AUTHOR: Anastasia Rabiyah
PUBLISHER: loveyoudivine
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 11k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotica
COST: $2.75Life at the Chattel is easy but boring for Anne, until a man with too many scars and even more names chooses her for a Wednesday assignation. He doesn’t want sex. He just wants to hold her. But the darkness in him feels all too familiar, the fire he creates in her belly an ache she welcomes. Forever doesn’t scare her. Neither does he…
I found myself surprised by this short story. I’ve never read anything from this publisher before, and other offerings I’ve seen by this author at other e-pubs seemed less than promising. The prose isn’t anything exemplary, though it’s clean and unassuming. The heroine, too, isn’t any kind of unique archetype. She’s a whore who’s tired of her job, going through the motions and saving for a rainy day that never seems to come. There’s nothing really original with Anne, but at the same time, I found myself liking her.
Then, the hero gets introduced. He goes by a different name each week, all the names of angels. His body is scarred though powerful, and though he might be gorgeous, what sucked me in was his whole melancholy, tortured vibe. He just wants to hold Anne the first night. It’s romance hero 101, but I fell for it, all the same. There was a certain grace to his scenes with Anne, an easy sensuality that swept me up. I wanted him to return to the story, just as much as she did every Wednesday.
This is not a romance, but there’s a satisfaction to the ending anyway. I like that the author didn’t take the easy road out with this, though one particular development in the end made me roll my eyes. Still, it was a brave move to end it the way she did. It encourages me to try some of her other work at some point. If I can fall for a hero in a short story like this, especially a hero that should by all rights have pushed my “oh, please” button, I have to wonder what I might do with something longer.
| Readability | 8/10 – Simple and unassuming, quite readable |
| Hero | 7/10 – I’ll admit it, I fell for the tortured vibe |
| Heroine | 7/10 – The whore with a heart of gold has been done to death, but she feels surprisingly relatable |
| Entertainment value | 8/10 – I got sucked into the wish fulfillment/fantasy of this |
| World building | 7/10 – The real world is adequate enough, but there are a ton of questions left unsaid about the hero’s existence |
| TOTAL: | 37/50 |
1 comment:
Thanks for the review. I appreciate your comments. My Guy was a challenge to write. The theme was "courtesan" targeted for the courtesan anthology to release at loveyoudivine (Seductive and Sold), and no, not my theme of choice, hence the twist to what the main character turns out to be. If you're looking for something lighter, and tails and claws don't bother you, try Goblin's Bride from Amira Press--one of my odder works that makes readers giggle.
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