Review: Has its flaws, but still an above-average example of the genre.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 15, 2012
Mari Carr, <strong>Tequila Truth</strong> (Samhain Publishing, 2008)Short (~78 pp.) novella that has a good deal of ambition, though ultimately doesn't quite fulfill same. Standard porn setting that never seems to work out in real life: three best friends, two male and one female, have been living together ever since college, with she believing that he 1 and he 2 just look at her as one of the guys, when in fact both of them want nothing more than to get her into the sack. She lets slip her two-guy fantasy during a drinking game one night, and after some discussion, they decide to go for a no-holds-barred naked weekend, no strings attached, all go back to being friends on Monday. (And the guys can't touch each other. That goes without saying. sigh.) What separates this from the pack is that Carr is willing to at least touch on, if not fully explore, the deeper emotional consequences that such a thing can lead to, even if it is in service of resolving this in the most genre-romance way possible. Not that there's anything wrong with that.That was sarcasm. There IS something wrong with that, very much so, though I'm willing to give Carr props for breaking trail into an area most Kindle porn writers very consciously avoid. I often wonder whether writers don't go there because they've never been involved in a triad, whether the situation is simply too emotionally complex to go into from their perspective, or whether they avoid it simply for the sake of convenience. Being the cynical bastard that I am, I'll tell you I usually land on #3, but that's obviously not the case here. I'm willing, given that Carr's fumbling in the depicting-emotions arena is just as charmingly nave as that of the protagonist of any book entitled <em>[fill in the sexy female first name]'s Time</em> that aims for any sort of realism, to accept that #1 is far more likely than #2 here. Pro tip: bet you'd get a kick out of the research. (Not directed specifically at Carr, but more generally at authors writing multiple-partner erotica.)I alluded to the other thing that's wrong here. Why in the world is it that the guys can't even accidentally brush up against one another? Here I have a way more cynical interpretation (kind of like the homophobic version of #3 above): I think authors have some sort of crazy idea that if you actually depict a triad of people who love equally, they'll lose the "gay is bad, mmmkay?" readership. I grant you, I've never been one to attempt to make money with any of my creative endeavors, and so I'm no expert on the subject... but I have to say, if you do, good riddance.Someday someone will write a triad book along the lines of <em>Tequila Truth</em> that addresses these issues in a competent, mature manner, treats all the protagonists with the respect they deserve, and which still contains meltingly hot sex. That day, to my knowledge, has not yet arrived. Until then, <em>Tequila Truth</em> is one of the deeper, more thoughtful shorts on the subject. Worth a shot. **