Review: Fifty shades of elegant
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 20, 2012
Readers who enjoyed the storyline in E.L. James' "Fifty Shades of Grey" even as they held their noses at the now-often-parodied writing, may take a welcome breath of fresh air. With this new series, James Wood gives us an engagingly sexy BDSM romance framed in beautiful, elegant prose. No roaring inner goddesses here; no titans of industry working through their childhood traumas; no dilettante self-indulgence. Far from the synthetic grandiosity and hyper-inflated operatic emotionalism of so much contemporary erotic romance, Wood's settings and characters are refreshingly ordinary, down-to-earth and always believable.  Though the when and where of the narrative are kept intentionally vague, as if locked in a kind of "Pleasantville" time warp, this only adds to the sense of intimacy.Wood invites us to share in his heroine's journey of sensual discovery. Still hiding in her shell after the dissolution of a long and unfulfilling relationship, Paula moves back to her hometown to live with the aunt who raised her. We look in on the young woman's unbidden fantasies, born of frustration and loneliness. We watch her growing fascination with a handsome neighbor, which soon takes on an innocently obsessive quality, manifested in voyeurism and, ultimately contact, capture. and seduction."Seduction" is the first book of a promised trilogy. Each installment is tantalizingly brief, comprising little more than a third of a very short novel.  The storyline is cumulative; subsequent parts more or less meaningless without reference to the earlier episodes. One might expect these eventually to be collected under a single cover. (I've read the first two; the third is scheduled for release in January 2013). On its own, "Seduction" is a quick, pleasant read; an expertly crafted piece of erotic diversion, and certainly worth the download. Readers in search of a good story that also happens to be exceptionally well-written, highly polished and delightfully stimulating need look no further than James Wood's "Paula's Place".