Review: Love with reservations
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 2, 2012
From the first page The Erotic Dark had me, but...  The sex scenes did roll off the page even if they made me scoff at the heroine for allowing herself to be thrust into such situations. My own personal reactions to the demands of her three 'captors' were much stronger than the heroine's and although the heroine seemed somewhat empowered at the end of the story, the sexual cruelty she was subjected to would have cowed any normal person and pushed them into the realm of the sexually abused (quiet, tense, submissive because she'd been beaten into it, broken).  There were a couple of times in the book when Gabriel was particularly cruel, that I sincerely doubted that she would have stayed on the plantation simply because she'd been reminded that she'd agreed to accept their abuse in exchange for their protection. I liked the ending except for the inference that Gabriel - who was emotionally and mentally, the cruelest of the trio - was all knowing and all seeing and had acted in such a way that was ultimately, for the heroine's 'own good'.  I didn't quite buy that and it seemed too silly and pandering to me.  Yet as far as balancing her character's different personalities, dialogue and story premise, the author's craft is exquisite.  And as far as being degrading to women, well, if there is a woman out there who would be personally degraded by this sort of erotica (it's always our choice ladies), perhaps she's reading in the wrong genre.  Perhaps she should try contemporary women's fiction?  This story is flawed, but hot and savory. A Petrarch good read.