Samhain Publishing, $5.50, ISBN 978-1-60504-470-5
Contemporary Romance, 2009
Depending on your personal preferences, Alisha Rai’s Glutton for Pleasure is either one to read or one where you proceed with caution: it features not only an interracial romance but also a ménage à trois relationship involving two brothers and a woman. And no, the two brothers aren’t in a relationship with each other – you have to look elsewhere if you want that kind of stories, heh.
The Malik sisters run The Palace, a popular restaurant serving up the best spicy Indian dishes that will apparently set your hair on fire or something. Devi Malik, our heroine, takes pride in her culinary skills, but despite her confidence, she gets a little distracted when rich bloke Jace Callahan decides to pay a little more attention to his favorite chef. The thing is, Jace tends to share everything with his twin brother Marcus. It’s time for double-team nookie!
I have some high hopes for this story, perhaps too much of high hopes, so I suppose you can say that I have set myself up for disappointment. My biggest issue with this story is that the prose feels clunky and stiff. There is a monotonous quality to the writing that makes it hard for me to fully feel engaged with the story. The author also chooses to include some of the most awkward dirty talk I’ve come across. There is nothing wrong with the message behind those words and under any circumstances, I would probably find them erotic. But in this particular instance, I find the whole thing really artificial and even funny due to the unfortunately stilted quality of the writing.
I touched on the sex scenes because this story has a considerable amount of them, to the point that I actually remember them more than the rest of the story, heh. The characterization is a little on the thin side. Devi is a familiar brown cow heroine who blooms as a sex goddess under the attention of her two paramours. Ms Rai has made some efforts to ensure that Jace and Marcus are different people despite their resemblance to each other, but these differences feel superficial. Once the clothes are off (which is pretty often), the two poor men may as well be Meat Head #1 and Meat Head #2.
Glutton for Pleasure is still in a way a story worth a look if you like your interracial romances to be red hot and spicy. But Ms Rai’s technique here is too much on the unpolished side for me. Hopefully her next story will flow a little smoother and therefore be more enjoyable to read.
