woman has no idea what Tess feels.

This story is one in which the over confident person get a little comeuppance. Tess as a character came across at very arrogant. She knows she’s hot and she’s sure she’s the best singer. She’s also very confident that she can seduce anyone in the audience to get who she wants when she wants. I had mixed feelings about her. She’s not someone I would normally like and the fact that she goes on and on and on about how great she is through most of the story got a bit tedious.

I wished there would have been more interactions with the woman she does want and less of the build up of Tess’ ego. I wanted more tension created between them. But Tess does get knocked down a few pegs when the one woman she does want seems to blow her off. Tess does then recognize that she got too cocky and that’s what turned the story around for me. Plus, there’s hawt sex. I’m shallow like that, what can I say. B+

I Know What I Want- Jolie du Pre- Allie is working as a waitress in a sucky job, but she’s gorgeous enough to eke out a small living modeling on the side, which is what she’d rather do. One day a friend of a photographer calls Allie and tells her she has a modeling job for her and will pay her 2k per hour to be a centerpiece at her party, but she needs to interview her first.

Vivian, the woman who hires her, is an older and very wealthy woman who comes onto Allie sexually but cuts Allie off before really doing anything. Allie is very intrigued by her and wants to be with her. Vivian then plays this game with her of making Allie feel that she is interested and yet blowing her off all the time, controlling the relationship totally. Even after they have sex and Vivian says she loves Allie, she never quite gives Allie the satisfaction that she will really be with her.

When Allie gets a call from a major fashion magazine that wants her to be their main model, she goes to NY and although Vivian has said she would come, she doesn’t. In the meantime, Allie gets with the assistant of the magazine editor and they fall in love. Then Vivian shows up.

I have to be honest; the end of this story was very abrupt and a bit disappointing. While I got that this is about Allie deciding what she wants, I felt that the stronger part of the story, or lets say the part that was the most developed and had the more interesting dynamics, petered out.

Vivian is such a delicious, mysterious character. She in total control of that relationship with Allie and had some really interesting Domme characteristics that made her exciting. She’s very cool and yet, very patient with Allie as Allie tries to figure out what the deal is with Vivian. Yes, Vivian is very manipulative, but the cool mystique around her made her the most compelling character in this story.

The beginning of the story is all about Allie and Vivian, but then it shifts to Allie and the assistant. Allie is just your normal type girl with no real outstanding qualities who’s enthralled with Vivian and wants her, but also gets really pissed off with being dicked around. She has a more normal, realistic relationship with the assistant, but is unfinished with Vivian. When Vivian comes back into town, she calls Allie acting like nothing is bad between them and Allie blows her off. Then it just ends. What? Wait… don’t stop.

Personally, as a reader, the focus of this story was on the wrong person, it should have been on Vivian who was the more complex character. What makes her tick, why she’s acting like she is, does she really love Allie or is it a game… so much about her I wanted to know. Not so much about Allie. And the D/s elements that were hinted at, but never really developed, were also way more intriguing than the story between Allie and the assistant.

So I’d have to say that on quite a few levels this was a really cool story, but there was disappointment in the ending, which left me wanting a lot more. B+

Better with Age by Beth Wylde- Olivia is a woman heading into middle age and alone. She has a grown daughter who’s in college and is coming home for a night for her birthday before going back. Olivia is lonely, suffering from empty nest syndrome, but gets by keeping busy with her job.

Aleesha is also an older woman who hasn’t really found that person with whom she can really love and settle down with. She’s come back to her home town and bought a small bakery and is just living life… that is until quite by coincidence, Olivia shows up to pay for a cake she ordered for her daughter’s birthday.

Olivia and Aleesha were lovers in high school until Olivia’s mom caught them together and forced Olivia to drop Aleesha or she and her father would cut all ties with her. Being young and naïve, she let go of Aleesha. Now meeting Aleesha after all these years, the sparks fly again between them and they find that they cannot resist each other.

Oh what a totally sweet story this is. I loved, loved it! Beth Wylde really captured that feeling between the characters of a love that never dies and that feeling of coming home and rightness that happens when you find and are in the presence your soul mate. Neither one of these women have found a person who could replace the other or give them what they had together and they get immediately that after all those years that they still feel the same with each other.

I also thought their fears and vulnerabilities about their much older bodies being desirable to the other to be very touching as well. Olivia and Aleesha are just two characters that are so easy to relate to and it’s a nicely written, very satisfying story. And it's always nice to read a story about two older characters who find love. A-

Drawn by Yeva Wiest- Sydney is a cartoon artist who gets a little too involved in her characters, is definitely a butch who has very specific tastes in what she likes in a woman’s looks, and… she’s a player. She hasn’t had any nookie for a while and while creating a character, she creates the perfect woman but with two heads that can be swapped. One head is for the character’s nice personality and the other for the evil one. When Sydney goes in to see her boss to show her the new character and story, she likes what she sees in Beth, her boss’ assistant. Beth is tall and willowy and just Sydney’s type. She asks Beth out and Beth agrees.

But wait… who also shows up in the office is Alice, the boss’ daughter. She’s round and voluptuous, has huge breasts and heavy thighs and Sydney has an immediate reaction against her thinking Alice is too fat for her. And yet, there’s something about Alice that Sydney finds herself attracted to. The next day when Sydney goes to meet Beth for a date, Alice just happens to be in the hall of the apartment building since she lives in a nearby apartment and again, Sydney finds against herself that she feels this intense attraction to Alice.

Alice gets that Sydney has judged her straight away as too fat and keeps cool with Sydney even though both of them are aware of some kind of attraction going on. After a while it becomes too much for Sydney when she finds herself thinking of Alice non-stop and getting all up in that soft, round, womanly body and she finds any excuse to meet with her.

First, all around, this was a very quirky story, which had a bizarre fantasy element going on with it. Sydney’s drawing, Kisha, messes with Sydney all the time, demanding her attention and doing awful spiteful things. Sydney also has sex with her. It’s written in an odd way so that I never quite knew what’s going on with that. It’s obvious that when Kisha is involved that it’s Sydney’s imagination and maybe even the two parts of herself being expressed, but it’s written as Kisha literally doing those things, so that part is a bit strange. Ultimately, I didn’t really get the point of that, why it was even there really.

What I really got off on in this story is how Yeva Wiest has Sydney all flustered about suddenly being attracted to a woman who is so not her usual taste and who changes the usual dynamic of her being butch who loves femmes. And Ok, I liked that she falls for a fat chick and that it’s Alice’s curves and fullness that turns her on. I just like stories in which a character finds themselves acting out of character and being totally turned on by that.

Then there was the weird night Sydney had with Beth. Truly, this story went into bizarro land a few times and it was very entertaining, like being in a lesbian erotica story written by Seinfeld. B+

Sapphistocated was a general, all around good read and I’m glad that I finally got a chance to read a few stories from some authors I’ve been meaning to get to. It’s definitely a nice collection of distinctly different stories, but all ending on a good note. And the sex in all of these stories was deliciously written and sizzling as well.

Sex rating: Orgasmic- very erotic and steamy f/f, some minor anal, strap on. Mostly vanilla.

Grade: B+

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

Review- A Reason, A Season, or A Lifetime by Rayne 2. Marzett

A Reason, A Season, or A Lifetime
by Rayne 2. Marzett
August, 2007
Contemporary/ Lesbian/ African American
Category- 44K - $3.00

Buy it Phaze

A Reason, A Season, or A Lifetime is a first hand look at the fears and desperate misconceptions about love. This is by no means your average love story, and that is very clear as you follow Chrysten Rainer in her quest to figure out how to navigate through the rough waters of love and her budding career as a fashion designer. After losing the one thing in life she longed for, Chrysten must come to terms with not only the loss but also overcome the mourning and move on.

A Reason, A Season, or A Lifetime is not your average romance, it’s more about the journey of one woman as she comes to terms with what she wants out of life and how the women she loves fits into that. It’s a story of growth in which sex and love play a huge part. So this is no traditional love story although it ends up with that. This story is told through Chrys’s lens and it’s her story.

Chrys is a strong, confidant woman who is a fledgling, but savvy, designer and is trying to get a clothing line going. This is her career. She’s likes to keep her independence with the ladies and is a bit of a player. As the story starts, Chrys is in semi committed relationship with Angel, although she does have some favorite girls that she goes to here and there. She reflects about her life and why she doesn’t settle down, but not too much… in the beginning.

Angel dies in a car accident while Chrys is getting it on with another woman and this throws Chrys into a tailspin of self reflection and to some degree, guilt. She loved Angel and after this happens, Chrys spends the next year basically trying to deal with her grief and she doesn’t really get involved with anyone, even for fun.

As her clothing line is getting a lot of buzz and she’s having a major showing, she gets a model off, but hates that she did that. She’s still grappling with her feelings about relationships and what that is to her when her first love from high school, Stephanie, suddenly shows up at her door and they reconnect. It turns out that Steph is pregnant and Chrys decides it’s time to settle down, so she and Stephanie move in together and prepare for the baby.

Chrys then goes through a period of freaking out, feeling claustrophobic and she takes off for a bit planning to find another woman to have sex with. Instead she goes to Angel’s mom and pours her heart out, everything she’s feeling and she goes back home to Steph to ask Steph to marry her.

As I said in the first paragraph this isn’t a traditional romance story, nor is it erotica. It’s more like an account of someone’s life, which I found interesting for what it is.

Chrys at first was a character that I didn’t like. She’s kind of selfish and does as she pleases, often hurting those women that love her by not really thinking about them and what they are feeling. And she makes all kinds of excuses for her behavior. But after Angel dies, she becomes very self reflective and in the end I felt some respect for her.

The story does get a bit emo heavy at times with Chrys kind of going off on tangents about life and love and relationships and it does get a bit bogged down in parts with philosophical musings. At one point I thought this was going the way of too much melodrama with these kinds of musings being expressed:

I tried desperately to shake this feeling off me but found that it wasn't going to budge. Out the clear blue sky I submitted this soliloquy:

"I don't know. I've tried and tried. I pushed her aside for what I think is the last time and right back she comes. I wanted to move on. I wanted to find a love that I could start over with. Someone that I could offer the chances that I denied her so many times. Ohh, but this grave in my chest shows no sign of ever allowing that to happen. It came to pass too soon and over before the wind could blow. Must I forever wallow in the drudgery of the mistaken past? Must I spend eternal nights and days longing for what I can never have? I'm only human. I can't make promises. I can't understand what has no questions and only answers. The time has passed and come again and I have no idea how I'm going to get through it all. I thought that I was over and done with. Now here it is again. Haunting me, looming around my heart only to find no place to rest. I know now that I can not start anew without clearing up the past. That is my hold. Angel is my unfortunate end and I don't really want to let her go."

However, fortunately Chrys moves on and gets over herself towards the end and there’s a really satisfying HEA ending for both Chrys and Stephanie. This one does end with an actual marriage and having a baby. Ending on a high point like that actually saved this book for me.

A Reason, A Season, or A Lifetime is not your average fictional story so I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who’s looking for hot sex and a light love story. However, it is a good book about a personal journey through relationships and sex and is worth to read on that level if you’re into something deeper. Also, there are poems written between chapters that express the feeling behind what’s coming in the next part of the story. They are nicely written, if you’re into poetry.

Sex rating: Orgasmic- there are a few graphically written sex scenes that were pretty hot, although I wouldn’t call this erotica or even erotic romance.

Grade: B+

Review- Nashoba's Hope by Moondancer Drake

Nashoba’s Hope
by Moondancer Drake
April 15, 2009
Historical/ Paranormal/ Lesbian/ Interracial
67 pages PDF- $3.75
Ebook

Buy it Shadowfire Press

The sins of the past and desires of the present collide for two women caught in a war between their people.

Nashoba is a shifter, a warrior with the gift to take the form of both woman and beast. She is also the last of her tribe after smallpox killed everyone she ever loved, including her wife and sons. Now gathered together with other shifter kin, she battles to make a home for them all, and to seek revenge on the white soldiers she blames for the death of her family.

May came to America in the wake of her sister's death to look after her brother-in-law and their farm. May is working to find a place far from the European universities she was buried in, a task she fears is as hopeless as finding love. A nighttime attack on her brother by a mysterious Indian woman threatens to undo everything May has ever known. In the wake of the attack, May finds herself inexplicably drawn to the woman responsible for it.

Is there hope for these two women to find common ground coming from worlds so far apart, or will deep-set hatreds and old wounds doom them and their people to a bloody war no one can truly win?

Nashoba’s Hope is a nicely written, very sweet story about two women from completely different worlds coming together from a mutual attraction and an unspoken understanding of each other.

Nashoba, a Native American, is trying to find out about a local White farmer’s intent on her people when she sees that he’s actually a soldier. He happens upon her and points a gun. Feeling the rage of all of her personal loss, Nashoba attacks him but is stopped by a White woman, May, who shows no fear. There’s something about May, her eyes, her strength, her lack of fear that Nashoba is mesmerized by so she stops trying to kill and runs off.

Nashoba tells her clan, the medicine woman and head warrior, what has happened and the head warrior becomes enraged. Nashoba should have killed him. Nashoba explains that there was something special about May and that she thinks May is a special “White” woman, which of course the clan does not believe.

May, an Irish woman who went to live with her brother-in-law after her sister died, felt that spark of understanding between her and Noshoba and explains to her brother-in-law that Nashoba is a shifter just like him and his clan. He is from a clan of European shifters, although as a man, he can only be a carrier of the gene and not become an actual shifter, so she convinces him to not go after Nashoba.

In the meantime, Nashoba hovers around May’s farm as a wolf and saves May from a drowning one day, bringing May back to her teepee to have the medicine woman heal her. Hiding her from the others, she takes care of her until she’s conscious. May feels a strong connection to Nashoba when she wakes and sees kindness in her eyes even though she’s a bit afraid. When Nashoba kisses her, for the first time in May’s life she feels that spark of energy and love that she’s thought she yearned for with a man, but has never been able to find.

I really enjoyed this book. I haven’t read too many, if at all that I can recall, stories about Native American shifters. So I enjoyed this book for the uniqueness of it. It wasn't only that. This is a story that had many interesting levels to it. It’s a love story, a first experience story, and it’s a story about how love can cross cultural boundaries.

Nashoba is a very spiritual person who follows the beliefs and ways of her people. She’s suffered a lot of pain at the hands of White people. People who’ve killed her wife and her sons as well as her family. But she’s able to look past the skin color and feel that May is a person who “gets” her and that she is special.

What I liked about this part is that the author Moondancer Drake didn’t take the racial and cultural differences, especially as we know the history of what really happened, and turn it into a political statement in general. It’s just Nashoba and May’s reality of living during that time and it was kept on a very human level. But it did give a good backdrop for conflict that they have to overcome as two women attracted to each other, which I liked.

I also thought that Moondancer Drake wrote May’s first experience with a woman in a very beautiful way. May’s an individual. She’s always been a bit different, independent, not like other women, and even though she’s thought about marriage and such, she’s never found a man that inspired that spark of love in her and she was thinking that she’d be a spinster all her life.

When Nashoba kisses her, it’s like for the first time she becomes alive. It’s a very soft and sensual experience for May and was realistically written, I thought. I got that May is surprised by her reaction but also that she understands that it’s all OK and she doesn’t judge it, but goes with it.

The story leaves off with an HFN as May is still going to live with her brother-in-law having made a pact with the women to not say anything about their camp. I would have liked to see where that story went, but felt satisfied that all might be good.

I really liked Moondancer Drake’s style of writing and that she managed to write a full story giving enough character background to understand them and tell their story in a full and engrossing way. I’ll definitely look for more of her work.

Sex rating: Damp Panties—This is labeled as an erotic romance, but the language used and the way the sex was written was more poetic than erotic in terms of specific language. There’s really only one sex scene and it was written with a cross between somewhat purple prosey and graphic language. Almost like Moondancer Drake didn’t know how graphic she wanted to get or how she wanted to write the sex scene and vacillated between lightly sensual and erotic. I thought it was very sweetly written but it wasn’t written in a way that got me going in any way.

Grade: B+

Review- The Wrong Valentine by Dana Littlejohn

The Wrong Valentine
by Dana Litteljohn
Feb. 2009
Contemporary/erotica/f/f/ interracial
Short Story- 5K

Buy it Phaze-- $2.00

Shante had prepared for a night of self pampering complete with dinner, wine and dancing by herself. Indeed, she was truly enjoying herself, but her evening improved immensely when someone else's Valentine-o-gram showed up at her door.

OK… this was a very short story. Only 39 pages on my ebookwise and 12 pgs. Pdf after credits, so I’m not so sure it’s worth $2.00. But what I will say is that what is packed into these few pages is one hawt little erotic story that read nice and smoothly and will get you going.

Shante has recently moved to NYC and is working in a high powered job. She’s on her way home when her co-worker, a really “nice” guy asks her if she has plans for Valentine’s Day and also if she has interest in him. She likes him but is unwilling to get involved with someone at work, which satisfies him.

She goes home alone and proceeds to pamper herself. She bathes and shaves and slowly creams her body from head to toe with vanilla lotion. While putting on the lotion, she can’t help but fondle herself, loving the way it feels and the way she looks in the mirror while playing with her breasts, and she gets turned on. While she wants to wait until later, she can't help it and masturbates to her first orgasm of the evening.

Then she gets dressed up in a clingy evening dress, puts on her favorite ruby necklace and earrings and puts on a pair of 4 inch heels. She turns on some soft, romantic music, lights some candles and makes a nice pasta dish with a strawberry dessert, which she eats with a glass of wine.

Then there’s an unexpected knock at the door. Even though it’s NY and she’s leery about opening it, it’s a woman’s voice, so she feels OK to open it. This woman is the most beautiful woman Shante has ever seen and she’s immediately mesmerized by her. It turns out that this woman, Vanessa, is a Valentine’s Day gift to Shante and she is there to pleasure Shante sexually.

Um… OK… wow! This was such a juicy little fantasy/story and nicely written as well. What I liked is that it’s very unclear if Shante is into women or not. She’s very open and comfortable about her sexuality, but we the reader don’t know if she’s straight and just finds Vanessa hot, or she likes women already. Vanessa obviously likes women although she’s definitely bi as she services men as well. But it’s clear that Vanessa is pleasantly surprised that she gets to please a woman for a change and that she likes Shante.

The sex is really steamy and these two really go for it with each other although it’s more about Vanessa pleasing Shante. It’s just too bad this wasn’t a book. I’d love to read a much longer story by Dana Littlejohn with two women involved. Even though such a short story, she still managed to convey that these two women appreciate and like each other even if it’s a paid sexual encounter so it didn’t come across as sleazy or degrading in any way. Very nice. And there’s a nice little twist at the end.

Sex rating: Orgasmic- smoking hawt, wet and juicy, vanilla f/f.

Grade: B-

Review- Good for Something by Anika Hamilton

Good for Something
by Anika Hamilton
June 2008
Contemporary/ Lesbian
Short Story
Ebook

Buy it Total-E-Bound -$2.81

Casey never had a really serious relationship; while Nicolette just got out of a bad one.

Nicolette Marchand relocated to South Florida to get away from an abusive lover. In her new home, she loves the sun, the beaches and the bookshop owner with the hazel eyes and beautiful smile. Spending her evenings in her home away from home, life was really good. At least, until the phone started ringing.

Casey Addison, bookshop owner, was a native of South Florida. She never really cared about anything or anyone other than her store before now. A chance encounter with a fellow book lover changed all that. She thoroughly enjoys the company of her bookshop's new fixture. Unfortunately, someone is threatening her new found happiness and Casey gets caught in the middle.

Helping each other, will these two women discover a love they never knew they needed? And can Nicolette open herself up and trust that together, they are both...

Good for Something?

Good for Something was definitely good for something. It was a sweet, quick, satisfying read about two women who fall in love and give each other something neither has had before. Nicolette gets a sane, supportive partner who’s not out to kill her at every turn and Casey gets to experience real love for the first time in her adult life.

Nicolette is new in town, forced to leave the only place she’s known and lived to get away from Gabriella, her former lover who violently attacked her for trying to break up. Checking out her new town, she ends up in Feed Your Mind bookstore owned by Casey.

The two women hit it off immediately and sparks fly between them. They take their time though and spend a month getting to know each other before having sex.

After spending a hot weekend together of making love during a trip, their first time to be secluded together for a couple of days, they decide to move in together, taking their relationship to a deeper level.

In the meantime though, Gabriella has found Nicolette and has been calling her, threatening her. When Gabriella makes a real move and attacks Casey putting her in the hospital, Casey confronts Nicolette about not sharing and trusting her with the fact that Gabriella has been stalking them, and pushes Nicolette to face her trust issues within their relationship.

This is a short story so I didn’t expect too much in the way of a lot of detail leading into a relationship or other details that would explain some missing pieces. Like in this case, how Gabriella found Nicolette and why she’s in FL instead of where she lives in AZ. But I will say that this story was better than average at being a complete story without too many holes left to be filled in by me the reader.

The story starts out nicely, but I thought that in the initial meeting the emotional connection happened unrealistically fast, with both acting more familiar then would normally be the case upon a first ever meeting of someone. The real emotional build-up was just explained and not really shown. However, from that point, the relationship between Nicolette and Casey was written in a believable way and I could feel that these two are really into each other and that they will have an HEA.

One thing I did like is that this is the first story about two women lovers who practice some sort of safe sex in that they both get tested before having sex. In m/f, and m/m stories the condom issue seems to be a biggy for many readers in contemporaries with many being upset if there is lack of mention. But it was good to read some sort of mention of safe sex practice between two female lovers who’ve just met.

The whole ex-girlfriend turned stalker was a good counterpoint to force Nicolette to open up and also to give the women a reason to become even more intimate with each other. Plus it created some tension, causing Nicolette and Casey to really come together and fight for themselves as a couple. Gabriella’s stalking and violence towards the women was very realistically written and did have me thinking about what it would be like to have that happen.

The only thing that got on my nerves, and this is purely a matter of taste, is that both women address each other as “Casey girl”, Nicolette girl,” “my girl,” “my Casey/Nicolette girl,” and so on, all. the. time. Because it was every single time it got a bit nauseating in that way in which couples have cutesy names for each other that make others want to barf.

For a short story though, Good for Something was a good read, the sex was hotly written, and I’d definitely read some more of Ms. Hamilton’s work.

Sex rating: Wet Panties- usual f/f stuff with some minor anal. No toys.

Grade: C+