Your review request caught my eye because you described the heroine of your novel, Star Gazing as congenitally blind, and mentioned that this story takes place on the Isle of Skye. You also mentioned that the book was short listed for RNA’s Romantic Novel of the Year award. I surfed over to Amazon and read some very enthusiastic reviews, and decided to take you up on your offer and review the book.

Unfortunately, what I’ve read of Star Gazing has failed to engage me and I was only able to read at a glacially slow pace. Even more than a hundred pages in, I remain emotionally detached, and so I’ve come to a point where, in order to write this post on a timely basis, I’ve given up on finishing the book.

Star Gazing does have some good qualities which I will describe after the following plot summary:

The novel begins when its heroine, the blind, forty-five year old Marianne Fraser, runs into a cyclist near the front door of the Edinburgh home she shares with her sister, Louisa. The bottle of burgundy Marianne is carrying shatters and the door keys slip from her hands. A stranger offers his help and as he assists her, their mutual love of opera comes up.

Later, while at the opera, during the intermission, they meet again. Louisa, Marianne’s sister, is away buying drinks when the man introduces himself as Keir Harvey. Keir’s last name is a shock for Marianne since it was her late husband’s first name.

Marianne’s late husband worked in the oil industry and was killed in an accident. Marianne was devastated not only by Harvey’s death, but also by the miscarriage she suffered shortly afterward. The experiences she had with men in the years that followed were unpleasant, so she is somewhat jaded about the opposite sex when she and Keir meet. And she is not sure what to think of Keir when she tries to introduce him to Louisa, only to realize he is no longer there.

Keir and Marianne encounter one another again at the botanic gardens, and she confides in him about the losses she has suffered. When Keir is away, he mails her a cassette tape of him talking. On his return, Marianne invites Keir to her house for dinner, but he does not show. Louisa suspects that Keir is a figment of Marianne’s imagination, but then he reappears. It turns out that Keir, whose job is to spot hazards and prevent accidents from happening, was in an accident on an oil rig, and has been in the hospital. When Marianne realizes he was injured, she not only forgives his absence, she also accepts an invitation from him, to come to his home at the Isle of Skye.

In Skye, Marianne and Keir sleep in separate rooms, but in a rather reticent way, they both acknowledge their attraction. Keir describes the surroundings to Marianne, and explains that he tries to protect the area’s natural habitat. It would be cliched to say that Keir becomes Marianne’s eyes, but he makes it possible for her to perceive things she can’t see.

Marianne is a rather different kind of romantic heroine, not only because she is blind, but because she carries a lot of bitterness. She is, as she herself says, “incandescently angry.” Although I understood why Marianne might have a chip on her shoulder, especially after her husband’s death, her miscarriage, and having other men attempt to take advantage of her blindness or put her in the helpless-woman-in-need-of-rescue role, I still didn’t feel much of an emotional connection to the character.

Keir, who is a few years younger than Marianne, yet clearly mature and responsible, was somewhat more appealing. But with him too, as with Marianne, I felt somewhat at arms’ length, in this case perhaps because most of the time, there wasn’t much insight into his thoughts and feelings.

Star Gazing is written in alternating third person and first person sections, both in present tense. The third person sections in the first hundred or so pages keep the characters at a distance from the reader, with a lot of dialogue but very few internal thoughts.

The first person sections I read provided Marianne and Louisa’s viewpoints. Louisa’s POV included some humor, and she was a colorful character, a 51 year old writer of vampire novels who struggles with her weight and has a friendship with a younger goth named Garth.

The best part of this book for me were the descriptions of how Marianne perceives the world:

I love the garden in all seasons. I especially love it when it rains. I like to shelter under the trees when they’re in full leaf and listen to the patter of rain as it forms a kind of sound-sculpture for me, defining the size and shape of a tree, giving me an aural sense of scale, of distance.

I also appreciated the way Keir used Marianne’s auditory sensitivity to translate images into sounds for her:

‘If you look east, one of the brightest stars you’ll see is Arcturus. It has a yellow-orange glow. Most stars look cold. Icy. They’d sound like…flutes. No, piccolos. Shrill. Arcturus looks warmer. A cello maybe… It looks like the stove feels when it gives off just a bit of heat. Arcturus glows, but it doesn’t burn or blaze like the sun. It’s like the feeling you might have for an old friend… or an ex-lover, one who still means something to you. Steady. Passionless. On second thoughts, make that a viola… How am I doing?”

Yet the emphasis on Marianne’s blindness became less interesting to me as the book went on. I would have preferred to see it treated as just another facet of her character, and less of a focal point.

My main problem with the first hundred pages of this book was not this, though, but rather that the writing felt subdued. The emotions were somber and understated to a point where the writing felt dry to me, and I felt detached from the characters and from their story, despite the fact that the prose was above average.

The pacing also felt slow to me, but that may have been due to my lack of engagement. If there is such a thing as a book that is too grounded in reality for me, this book was an example of that, since Marianne and Keir lacked a kind of romantic glamour that I look for, and I think what I read of their story could have benefitted from more dramatic turns.

I wish I had been able to get more caught up in Star Gazing, and I expect there are readers to whom it might appeal more. But I have not been able to overcome my emotional detachment from the story, and rather than force myself to finish it, I’ve decided to stop reading. Therefore for me, this one is a DNF.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Falling Star by Olivia Brynn
2. REVIEW: Cover of Night by Linda Howard
3. REVIEW: Death Angel by Linda Howard

Janine: Adam is vacationing on a tropical island with his friend Stacy. As the story opens, Adam has been eyeing Brett, a fellow tourist, but because of Stacy’s drunken antics, he does not have much opportunity to approach the man he desires.

After lusting from afar, Adam get his chance when their tour bus stops and Brett struggles to use his digital camera. Adam gives Brett a few pointers and takes the opportunity to flirt with him. The two spend a few days getting to know each other, and most of the signals tell Adam that Brett returns his desire.

It’s not until toward the end of the vacation, though, that Adam gets a chance to be alone with Brett, and when he does, Brett is passive. At first Adam is confused, and then he figures out that Brett is a submissive. Brett wants Adam to take charge. But Adam has never tried BDSM before. He wants an affair in paradise with Brett very badly, but can he learn how to play the role of dom?

Janine: The first thing readers should know when assessing my comments is that I haven’t read that much m/m or BDSM romance. I have fallen in love with a few works that feature m/m relationships — namely Ginn Hale’s Wicked Gentlemen, Jesse Sandoval’s story in Tangle (“Los Conversos”), E.M. Forster’s classic Maurice, and Anne Rice’s early vampire books. On the BDSM front, I’ve really enjoyed Rice’s Exit to Eden, but haven’t yet found another BDSM romance that has resonated with me. Thus, “An Affair in Paradise” was a bit of a stretch for me.

Joan/Sarah F.: On the other hand, of course, I currently read pretty much exclusively m/m romance and I’m in a never-ending quest for good BDSM romance of almost all persuasions. So “An Affair in Paradise” was a perfect little story for me. The other thing readers should know in order to assess my comments is that I acted as a first-reader for MHT on this story. While I wouldn’t say I was a critique partner or even a beta-reader, MHT did send me this story to see if I thought it got BDSM right. As I had nothing to correct, my input (“OMG! It’s fantastic!”) had no effect on the finished product.

Janine: I enjoyed “An Affair in Paradise” but only very mildly. Part of the problem for me may be the length of the story. At roughly 10,000 words (about 40 book pages), it’s pretty short and that doesn’t leave much room for showing Brett and Adam’s relationship outside the bedroom. We are told that Brett and Adam talked a lot and got to know everything about each other before the relationship became sexual, but I would have liked to be shown a little more of that getting-to-know-one-another stage of the relationship.

Joan/Sarah F.: This is actually an issue with many of MHT’s short stories. They tend to focus intently on the beginnings of the relationship, but then just as the relationship gets started and the characters are just about falling in love, the story stops. I feel this story was sort of like a brilliantly imagined thought experiment: How do you establish a relationship when the submissive is the experienced BDSM partner and the dominant has never even though he might be interested in BDSM play? And I adore the product but could wish that it were longer.

Janine: Another thing I would have liked to have seen more of is the setting. It’s not every day that I read something set on a tropical island so I would have loved to get a better sense of place — the flora, the fauna, the view they snapped pictures of, the types of drinks Stacy had. But the setting was presented in a fairly generalized way that left me wanting more.

Joan/Sarah F.: For me, this just kept the focus of the story solidly on the budding relationship, without the distractions of atmosphere and description.

Janine: I was also confused about a couple of things. At first, I wondered if Adam was closeted and dating Stacy, because they shared a room. While I was wondering about this, it kept me from investing more deeply in Adam and Brett’s burgeoning relationship, since I didn’t see how such a conflict would be resolved in 40 pages. Then it was cleared up that Stacy was only Adam’s friend, but I think I would have preferred not to be confused about this from the beginning, because at that point, it felt like the main obstacle had been explained away.

Joan/Sarah F.: As I’m much more familiar with MHT’s writing, I never had this misunderstanding. MHT doesn’t DO closet cases. Ever. But as a new reader, with the m/m genre’s focus on closet cases, I can understand this.

Janine: Of course, the real main obstacle was Adam and Brett’s feelings of uncertainty about one another. Would Adam enjoy being in the dom role? Would he be able to pull it well enough to give Brett pleasure? That was a much more involving conflict to me, and I enjoyed it.

Joan/Sarah F.: Yes! This is where the story shone brightly for me. I love stories where people come to understand more about themselves than they would if they hadn’t met the other character.

Janine: The other thing that confused me was Brett’s past with his previous partner. From Adam’s POV, Brett’s ex sounded like a jerk, and some of Adam’s thoughts on the subject made me wonder if Brett’s previous relationship had been a healthy one for Brett. That worried me, because again, I didn’t see how those kind of issues could be resolved in such a short story. Once we got Brett’s POV, though, I understood that the ex wasn’t as much of a jerk as I’d thought he was. But this was another thing I would have preferred not to be confused about.

The author’s writing has a sharp clarity that I enjoyed, but I also found some of the sentence structures repetitive. I don’t think this is something that would bother most readers; I expect I am more sensitive to it than many, but it did keep me from enjoying the story as much as I might have otherwise.

Joan/Sarah F.: And I love MHT’s writing style. I love how the words are a transcript of what’s in the characters head to the extent that what’s said and what isn’t complement each other and how the characters move or look add to the conversation of words, thoughts, and bodies:

Biting his succulent lower lip, Brett brought his arms up, crossing his wrists overhead, a pose that immediately told Adam to go for it, do it, take. Still- "Can I-"

Brett’s voice was soft, dark. "You can do whatever you want."

Oh, shit, yes, yes- Adam didn’t know what that was about, but he liked it.

Janine: Moving on to the things I liked, I felt that the two heroes had an endearing, human quality. I really liked Adam’s intial dilemma of how to approach Brett, and Brett’s similar dilemma of whether or not Adam would want to get into his kinks. I felt their vulnerablity in the situation and that made me care about them.

I really liked the twist that even though Adam was the dom and Brett was the sub, it was Brett who was basically initiating Adam into the world of BDSM. And I liked the way Adam was torn between shock at some of the things Brett was into and being turned on by them. It made it easy to identify with both characters and made things more equal between them. Brett said he would do anything for Adam but it was clear that Adam would also do some things he wasn’t used to doing and was therefore not always 100% comfortable with or confident of doing correctly, for Brett.

The sex was for the most part sexy to me. The characters were hot for each other but also each cared about the other’s feelings. It was a nice balance of that. I wasn’t completely convinced that the two guys belonged together but I could imagine that the fun they were having might eventually translate to a deeper commitment.

Joan/Sarah F.: MHT’s skill at character development definitely show in this story. As you said, both characters are very human, very real. This translates to a wonderfully realistic, sympathetic, and OMG!sexy! exploration of BDSM, done with humor and creativity, that is, I think, accessible and hot and fun to non-BDSM-identified readers, too.

As with the best BDSM stories, though, this story shows lovers at their best, BDSM aside: caring for each other, willing to do what pleases their partner, as well as chasing their own pleasure. Add the BDSM aspect of initiating a clueless but very willing dominant to the mix, and I love this story and have reread it at least five times by now, each time finding it just as sexy, just as funny, and just as…cozy? as the last time. Cozy because I can feel the emotions these characters have for each other deepening and taking hold. It’s romance at its best.

My only concern is that the HFN ending isn’t solid enough for me. The characters are compatible and attracted and want to spend time together, but they’re planning their next vacation together, rather than trying to figure out how to meet each other outside their vacation. The story is ripe for a sequel, which is something that Torquere does very well, at least.

Janine: Yes, I could imagine a story about Adam and Brett’s next vacation together too. On the whole, I feel that “An Affair in Paradise” was a bit more enjoyable than average. I probably would not read it a second time, though, so my grade for it is a C+.

Joan/Sarah F.: At its best, “An Affair in Paradise” is, for me, a feel-good keeper and a reliable reread, which is why my grade would be a high B+.

This book can be purchased in ebook format from Torquere Books as of March 28, 2009.

Related posts:

1. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: Tempted by Megan Hart
2. REVIEW: e Before Christmas by Matthew Beaumont
3. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

Just as I had finished reading Forbidden Shores by Jane Lockwood (a pseudonym for Janet Mullany) and was getting ready to review it, I had a conversation about the book with my good friend Jennie F., who had also recently read it. Jennie’s comments were so insightful and thought provoking, and I enjoyed our chat so much that I thought it might be fun to (after editing it a bit, and applying the spoiler font to spoilers) share the conversation with all of you, in lieu of a more traditional review.
-Janine

Janine: Okay. I finished this book and am ready to discuss it. First, I want to bring up that although Forbidden Shores is labeled “Historical Romance,” it should at the very least be considered an erotic romance, and maybe even straight erotica. There is a lot of sex, and not just between the hero and heroine.

Jennie F.: I just finished it too. I would think it would fall somewhere between erotic romance and erotica. The focus is definitely on sex, but there’s enough other stuff going on for me to hesitate to label it straight erotica.

Janine: I agree with that; it seems like a hybrid of the two to me.

Jennie F.: BTW, I went to Lockwood’s website and she mentions that one of her inspirations was reading Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains, about the efforts of English abolitionists in the 18th century. I read that earlier this year, and it is a very good book.

Janine: I’ve heard nothing but good things about Bury the Chains. Here, for our readers, is a plot summary of Forbidden Shores:

The story takes place in 1800. Allen Pendale and Clarissa Onslowe meet on board a ship called The Daphne. They are sailing to a Caribbean island where a position as governess to the daughter of a plantation owner named Lemarchand awaits Clarissa, and where Allen plans to visit his father, also a plantation owner, and inform him of Allen’s mother’s recent death.

Clarissa is a clergyman’s daughter and former abolitionist who was ruined when she fell in love with a man and went to bed with him. When the rest of her family disowned her, her uncle offered her a position as his housekeeper, but now the uncle is dead, and despite her anti-slavery sentiments, Clarissa is on her way to the Caribbean, to work for a plantation owner, of all things.

Allen is an attorney and the younger son of an earl who has a knack for getting involved with married women. Allen and Clarissa meet when an irate husband tries to shoot Allen and Allen knocks Clarissa down to protect her from the gunshot. Clarissa does not appreciate Allen’s gallantry, especially since Allen lands on top of her. She is irritated with him but secretly aroused, too.

Allen and Clarissa both fantasize about each other and then, one night they end up having sex on the deck behind the chicken coop. They have fun but then decide it’s best to pretend that nothing happened.

Shortly after that, their cabin mates, Lemarchand’s overseer and his wife, become so seasick that the best solution to the problem seems to be for them to share a cabin, and for Clarissa and Allen to share the other one. (Like the AAR reviewer, I was very doubtful that such a thing would actually have happened in the Georgian era).

At this point, Clarissa reveals to Allen that she hopes to become the mistress of some very wealthy man on the island, and to earn a lot of money on her back. There’s just one problem — her sexual experiences are limited, and would Allen be willing to teach her everything he knows about sex?

Allen is plenty willing. So he and Clarissa have lots of different kinds of sex, to the enjoyment of both. Then they arrive on the Caribbean island, and it is time for them to part company. But just as they are intending to go their separate ways, they meet with the wealthy plantation owner, Lemarchand, who goes by the name March, and Clarissa falls in love with him almost right away. It’s love at first sight for March, too. Only the object of his affections isn’t Clarissa — it’s Allen.

After Allen does something that offends her sensibilities, Clarissa sets her sights on March for her wealthy protector (something else that seemed to me like it could be historically inaccurate, since she was his daughter’s governess). Not long after she does so, Allen realizes that he is in love with Clarissa.

So now the focus of the story is a triangle, but not a traditional one in which two men are in love with one woman. Instead, it’s a triangle where each person is in love with someone who loves someone else.

I don’t want to say much more about the book because I’ve already revealed things that happen quite far into it, but it’s tough to discuss it without giving away spoilers, because of the way the book is constructed.

I will add that at some point, there’s a sexual mà©nage in Forbidden Shores, too. I’m mentioning this even though it happens far into the book, because I think it’s the kind of thing that readers like to know about a book in advance.

Jennie F.: Yes – I’ll add that in case it makes a difference to anyone (it was brought up on the AAR thread about the book) that while there is m/m interaction, it doesn’t involve anal sex. I wondered if Lockwood’s omission of any m/m anal sex was a concession to potentially squeamish readers – somehow I don’t think so. Readers who are interested in erotica featuring m/m scenes probably wouldn’t draw the line there. So I tended to see it as more a decision to stay true to the characters rather than go for that extra shock factor, which I respected.

Janine: I agree with you on that. There’s a sense of intelligence and an earthiness in Lockwood’s writing style that appeal to me, so I really wanted to love this book. The characters, especially Allen, had some depth and dimension; the settings, shipboard and Caribbean, were unusual, and I enjoyed that very much.

I also liked the literary allusions to The Tempest and loved that the story had a slavery angle. I really appreciate that Lockwood did not pretty up what slavery was like. The depiction of slavery was very realistic, and that was one of the best things about the book.

Forbidden Shores is clearly above average in many ways, but despite that, I closed the book feeling that it did not live up to its potential.

Jennie F.: I agree that there was a lot to like; it made the flaws that kept it from being a great book all the more disappointing.

Janine: Agreed. One reason I felt that way is that it took me a while to warm up to Allen.

Jennie F.: I liked Allen fairly early on. He had a certain ironic self-awareness that reminded me a bit of a Judith Ivory hero, or of Sheridan from Kinsale’s Seize the Fire.

Janine: Yes, that’s true, but he also had a certain uncouthness that those heroes lacked. Sometimes I enjoyed that (especially in the first sex scene), but at other times, it kept me at arm’s length from his character.

Jennie F.: That didn’t bother me. If anything, it leant a bit more of a realistic edge to his character. Despite his apparent success as a ladies man, Allen ultimately seemed to realize that it wasn’t because he was so suave and irresistible that all those married women fell into bed with him. Ultimately, he was the character I liked best.

Janine: I started out liking Clarissa best, but as the book progressed, I liked her less and Allen more. My feelings toward Clarissa underwent a sea-change when The Daphne reached shore, and she decided she was in love with March.

By far the biggest flaw in the book for me is that I could not understand for the life of me how Clarissa could fall in love with March so quickly. Yes, March was gorgeous, wealthy and elegant, but Clarissa was a former abolitionist, for heaven’s sake, and March’s wealth came from the back-breaking labor of the slaves that he believed in treating with cruelty.

Jennie F.: The instances of love at first sight (Clarissa for March; March for Allen) are what really brought the book down for me. I am not a big believer in love at first sight, and it’s a fanciful notion that didn’t fit into this book, that was to a certain degree more realistic, and as you said, earthy than the average romance.

Janine: Well, I can sometimes believe in love at first sight, but the author has to work double-time to convince me of it, and I don’t feel that Lockwood did that in this book. You’re right that March’s instantaneous love for Allen was pretty inexplicable too, but the insufficient motivation was even more glaring in the case of Clarissa’s love for March, because the gap in their values was so wide.

As I read I kept asking myself how Clarissa could love March. She was upset with Allen for a transgression that, although bad, was nowhere near the level of the wrongs March committed, but she wasn’t nearly as angry with March.

Jennie F.: I really lost the thread of Clarissa’s character even earlier, with her decision to become a courtesan. Her motivations were not sufficiently explained, so it ended up coming off as a sort of porny plot device to get Clarissa together with Allen and March.

Janine: I agree that the motivation for her decision to become a courtesan was not explained but for some reason I was able to accept this much better than her falling in love with March.

Jennie F.: At least her falling in love with March was somewhat unexpected, from a romance POV. Whereas the courtesan thing seemed a bit clichà©. Though I agree it was less morally distasteful than falling in love with a slave owner.

Janine: Perhaps if Clarissa had been shown getting to know March more gradually, I might have believed that she loved him, but as it was, I never really did. To sell me on love at first sight, an author really has to lay the groundwork that shows that the lovers have a lot in common before they meet, or else that one complements the other in an essential way. But I didn’t see anything like with March and Clarissa.

Jennie F.: I would’ve settled for laying some groundwork that Clarissa was ready to be deluded; that she could fall in love with the *idea* of March rather than the man himself.

Janine: Oh, excellent point. There was a while when I thought that this was where Lockwood was going. I thought Clarissa would turn out to be merely infatuated rather than in love, and to be deluding herself about March. I think I would have found Forbidden Shores more interesting and more romantic book if I had felt that something like that was conveyed, because the infatuation could then have been merely an obstacle in Clarissa and Allen’s relationship, and overcoming that obstacle would have ultimately made Allen and Clarissa’s relationship stronger.

Jennie F.: I agree. I guess it was it was more unconventional, but not very romantic. By the end, Clarissa at least was saying that she had loved March, past-tense, but again I didn’t feel I got enough of her interior thoughts to really get a feel for when her feelings changed. Presumably when she found out what he’d done to Allen, but that doesn’t make her particularly admirable, that she tolerated his abuse of his slaves but only fell out of love when that abuse extended to Allen.

I ended up feeling that Lockwood really gave Clarissa’s thoughts and motivations short shrift, which was a shame, because she had some potential as a character.

Janine: I too felt that a lot of Clarissa’s thoughts and emotions were missing from the sections in her POV, and this made the book more frustrating. I’m still not completely sure whether Lockwood intended us to believe that Clarissa was merely infatuated or that she felt a deeper love for March than that, although I lean toward the latter. But either way, because I couldn’t believe in Clarissa’s love for March, and because I thought a lot less of when she loved him (or thought she loved him), the story fell apart for me toward the end. I was still interested in Allen and his character arc, but there wasn’t enough in the book to satisfy me.

I also have the feeling that I was supposed to find March sexy and to care about what happened to him. But I just didn’t, because of the way he made his fortune. Maybe it sounds moralistic of me, but I can’t help it — this is the way I feel.

Jennie F.: I think we were supposed to at least understand the magnetism that drew Allen and Clarissa to him. I don’t think Lockwood was entirely successful in depicting that, though again, I think maybe she could have done that through examining the aspects of Allen and Clarissa’s characters that could have made them susceptible to March in the first place, rather than trying to make the reader fall in love with March.

Janine: Yes, good point. What do you think about the erotic aspects of the book? I thought the first sex scene between Allen and Clarissa was mega-hot, and a few others were pretty hot too. There were others between the two of them that I could take or leave. The mà©nage scenes didn’t really turn me on much at all, and I don’t think it was because it was a threesome. I have enjoyed a threesome scene in one of Megan Hart’s books, so I think the issue here was that having so many unrequited feelings flying around made the scenes somewhat uncomfortable to read. I did enjoy one very hot kiss between March and Allen.

Jennie F.: I think this is where the book did succeed for me – I found all the sex scenes pretty hot. I do hope the author writes more erotica, because I think she has an affinity for it.

I did mean to say that I liked Clarissa’s forthrightness in suggesting the mà©nage a trois. That could’ve come off as a porny erotica set-up, but it had a bit of poignancy because of the nature of the triangle.

Janine: It’s mentioned on the back cover that Allen has a secret, and even though it doesn’t come out until quite late in the book, I guessed what it would turn out to be very early on, and even had a strong hunch about what would happen when it came out, which proved to be correct.

Jennie F.: I don’t know if I would’ve guessed; I was bad and read ahead. I think there were some hints, but I’m not sure if I would’ve put two and two together.

Janine: Well, it’s clear from reading Blythe’s review at AAR that she didn’t guess the secret, and I really don’t think most readers would. I seem to (she says immodestly) have a knack for that sort of thing. But because I did guess this secret, I kept waiting for it to come out and when it finally did it seemed like that section of the book, and especially Allen and Clarissa’s reactions, was too compressed and should have been fleshed out more. I think the book needed to be longer.

Jennie F.: I agree with you that the book would’ve worked better had it been longer. I would have liked to have known more what Clarissa thought about Allen and her relationship with him after the revelation of the secret.

Janine: Overall, I felt that there was a lot to appreciate in this book, but also some things to be disappointed in. The ending does point to a HEA, but I didn’t feel the book was very romantic.

Jennie F.: I think I agree that it did not feel very romantic in spite of the hinted HEA – I think because Clarissa’s feelings for Allen never seemed to rise above attraction and liking, and when they were estranged, a sort of nostalgia for him and their times on the ship.

Janine: What grade would you give Forbidden Shores?

Jennie F.: I would give it a B; not a high B – closer to a B- than a B+. Judging it strictly as erotica I’d probably give it a B+; judging it strictly as romance a C. I do give it a bit of a bump for being something different; I’m always looking for that.

Janine: Me too, which is another reason why I wanted to love this book, and am somewhat disappointed that I didn’t. I’m not sure if I’ll be tempted to reread it, but I’m glad I read it at least once and I do think it’s above average. So for me, the B- grade seems to fit.

This book can be purchased in trade paperback format.

Related posts:

1. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. REVIEW: Forbidden by Lila Dubois
3. REVIEW: Forbidden Pleasures by Lora Leigh

This was a top seller at Samhain’s My Bookstore and More a few weeks ago. I’m always curious about what other people are reading and so I bought the book blindly (no cover, no blurb) and I had never read you before.

India Powers is a woman who has spent her whole life pleasing her impossible parents only to be overlooked for her less successful older brother. She even went so far as to get engaged to a man she doesn’t love because it was the one thing that really pleased her parents. When India finds her fiance in bed with another woman, she decides that no amount of parental approval is worth a lifetime of unhappiness. She breaks off the engagement to the fury of her parents and heads off to take a vacation on a remote island.

Rafe Santiago and Grant Thompson have been best friends from childhood. Now adults and business partners, Rafe and Grant are weathering Rafe’s nasty divorce. During the marriage, Rafe’s wife constantly made plays for Grant, sometimes attempting to pit the two friends against each other. One stormy night, Rafe and Grant satisfied Rafe’s wife’s urge for something more exotic. This even created a closer bond for Rafe and Grant which Rafe’s wife found to exclude her. The two men decide to take a break from their business to celebrate the divorce and Rafe promises Grant that they will find the perfect woman to be a part of both their lives. (Grant is quite skeptical of this).

The three meet at a small airport awaiting the plane that will take them to their island destination. India’s battered confidence is salved by the attention to the two handsome men are paying her but before anything is acted upon, the three board a plane. The plane goes down and the three get stranded on an island. There, they find succor in each other’s arms.

I did like that you explored the pyschological aspect of the threesome and that India wasn’t ready to jump into bed with both even though she was attracted to both. I thought she should a natural and believable hesitation. What I found a little less believable was that the men would be so focused on inducting India into their little sexual society when they were just newly stranded. It seems that you would be more worried about being rescued than being laid.

I wish that the villians were more carefully nuanced. Instead, the parents and the ex-wife seemed to be caricatures and you were drawing a careful line between people. They seemed either all good or all bad. I also thought that India’s lack of confidence which returned after being stranded was frustrating. I would have also liked to have seen more of the survival skills that India, Rafe and Grant would have had to display in order to survive for so long on the island.

I did like the part of the book dealt with the social consequences of being part of a threesome and the idea of being open about the lifestyle even if that meant being the subject of derision. I.e., being with the people you loved mattered more than what others thought of you. While this book didn’t work quite as well as I had hoped, I would be interested in reading you again. C.

Best regards,

Jane

Stranded can be purchased at Samhain.

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