Samhain Publishing, $2.50, ISBN 978-1-60504-051-6
Contemporary Erotica, 2008

Mallory Malone’s erotic interracial romance Lady Sings the Blues reads like a textbook on erotic romance shortcuts. Perhaps it is a good way for the story to work, since it is after all a very short one, but I’m sure the author could have done things a little less obviously by the number.

Our heroine Alina Gabriel is a retired exotic dancer who has parlayed her fame into running a successful club called the Scarlet Lady. In this club, scantily clad ladies run around ordering drinks and experiencing aural-induced orgasms by watching Joshua Hanover play his guitar and croon hot sexy songs along with his band. Oh, don’t worry in case some readers are concerned that Alina was some kind of slut because she happened to wave her thonged rear end at old men waving fistfuls of cash once upon a time. She just needed the dough to finish business school and start this club. She and Joshua want to get it on, but while he wants more, she’s not ready to commit to his idea of “more”.

This story relies a lot on the reader’s familiarity with clichés in order to fill in the blanks where the characterization and the details of the setting are concerned. It gets to a point where I wonder why we need the author if the reader can pretty much map out the story herself.