Gamble of a Lifetime by Eileen Ann Brennan

TITLE: Gamble of a Lifetime
AUTHOR: Eileen Ann Brennan
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 14k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $2.99

Coming off a bad break-up, Lauren goes to her best friend’s Halloween bash determined to have a night she’ll never forget. When her ex shows up, determined to get her back at any cost, Lauren is saved from unwanted treatment by Ashton Claymore, dressed as a riverboat gambler. She decides to indulge in the attraction, and the sex blows her away. But Ashton has a secret; he’s a ghost, stuck on the riverboat, able to become corporeal only one night a year. One night will have to be enough…

I know not to expect too much from EC Quickies. With the publisher’s focus on sex over substance, I either purchase the story because it a) hits a kink, b) sounds sexy as hell, c) is an author I trust, or d) sounds like it might vary from the norm. I bought this particular story because of B and D, and while it pretty much failed on the D part, it satisfied enough of B not to feel like a waste.

The sex is hot, mostly because the prose is clean and easy to read, and I don’t need to struggle to like the two leads. There isn’t a lot of character development, but they don’t feel too much like stereotypes, either, which in a short, I can live with. I’m not sure I would have jumped to try the story if I knew the party she was attending was an orgy, though. That tarnished the appeal of the story for me, especially since the author wants me to buy into them finding love in the space of a single night.

I was mildly impressed with how the author resolved the conflict of the central story, though, mostly because I thought she would go another route. While I never really bought Lauren’s terror about her ex – there’s very little backstory to that, and it almost comes as much of a shock to her as it does the reader – I was invested enough in Lauren and Ashton to gloss over that particular aspect.

At the end of the day, a diverting few minutes, though it’s not something I’ll likely remember for very long. It’s just not unique enough nor did it grab me by any of my senses enough to stand out from the pack.

Readability	8/10 – Easy prose with only minimal purple moments
Hero	7/10 – Believable without being too over the top
Heroine	5/10 – I never really got a good feel for who she might be outside the party
Entertainment value	6/10 – Not as much fun as I had hoped, but better than other quickies
World building	6/10 – Starts out strong and degenerates from there
TOTAL:	32/50