Ellora’s Cave, $6.49, ISBN 978-1419914638
Romantic Suspense Erotica, 2008
Becca Hamilton meets Jack Duritz for the first time during her brother’s wedding. Ah, someone else’s wedding—the most popular occasion for romance heroines ever meet guys that drive them horny. Still, our heroine loathes the woman his brother is marrying, and she also believes that her new sister-in-law’s brothers are all doing or selling drugs. They also make the move on her, and that’s disgusting. Well, Jack also makes the move on her, telling her that he’s had “carnal fantasies” about her. No, people, he’s not in his sixties, despite his phraseology. He’s hot, which I guess is why Becca is tempted to put out to this guy. However, he tells her that he is a friend of Becca’s brothers, so regretfully, she decides not to bend over in some room and become the cliché of a romance heroine that gets shagged by some friend of the couple in chapter one.
We cut to later, when Becca, revealed now to be the owner of some yoga, woo-woo, and whatever shop, and Jack is a police detective. She reports that she has visions of people being kidnapped, so naturally the cops think that she’s suspect number one. Has that ever made sense, this admittedly overdone plot development? Jack is skeptical of course, but our heroine soon becomes the next target of the kidnapper. It’s up to Jack to hoist his pistol and give Becca the best bodyguarding she can ever ask for.
Oh, Mystic Circle. A good romantic suspense ramps up the tension, tightens the pace, and delivers some chills to keep the reader at the edge of their seat. A good erotic romance is full of sizzling sexual chemistry and boiling hot sexy romps to make the reader’s toes curl. This one is neither, does neither.
Far too much time is spent on detailing mundane details or having the main characters circle one another without actually dry humping one another, so there’s not much sexual tension or suspenseful vibes for a very long time. The villain is more of a background plot device than a genuinely menacing threat, so that’s another strike against this one being a good romantic suspense. The characters spend way too long talking in circles and when they finally have sex, it’s more like a tepid romp than fireworks set off on Guy Fawkes Night. So, that’s another strike against it being an erotic scorcher. The paranormal elements jump start the premise, but they feel like they are plastered on as plot contrivances and gimmicks that pander to bestselling trends of that time, rather than an organic, seamlessly integrated aspect of the plot.
What this one is, therefore, is a very ordinary kind of average and flawed. The characters tend to unnecessarily make sassy remarks to one another when a straight-up conversation would have served the moment better, but that’s a pretty common problem found in so many stories of this sort. The pacing is off, but pick any random flawed romantic suspense and I’d find that problem too. The characters are bland and unmemorable, driven by a single trait or two that define their entire personality—again, a common problem marring way too many mediocre romantic suspense stories. These characters spend time having sex to meet the erotic romance quota when they should exhibit more urgency and focus on the case at hand. I can go on and on, but I think folks reading this review will get the drift by now.
What I’m saying is that there are many flawed, forgettable, and very average romantic suspense stories out there, written by authors that often came off like they’d be better off writing maybe romantic comedy or something else—authors that seem to have no clue what makes a good romantic suspense tick. Everything here, from pacing to tension, is completely off. The only difference Mystic Circle has that sets it apart from these examples of universal mediocrity is that it is being passed off as something erotic under the Ellora’s Cave banner.
It’s tempting to call this a paint-by-numbers effort, but even then, it feels like the author had a few of those numbers wrong.
