Review: Erotic Romance Done Right (A- Grade)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 26, 2012
From the large amount of free Kindle reads I've downloaded, I would say less than 10% are worth reading. When I find a gem among these duds, I count myself lucky. I found a true gem last week with Karen Erickson's Indulgent Pleasures. I adore this book so much that I have given it the KB, "I want to have babies with it", a label I don't use lightly. I've read Karen's work before. She has over twenty ebooks published and most of the ones I've read by her have been very short. I'd wondered, what if she wrote a full length novel. Would it be good? Well I can say Karen has exceeded all my expectations with Indulgent Pleasures. This is one hot erotic contemporary romance you must get your hands on. It's well written, sexy and with two amazing main characters. The hero, Justin Hawkins, a retired baseball player who has a reputation as a bad boy is a woman's dream come true. The heroine, Stephanie Shaw is  a woman we can all sympathize with. Stephanie thinks she's lacking in looks and overall sensuality because she feels she's just average. But the moment she bumps into, or rather stumbles into Justin's arms during a party, he thinks she's one of the most gorgeous women he's ever met because of her sparkling personality and overall peppy nature. And what's even better, a hot interlude in a limo between these two, leads to even more hot sexy times, which in turns leads to love. I didn't want this book to end because I was having such a fun time reading it.Stephanie is a writer for San Francisco's City Magazine who longs for her own column. She has her chance when her editor offers her an interesting assignment. Stephanie must find out a woman's top sexual fantasies. Stephanie gives off this good girl vibe and isn't comfortable with unleashing her inner goddess *cough*, I mean her inner vixen when it comes to attracting men. Stephanie isn't flashy or into wearing tight dresses or even being on the prowl for a man. She leaves this party she attends at some club where she scopes out the environment, feeling dejected. She almost falls to the ground but is saved by "big strong arms"that belong to Justin. She has no clue who Justin is, to his relief, because he's tired of women being only interested in him because of his reputation and superstar status in baseball. Justin was in a car accident and can't play professional baseball anymore. He's angry and hurt and wants to be left alone by the press. But when Stephanie literally falls into his arms, things begin to look up for him. The gentlemen that he is invites her into his limo and will drive her home. What happens between them in his limo is one of Stephanie's ultimate sexual fantasies.Justin and Stephanie have hot sex in the limo. Stephanie thinks it's a one night stand type of thing. Off she goes, leaving Justin who doesn't just want a one night stand between them. From this interlude, Stephanie writes about the encounter, not naming names, for her editor, Zoe. Zoe loves it and wants more of these types of articles from Stephanie where Stephanie's identity will be kept a secret along with the men she's with. Stephanie is not comfortable with this but wants a column desperately. And then Justin seeks her out. She tries to push him away but he's very interested in her and they start having a supped up, sexual relationship. Stephanie doesn't want an exclusive relationship with Justin and neither does he. But as these two grow more intimate and engage in hot steamy sex, their emotions get involved. Justin is the first to realize he wants more from Stephanie than just her body. Don't you love it when the hero figures out he loves the heroine first? Now Justin wants more from Stephanie but has no clue that every time they have sex, she writes about it in an article. If Justin finds out, Stephanie could lose everything.I adored Indulgent Pleasures with everything I have inside of me. This isn't a book with just hot sex for sex sakes to  keep the reader interested. There's truly a wonderful romance and relationship between Justin and Stephanie. I couldn't get enough of these two. They are equal cute together and just as freaky, but not too WTF freaky. An example of this is when Justin's knee is hurting and he has to stay in bed. Stephanie decides to take care of him knowing sex might be out of the question. She puts on a sexy nurse outfit for kicks. What happens is full of smoldering, close to smutty sex, but with intense feeling. Every time these two hit the sheets, their passion is out of control, but they also have fun.Watching Justin fall for Stephanie is one of the reasons this book worked so well for me. Stephanie's guilt over exposing every part of their sex life, which leads to a typical reaction from both parties involved, doesn't ruin the momentum and that HEA we all want in the romance we read.And so, I'm giving a call to action. Buy this book! For a self published book, I couldn't find any inconsistencies, poor grammar or awkward phrasing and sentences. This is one well edited, well written book with nice love scenes that are on par with most of love scenes I enjoyed reading in my romances.Indulgent Pleasures is erotic romance done right that shows a healthy, respectful sexual relationship we all can wish for ourselves. *pushes Fifty Shades of Grey aside*.Katiebabs