Linzi Basset, $0.99, ISBN 978-1386702931
Historical Romance, 2020
Poet James Madison causes our heroine Katherine Blake to have a super wet and super explosive Fourth of July down there just by reading out his poetry.
I am not kidding, people.
Katherine breathed in deeply. She clenched her thighs together in a desperate attempt to stem the flow of hot, wet juices from her pussy. Her drawers were soaked. Every word that escaped his lips in that husky and dulcet tone caused shiver after shiver to course down her spine.
She was on the verge of a climax and that from listening to the seductive poem he’d just read.
If he has such an effect on me with his words, what will he do to me when he touches me? Oh, how I long to feel those long fingers of his trace the curve of my breast, his tongue licking my nipples and then down my stomach to suck on my … ooohh!
Katherine hunched over, clutching her waist as an unexpected spasm rocked through her body. Her pussy flushed with hot, wet juices. Her thoughts had transposed to imagining those hands and lips on her body … so intense that it culminated in a mini orgasm.
I don’t know if I wanted a guy with such a super power, I wanted that super power for myself, or the heroine is probably just a sad person that needs to go out, feel the sun, and maybe straddle a few fence posts along the way.
Oh, yes, the story. It’s 1908 in Linzi Basset’s The Poet’s Lover, and the town librarian Katherine is plumping up her cleavage in bated breath as she hopes that James, who has returned to town, would notice her and do lovely things to her body.
James, however, is all ooh, dare he befoul an innocent with his foul, dark side, ooh wobbly melodramatic organ sounds in the background please as he writhes painfully in thwarted lust. What is his dark side, you ask? Is he a PDF file with a baby shoe fetish? Is he majorly attracted to barn animals, perhaps, or maybe decomposing corpses?
No, people, it’s that he… he… oh, brace yourself, genteel people… he likes to dominate his women in bed.
It’s shocking I know, because this dingbat clearly doesn’t know romance heroines well, for all his purported travels round and round the block with women. Don’t we all know that virginal women are all naturally submissive in bed? One just has to tie them to a bed and they immediately transform into the ultimate shibari-powered windmills of every man’s dream.
Now, when it comes to this story, I have no issues with most of it. The author’s narrative style is polished, making me wonder whether Linzi Basset is a pseudonym for an old pro wearing a new hat. While the hero’s “ooh, dark side” is hilariously overblown, he’s okay. This isn’t a long story, so he’s okay for all the limitations of the length of the story on his character development.
I just don’t like the heroine’s motivations in wanting to be smashed by the hero.
Now, I’m all for a DTF heroine, and this is one premise that works very well if all she wanted was an affair—his angel of the morning, it was all she wanted so who cares if the echoes of the morning said that they have sinned, etc, that kind of thing.
Instead, I’m told that she is doing all this because she wants to marry James, and yes, she wants to also make him all monogamous and devoted to her too.
How will she do this? Well, she’d just play his sexy games and hopefully he will fall irrevocably in love with her.
Maybe I’m just old and cynical, but I only need one look at the heroine’s motivations to see the inevitable crash and burn had this been real life. Wanting to change the man into her idea of a perfect husband… by playing up to what he wants her to be? That is not the way; that’s how people that should know better get their hearts broken.
Heck, if Katherine is trying to get married because she needed his money or something, I’d still buy that, but no, she is trying to live out a dream of being a Disney Princess by putting out to the guy in every way that he wants it. Making things worse is how the hero keeps reminding himself, everyone, and me of how innocent Katherine is even after he’s stuck everything of his that can be stuck into every feasible bodily orifice of hers.
In other words, The Poet’s Lover sees the author wanting the heroine to be a glorious slut, but at the same time she wants her cake and eat it too by insisting that Katherine is being a slut for all the right, “moral” reasons—sure it stings, but it’s for that ring, so the heroine is still pure where it counts, people.
The end result only makes the heroine an idiot on her path to crashing and burning, only to get a happy ending because the hero has a fetish for innocent women.
Meanwhile, another woman that wants to put out to James to get his money is demonized. Sting for the ring—good, sting for the bling—oh my god, what a ho.
Oh yes, this story has a few tags on the product page, and one of these tags is “satire”. Because of this, I read this thing twice to see whether I missed the satirical elements the first time around, but alas, maybe they are just too subtle for me. All I get is a story that reinforces the dumber tropes and stereotypes of the historical romance genre, instead of satirizing them.
So yes, this is a well-written story, but yeah, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all baloney.
