Berkley Heat, $15.00, ISBN 978-0-425-22404-5
Contemporary Erotica, 2008
Be with Me isn’t merely a ménage à trois romance. There are three men involved with a woman, so that makes this a… uh, what’s the fancy French phrase to describe this arrangement again? Ménage à quatre? In my language, such an arrangement is described as “that woman is going to need therapy soon because, my goodness, one long-term beau can be hard enough to manage, so I can’t imagine having to deal with three of them”. Then again, the heroine is a policewoman who has the right to keep a gun and use it so I suppose the three men will know enough to keep a safe distance when she claims to have a headache and locks the bedroom door.
Anyway, I’m sure we are all eager to meet the happy folks. Regina “Reggie” Fallon is the policewoman heroine in question. She goes way back with Cam, Sawyer, and Hutch, although the friendship becomes sexual only after Reggie gets hospitalized after getting hurt on the job and the three men’s protective instincts are raised. But the threat on Reggie’s life is far from over, so there is going to be a hurdle or two to overcome before they buy an extra-large bed to accommodate all those people who are going to be using it.
Having read and enjoyed the author’s previous more-than-two romances, I find this one to be disappointing. I don’t know if this is because of the fact that we have three men and not enough pages to accommodate them all, but the three men don’t have strong distinct personalities and they seem to blur together after a while. They were orphaned kiddies who bonded together against the rest of the world, who become successful self-made men, and they are all close to Reggie, but that’s pretty much it. Reggie is a strong and pretty good heroine in her own right, but the men are a disappointment. Also, the whole “men rush to share the heroine because they want to protect her” thing is now a clichéd premise in polyamory romances and I wish the author has come up with a different reason to get the four characters together.
And before you ask, and I know you will, the sex scenes are hot – this is a book by Maya Banks after all – but if you are expecting some really, really risque scenes that defy physics and stretch ability, this one doesn’t deliver, heh.
Be with Me may have four in the mix, but I can’t help feeling that I’ve read stronger and more enjoyable books by this author in the past. This one doesn’t deliver the goods as much as I’d like.
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