Review: Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin…oh my!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 24, 2014
I’d been reading “Between the Sheets” nonstop for about four fours and just barely finished the last page when I had to dash off to a regularly scheduled group exercise walk with five close women friends. We walk together and do other social stuff frequently so these women know me very well. When I arrived, they all noticed something different about me. One of the women suggested that if she didn’t know be better, she’d have thought the difference was that I’d fallen in love.Well, it turns out she and the others were extremely perceptive. At that moment, I felt on top of the world and enveloped in a warm feeling of mild euphoria. I was super energized and exhilarated. I felt like I was floating a few inches above the ground, like the sky was bluer, the grass was greener, the world was kinder…in short that everything was perfect.Naturally, what I was feeling was slow ebbing aftermath of a heady chemical rush of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. All that had all been brought about by reading “Between the Sheets.” The novel so effectively put me in the middle of a genuine romance that my body chemistry had temporarily changed. Imagine! A mere book did that to me! Naturally, the feeling started to fade after a few hours but it was oh-so-lovely while it lasted.For me, “Between the Sheets,” wasn’t just a novel, it was a genuine experience. The book delivered such a perfect mix of enchanting romance, edgy suspense, sassy humor, and charming real-life main characters that I slipped into a state of suspended reality and disappeared inside the book.The book is delightfully short. It’s got a terrific plot that keeps you glued to the story. Technically, the tale is a realistic fast-paced, erotic romantic thriller, but the emphasis is always squarely on romance, in particular the sensations of falling in love and being in love.The main character, Jenna Brooks, is a lovely, intelligent, lively, twenty-eight-year-old author who makes her bread and butter writing technical grant proposals for a marine biology laboratory. But unknown to her marine biologist mother and environmental lawyer father, Jenna is also a very successful erotic romance novelist who publishes under a pseudonym. She’s a happy single woman who just happens to write sexy romance books because it is the only love life that she wants at the moment. However……into that life stumbles handsome successful take-charge Riley Stone. He knows all about Jenna, but she doesn’t know that. He’s read a complete and detailed file on her. In addition, he’s read every one of her erotic novels. He’s even memorized the sexy male lines from the intimate parts of her books. He’s read them because innocent Jenna doesn’t know it but she’s front and center in an FBI investigation that Riley’s working as a special consultant. Jenna’s totally clueless that her life is in the cross-hairs of a major criminal plot involving one of the West Coast’s most notorious crime bosses. In the beginning, Riley’s out to use Jenna to gain information. But he didn’t count on how enticing it would be to just be around this bright, entertaining, lovable woman with golden hair and green eyes. He finds himself falling for her fast and hard…and she seems to be falling for him, too.Jenna had always written about “a sudden intensity, and almost magnetic attraction between a man and a woman” and now it was happening to her in real life.Oh my! I love literary fiction and that is what I generally review, but I can easily see how one can get addicted to this type of book: an intelligent, fast-paced, witty, humorous, erotic romance build around a short and thrilling suspense-filled plot. “Between the Sheets” was honestly just so fun to read! But most of all, it made me feel good. In fact, I desperately want more of that dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin cocktail! Genie Davis, Linda Marr, you make a great writing team. I can hardly wait for your next book.