Review: 3.75 Review for Desire and Deception
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 5, 2011
Sometimes you sit down, open a book that you have been told is an Erotic Romance and are somehow introduced to a story you did not quite expect. This is exactly what happened to me for this review of Desire and Deception. Ms Buchbinder has written a novel mixed with love, murder, intrigue sprinkled with a pinch of humor to have cooked up one heck of a busy story!We have two young women, both professors at a local college. Each has their own story to tell as their lives intercept for this story. Izzy is a Latina, daughter of a Mexican crime boss with a husband, a lover and 3 children. Sarah Wright-Rosen, newly married to handsome Doctor Dan Rosen has one agenda: to beat the biological clock and have a baby. So our story begins.The first hint of trouble: Sarah is embroiled in finding the dead body of her boss and mentor drowned. Sarah was fishing with her husband after a business event she attended, off the coast of Florida, and reeled Bobbi in on her line. Sarah being a black and white type person, is not satisfied with the police blowing it off as an accident. She returns back to work to find notes to her from her deceased boss implicating a tenured professor of wrong doing. Sarah sets out to find a killer, and Dan is not at all happy with it, as terrible acts of violence towards Sarah start to occur.I do not want to add any spoilers. Ms Buchbinder has woven such an intricate story, switching between the lives of these two women chapter by chapter leading the reader down a path of no return. The addition of Dan's Jewish mother adds a just the right amount of humor to break the dark mood that follows us.As our story proceeds, we start to see the changes in these two young women. As we grow life has a way of doing this and they are no different. Rated erotica this book certainly is not sex for sex sake but a part of life of two healthy young women who are with loving partners and is quite natural to the storyline. Izzy uses her sexuality because it is a tool to get what she wants.Each woman has their own personal baggage that we learn about, each woman abused in different ways as children, and this is what makes them who they are today. Sarah had a drunk and abusive mother, and Izzy had a father that abused her both sexually and emotionally. Learning about this gives us the background on why they are who they are today. Ms Buchbinder gives us characters that are real, flawed and like someone you might even know.I had trouble liking Dr Dan. I felt he was too overbearing at times and then not supportive in others. I sometimes became overwhelmed by too much story being given to me, changing the flow of my read, so that I had to set the book down to digest. I liked the growth of Sarah who at the beginning was a bit of a wimp, who grew into herself and curbed her green eyed monster. Izzy kept us guessing all through the story on which destructive path she would take. This is not a quick novella 99 cent read. Once you open page one you are invested in this well edited story.Reviewed by Gloria LakritzSenior Reviewer and Review Chair for the Paranormal Romance Guild