Review: Excellent writing, hot cultural reverse plot, understated humor guaranteed to make you laugh.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 18, 2014
If I smile on the first page, and laugh by the second page and the writing flows, I know I've got a winner. I've read other stories by Ms. Jaret and enjoyed them. One in particular, Bryan's Girlfriend, was so unusual in style with a clever plot that I gave it my first five star review for an erotica genre story. After asking Ms. Jaret a question about one of her short stories, she divulged that she was almost ready with a new erotic novella with the cultural reversal, younger man / older woman. I believe this plot line is difficult to do well, without descending into Mrs. Robinson, or a Cougar tale, but after reading other work by Ms. Jaret, I figured if anyone could pull it off, she could. I was very happy when she accepted my offer to let me, somewhere between alpha and beta, read it. Her work is so damn clean when you get the first copy after only a few others have seen it that it is like an easy beta read, but I believe I was a little earlier than that.The tension between the young stud and the middle aged mother was classic. He's had the hots for her since he was 12 and now he's 23, and his feelings haven't changed. She's in mid life crisis, after a messy divorce, about her body and unsure of her attractiveness to any man. What was so unusual was that the young male was grounded, polite and respectful of her, even though his hormones were raging in general and for her in particular. I enjoyed that very much. The dichotomy was that he was a student athlete who was always a star, in the limelight, always getting his way, until an injury dashed any hopes of a professional career. Yet he was very smart and still determined to continue on with his life and he knew what he wanted from her. What he had to convince her of, was to understand that she was beautiful and adored and just needed to see herself through other people's eyes, especially his. And she made him realize what his career potential was and gently persuaded him to reach for it and take it seriously.Knowing how this must end is what keeps you turning the pages, along with deft prose that is easy to read. That, and the incredibly understated humor. I laughed my ass off sometimes, but I'll let you find the lines that are the gems. It's worth the journey. The only spoiler alert I'm going to divulge is that it is an HEA kinda story with a reasonably believable ending. However, I'll be honest, about 2/3 of the way through the book, I wrote the author and gave her my ending, pretty much knowing what her ending had to be. Although Ms. Jaret brought hers off very well, with a nice twist and it was satisfying, mine would have been a very outside the box twist that would have left you breathless. ;) Ms. Jaret sensibly used hers. We also had our differences about one graphic scene, and she was very gracious to hear me out, and I was happy to know that she had thought about that scene carefully and had a different POV that was logical. It's refreshing to know how seriously she takes plot development and it's reflected in her work.I look forward to more erotic tales from this talented author. I want to be able to tell friends I knew her before she became famous. Now, if I could only convince her to write wetter and messier graphic scenes, one of the keys to sizzling erotica. I think she's holding back on us. ;)