Nightshade Collections, $0.99
Contemporary Romance, 2016
The first time chef August Jaeger – yes, he’s a chef, not some barbarian from a distant planet – spots Saffron Burton, he’d love nothing more than to slip some pork down her egg roll. He loves curvy women, you see, and she’s curved to kill, if such a term exists. Alas, she may be a spy sent by his archnemesis to discover the goodies he intends to serve during Restaurant Week, Denver’s most popular foodie event. Well, Saffron is actually under pressure by her editor to do a scoop of August’s secret plans, but once she’s had a scoop of his ice cream, there’s no going back!
Now, if you have read stories in which a female reporter goes undercover only to put out to the object of her investigation, you won’t be shocked to learn that Saffron eventually can’t do it, et cetera. Nothing new in Acquired Taste, in other words. Just a simple tale in which the plot is just an excuse for the main characters to get it on, and then, once she gets off a few times, she goes off the rails where her mission is concerned, and this is the sign of true love, so those two get off happily ever after. It’s all so beautiful… if you haven’t read this kind of story before, or that you find the sex scenes so hot that the rest of the story doesn’t matter. That last part is subjective, but I personally felt those scenes are a bit too vanilla to be considered erotica material. No banana buggery, no milk shake explosions, nothing of that sort, sigh.
On the bright side, this is a cleanly written and easy to read story, and while the main characters are on the one-dimensional side, at least the whole thing is painless to read. If this is a real life kind of sexy, it’s more of a forgettable one night shag. Well, I have no specific complaints, but at the same time, I’m not exactly bowled over to go for another round. Perhaps it is a good thing that this is part of a 10-stories-for-$0.99 boxed set, as I’d probably impose more exacting standards on it if it was more pricey.
