Ada Stuart, $0.99, ISBN 978-0463313763
Contemporary Erotica, 2020
Oh, so there really is a National Nude Day—US only, I assume, and from what I can see, that falls on July 14. Hey, talk about good timing, and I just happen to read Ada Stuart’s Bared to You just a few days before this auspicious day. Mind you, unlike our heroine Sophia here, should I get naked and barge into a hot guy’s place, I’d probably be greeted by the wrong kind of screaming and a haul of my rear end to the nearest jail.
Instead, Evan is a bit confused when his friend shows up clearly naked under a robe asking him to celebrate this auspicious day with her. She’s always wanted him, you see, and since it can be very difficult for a hot woman with a killer body to get any man she wants into her bed, she decides to use this nude day gimmick to allow the author to make some money out of writing a story get her a man. What do you think, will she succeed?
Now, I notice this story has been edited by some folks at Literotica (it says so on the first page), but I’m not sure whether this story had been published there before. Don’t ask me to go look, as my country has installed a nationwide block on that website and don’t worry, Surfshark and NordVPN are not sponsoring this review so I’m not going to launch into a plug of those services.
This is a super short story, and half of the pages in this already short thing are devoted to plugging the author’s other works. I suppose I can’t complain too much, considering the price of this story, but there are many other works that cost the same and are far longer, so folks that are particular about cost versus word count may want to take note of this.
Another thing to note is that this story has a label about dubious consent, which I’m sure authors such as Ada Stuart are aware to be a selling point as much as it is a warning to other people. However, I’m not sure that I’d describe this story to have such element. Everyone seems perfectly happy to do whatever they do here. Maybe the dubious consent part comes from folks that inadvertently spot these two shagging, I suppose. “Are those two hot people shagging? Right in front of my salad?”
Anyway, this is a short thing so I’m not sure whether I can say much about it. The sex scene is fine, although it’s not something I’d consider memorable or outstanding.
I will say, however, that despite this thing being of diminutive length, way too much time is spent on the two characters talking about getting naked. Let’s be real: when someone buys a story labeled as a “Short Taboo Dubcon Friends to Lovers Erotic Romance”, I don’t think they are planning to sit down and then go through pages after pages of conversations. We don’t have much time or space for the hot stuff, and the author still opts to hone her conversation skills through these characters. Why? The time and the alphabets could have been used instead on more sex scenes!
Bared to You attempts to play the slow burn game, but it ends up being more of a quickie that starts with way too much babble and ends before I can even blink and say, “Wait, you’re already done?” Should have just swiped left in the first place.
