TBR Challenge: ‘RODE HARD’, by Lorelei James

The topic of this month is TBR Challenge: Sugar or Spice (closed door “just kisses” or super steamy)

Ridgeview Publishing, 11 /2014

Published: Nov-2007

Genre: Erotica

My Rating: three stars

Part of a Series: Rough Riders #2

I read the first novel of the series Rough Riders and I liked it, so I bought the second one. Moreover, I plan to buy more, as some of the characters appear in these two novels and I want to know what happens with them.

Erotica is not easy to read and enjoy and I guess it is not easy to write. You have to put enough explicit sex to be exciting but at the same time you have to put a good love story, so the romantic and the erotic part need to have enough development.

I think Lorelei James achieves both objectives: there is a lot of steamy sex, with a little bit of what could be considered kinky –spanking, bondage, threesomes and anal sex. However, you can also find characters who discover each other, that fall in love and struggle to find their HEA, defeating their own insecurities.

An interesting thing about this book is that there is not only one couple but two. The main one is the main reason why I bought this book: Gemma and Cash. In the first book of the series you met of both them, and it was clear that there was something simmering between them.

Gemma Jensen is a widow, the owner of a ranch.

Cash Big Crow does not have a place to call his own; he is a good cowboy that had a past in the rodeo circuit.

She is in her forties. He is a decade younger than she is. But, do you know what? Age is just a number.

Gemma contracts him to be her foreman. He accepts working for her, but with one condition –they will sleep together and he will be the boss in the bedroom. Gemma has no problem with that, because she has been lusting after him for years.

Unbeknownst to her, Cash is the father of Macie, whom he had while a teenager. Their relationship has been nearly non-existent and now that her mother is dead, they try to connect, to know each other better. Therefore, there goes Macie, with his father, to Gemma’s ranch.

She will knew one of those notorious and wild McKay boys, the little one, Carter. He is an artist, but is working for Gemma as a way to earn money. Carter is obsessed with Macie, wants to paint her, it is the muse that is going to inspire him great works –he is sure of that. At the beginning, it looks like a not very sane obsession.

Both Gemma and Macie are strong and have clear ideas. They seem more mature that the men of their lives. In the case of Cash, because he has been in love with Gemma for so long that he does not tell her because he is afraid of –what, exactly? I am not sure.

What is Carter’s problem? Well, he feels that, in such a great family as his, nobody really knows him, but Macie does. What does he do? From my point of view, he sabotages their relationship not attending to her real wishes.

What I like about Lorelei James is that the characters are common people that have great sex lives. You do not need millionaires or sophisticated erotic clubs in order to have kinky sex. In a sense, it is the kind of what I call ‘Ikea erotism’, the common life hot sex.

I am not interested in the erotica that gives you BDSM, brooding millionaires or sex clubs. I prefer this kind of book that presents you common people, with their modest economies, their complicated emotional lives. Life is not perfect –these Romance novels say– but you can find incredibly steamy sex in it, it is only a matter of finding the partner that is good to you.

I read it, I enjoyed and I will easily forget it. I think it will hardly be an all times favourite for anyone. Nevertheless, it gives you exactly what you expect and that honesty is the best that can be said about any commercial fiction product.

I certainly will keep on reading more Lorelei James books.