Review: Love or Voyeurism
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 7, 2011
EXTREME WARNING: Unless your computer has updated Norton Anti-virus protection or comparable protection against covert & malicious software (which infects your computer & then downloads all your files at night by spies) DO NOT ACCESS ANY OF MY REVIEWS!!! [This is no hype or joke.]As an avid reader, I have read (and still read) some of almost everything--from American/European classics, African novels, to African-American classics of history and literature. Since receiving my Amazon Kindle as a gift, I have read more romance novels than I ever have. (Prior to this--and as a genre--they got no respect from me--probably from my associating them with bored, and boring, white, middle-class, housewives.) However, once publishers discovered the very lucrative market of Black readers--and most especially that lonely, single, Black females would buy smut--the marketing of romance novels to them was inevitable.  Most of the ones I've read, I've come to regard as mediocre or sometimes just filth.  But every now and then one stands out from the pack. SOCA NIGHTS by Lexy Harper is one of these.  This novel is so well-written it makes you appreciate Black love and the art of good storytelling.  But it also makes you question whether today's Black authors are more interested in telling a good story about love or, additionally, being voyeurs (peep-freaks) into people's bedrooms.Most smut is transitory and, no matter how well-written, will not stand the test of time (Giovanni Boccaccio excepted.)  Perhaps today's Black authors are not really interested in having their works read ten, twenty, or thirty years from now--such as Zora Neal Hurston's THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD.  Explicit sex scenes (no matter how good the novel or the author's talent) may gain them money and temporary readers, but will most assuredly consign their work to literary obscurity. And this will be a shame for so many really good novels...as with SOCA NIGHTS--maybe the best romance novel I have read to date.  Certainly no one can tell an author what he or she should or should not write, but regarding explicit sex and longevity--sometimes showing less is really saying more.  There seems to be no middle-ground.  Today's author's must choose...sex as voyeurism, or sex as poetry and implicit love.SOCA NIGHTS is a well-written romance novel and an excellent read--which I do recommend (and have recommended).  But seven years from now, savvy Black readers may well ask--LEXY WHO???SUGGESTION TO AUTHOR:  Since you e-publish on Amazon, you might consider releasing two versions of this novel.  One, revised as literature; and another, labeled "explicitly erotic."  By doing so, your readers can choose which version they wish to buy--according to their personal preference.