Spice Briefs, $2.99, ISBN 978-1-4268-0778-7
Contemporary Erotica, 2007

Letting Go is part of the Spice Briefs imprint, which means for $2.99 you’ll get a single-chaptered short story of a naughty nature. How naughty? Think, oh sex toys, rear end action, and other things that one would expect from Ellora’s Cave rather than Harlequin.

Marc and Becky decide to spice up their two-year marriage by making a getaway to a mountain cabin. Becky is privately a little concerned that her not-so-adventurous side may not measure up to her more outgoing husband’s expectations so this is one getaway where they will indulge in all their fantasies. They have a big box of sex toys with them, so it’s going to be a more heavy-duty kind of holiday than those Becky is more used to.

Because this short story is more of a situation than an actual story, I am only presented with a scene of Marc trying to loosen Becky up for some jolly good anal session. Naturally, being a romantic tale of raunch, this story ends with Becky purring with pleasure instead of Marc weeping and screaming into his mobile phone for an ambulance to be sent to the cabin ASAP.

This is a readable story and Ms McCarty has a way with naughty scenes, but the overall story is too short to be of any use other than a diversion one could read and chuck aside in fifteen minutes or so. My reaction to it, on the whole, is a ho-hum kind of indifference. I do wince once a while, though, when I can’t help recalling how much I’ve spent on this thing. This is even shorter than a typical “quickie”, “tryst”, or any other electronic publisher euphemism for a really, really, really short story, mind you, so if you ask me, this is also a pretty pricey diversion at its $2.99 price tag.