AUTHOR: Melinda Barron
PUBLISHER: Resplendence Publishing
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 19k)
GENRE: Paranormal ménage erotic romance
COST: $3.50
An evil spectral presence at a funeral nearly kills medium Martin Vandreen, but he escapes, determined to find out what it could be. When lovers Rumer and Noah break into his home to enlist his help, he learns the presence is an awful witch who has been finding human hosts for centuries. Now bound to the cemetery, she’s about to be freed, unless Martin, Rumer, and Noah can stop her…
I have the worst luck with ménage erotic romances. I admit I have certain parameters that I try to match up; for instance, I’m not interested in anything involving family members sharing, like a group of brothers with one woman. And all that needing a third to complete them is usually rubbish. So even though I look at them when they come out, I invariably buy very few ménages. Yet, even those few I buy end up being a waste of money.
I liked the premise of this novella. I’d read the author before and I hadn’t been hugely impressed, but I thought, It’s been a year and a half, maybe I just had bad luck the first time. The excerpt seemed like it might be tense and interesting, too. Martin undergoes a very unpleasant experience at the cemetery, and he seemed to have a sense of humor about the whole thing, so I gave it a go. The first chapter is fine enough, even the second chapter. But then Rumer and Noah show up, and everything goes downhill from there. Not in the conflict. I can buy the fact that Rumer finds it necessary to break into Martin’s home and ask for his help getting rid of the witch Josephine. No, the part where I start to lose it is when Rumer and Noah decide to spend the night to supposedly protect Martin from Josephine, and because there’s no guest room, they’ll just sleep in his bed. In their underwear, of course. It’s just ludicrous, and only becomes more so from there.
The next morning, Martin wakes with a hard-on, and two people who want to have sex with him. At that point, the dialogue takes a turn for the worse: "Why don't we all play together," Noah said. "I'm hard, too, and I know my baby's wet. Mutual masturbation might help us forget the horrible way we met last night." I thought there might be a respite when it shifted back to the ghost plot, but after a brief encounter, Martin decides what he needs to feel better is – guess what – sex. It might have been more palatable if the sex scenes worked for me, but these didn’t either. Under no circumstances will I ever find the word “anus” erotic. Especially when it comes so close on the heels of “nether opening.” It just got to be too much, because as soon as that engagement with the scene breaks down, it’s next to impossible to get back, especially when the things that bothered me in it are still prevalent.
Unless you’re a fan of the author, or don’t mind terminology like “nether opening” in your sex scenes, I can’t say that I’d recommend it.
| Readability | 6/10 – Starts out all right, but the dialogue made me laugh, which only made the overwritten sex scenes even funnier. |
| Ménage | 4/10 – Not hot, and starts out with one of the silliest reasons to put three people naked in a bed together that I’ve read in a while |
| Characterization | 5/10 – Individually, could probably hold their own, but any attempts to make them well-rounded fail as soon as talk turns to sex and emotions |
| Entertainment value | 3/10 – The idea is promising, but I lost any sense of credibility for it as soon it tried to turn amorous |
| World building | 6/10 – Hints of some nice atmosphere, but it gets lost in the erotic elements |
| TOTAL: | 24/50 |
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