Thin and unassuming, K.’s latest is a titillating and highly provocative tinderbox, conflating taboo themes of hierarchal...
Prolific eroticist K. (Honey B., Sexual Consultant, 2014, etc.) conjures a fictionalized wet dream starring a hypersexualized woman and the domineering hoodlum who sexually enslaves her.
Though the mysterious, unnamed raconteur of this erotica describes herself as an ordinary woman, she’s really an experienced physician who exudes “a sensation of calm, a sense of security.” She’s swept away by a cocksure, bearded, “dense and dreamy” stranger named Nathan, whose livelihood includes larceny and money counterfeiting. K.’s novella, easily read in one heated sitting, glosses over plot in favor of the sexual exploits between the narrator and Nathan as their relationship intensifies to incorporate kink and sadomasochism. Nathan is slowly revealed to be a crestfallen attorney and military serviceman–turned-criminal, but that hardly deters the narrator from pursuing him. Their respective appetites for carnal satisfaction seem infinite; any opportunity for role-playing and sexual adventure is met with agreement, including the addition of Jo, Nathan’s sexy “surrogate,” to their lovemaking. The book consists of short vignettes that ultimately blur into a carnal cacophony of three-ways, safe words, penis rings, and jail bailouts, as the narrator who “wanted a bad boy and got one” swiftly becomes rapt and ultimately enamored by Nathan’s sexual bravado. Readers of graphic erotic fiction will appreciate K.’s smooth delivery of unbridled passion coupled with introspective ponderings in which the veil lifts to reveal her protagonist’s true nature. This aspect elevates the narrative from one-note fantasy to an explicitly personal chronicle complete with a surprise ending. Although the ever reliable narrator spends most of her time being bossed around and used like a Fifty Shades sex toy, the story is very much owned and operated by her. “I didn’t want somebody to love,” she unapologetically confesses. “It was more selfish than that, I wanted somebody to enjoy my body with me.”
Thin and unassuming, K.’s latest is a titillating and highly provocative tinderbox, conflating taboo themes of hierarchal subservience, gender domination, and eroticized objectification.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-5002-6171-9
Page Count: 132
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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