Wild, Wicked, & Wanton

Wicked, Wild, & Wanton Jaci Burton Grade: B- Sensuality: Burning I've never read Jaci Burton before, but I've heard her name bandied about on various blogs. She's one of the authors listed in our If You Like... feature, so when I noticed her book prior to that two-month book-buying celibacy, I picked it up, even though at the time I wasn't quite ready to start reading erotic romance again.

I wrote about Burton's book in the October 8-9 issue of At the Back Fence on the topic of erotic romance. As with much of the erotic romance I've read since the Ellora's Cave type material started appearing in more "mainstream"-published books, two of the stories were predicated on premises practically de riguer right now: the threesome and the independent woman who secretly desires sexual domination. The third novella featured a storyline I've actually never come across before - voyeurism - and it was my least favorite of the three short stories.

The book centers around three women who are BFF. None are in relationships or have satisfying sex lives, so they come up with a pact: Two of the friends will pick a guy for the third to sleep with, in round-robin fashion, until all have been thoroughly boinked into happiness. As a result of these supposedly one-night stands, all three women find true love.

In Wild a divorced veterinarian with self-esteem issues and a decided lack of decent sex in her background - and in romanceland, what other kind are there? - ends up having a threesome with two men who are close friends who happen to like sharing women. The guys really light her fire, but she discovers she has true feelings for one of them...and wouldn't you know it, one of the love-'em-and-leave-'em men returns her affections, but since he's a player and she's not looking for a long-term relationship, neither knows how to go about acting on their feelings. I tend to prefer two in a bed rather than three, so when it came time to settle on a grade for this book, I entered C+ rather than B- in my database.

Wicked, my favorite of the three novellas, earned a B+ from me. The story features an independent woman whose mother was used and abused by so many men that our intrepid heroine refuses to consider any sort of involvement with the one guy who actually gives her wet panties. What she doesn't know is that he's got her number, and he's going to prove to her that she needs to be sexually dominated by him and that she won't lose her independence by giving in in the bedroom. I am a sucker for dominating men and strong but secretly submissive women, particularly when the domination is left firmly inside the bedroom. Though there were some outrageous moments in this short story - such as the one that would likely have resulted in a police officer being fired for sexually harassing a citizen - this one really did it for me.

My least favorite novella was Wanton. I'm not really sure why, but here are a couple of possible reasons. The voyeurism scenario is pretty new to me and I think watching other people have sex in person is pretty sqeezy. I tend to discount that one, though, because I really liked Donna Kauffman's ...And When They Were Bad, from I Love Bad Boys, which also featured a couple who get turned on by watching others have sex. Or it could have been a combination of both overly-ambitious and sloppy story-telling; the author included a semi-sub-plot involving the greedy head partner at the hero's lawfirm who is not only a sleezebag, he's a hypocritical sleezebag (really, aren't they the worst kind?). Over-stuffed, and over-stuffed by stereotyping is never a good thing, so my grade for this short story was a C-.

This is the one and only erotic romance I've read in months and months. Will I try Burton again? Because I so enjoyed Wicked, the answer is a definitive yes.

TTFN, Laurie Likes Books

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit