eBook Review: Seduce Me by Dorla Moorehouse
Xcite! Books has a reputation for publishing quality erotica by excellent authors, both well-known and new. Unfortunately Seduce Me is a book that does not live up to the reputation of its publishing company. There are some excellent stories here, but quality of the anthology is negated by the presence of some poorly-written pieces. Add a series of typographical errors to the mix, and you’re left with a book that has the potential to be great but unfortunately fails to meet expectations.
When Seduce Me is good, it’s really good. Morwenna Drake’s “Mistress to Slave” is one of the hottest stories I have ever read. In this piece, a noblewoman in ancient Rome is turned into a sex slave when social roles are overturned during the Saturnalia celebration. Alcamia’s “Alley Cat” is both sexy and intelligent, relying on fascinating wordplay and animal imagery to tell the story of Kat, a good girl by day and a wild woman by night. “Candle Light,” by January James, has the perfect blend of sex and humor, when a woman uses masturbation to teach some rude campsite neighbors a lesson.
Unfortunately, Seduce Me‘s lows are just as extreme as its highs. Elanor Powell’s “Merrilee and the PM,” ostensibly about a couple who receives an alluring private message on a swinger site, lets the audience down by focusing solely on the sex life of the husband and wife and keeping the swinger interaction to (largely chaste) Internet messages. Powell could easily have given us an excellent spanking story if she had focused on the principal characters, but because she attempts to introduce the swinger subplot without giving it proper attention, the story feels unfocused and pointless. Ivana Chopski’s “Whack!” is a story that feels incomplete. It seems that Chopski was trying to keep the story open-ended, but I finished it with the impression that she had gotten bored in the middle of writing and quit. “The Pleasure Fixer” by Candy Bagham has a convoluted plot that doesn’t make sense. At first, it seems that the story is focused on protagonist Abi’s burgeoning lesbian sexuality. Suddenly it becomes about her and her lover, Gina, putting on a show for one of Abi’s celebrity clients. The show is supposed to lead to a threesome, but unfortunately, Bagham quits writing before we get to see that part. While sometimes not showing a sex scene leaves the audience hot, in this case, the abrupt ending is frustrating and disappointing.
On top of the uneven story selection, Seduce Me has a surprising number of typographical errors. There are spelling mistakes, omitted or repeated words, and other minor errors that could easily have been corrected. This volume appears to have been assembled without the work of an editor. While am willing to forgive a few typos in a book, in this collection they are so extensive that I could not ignore them.
I hate to have so many negative things to say about Seduce Me, because this collection contains some pieces that are true erotic gems, stories that stand out and deserve a wide audience. In addition, I love the Xcite! Books mission of publishing stories centered around women’s pleasure and power, and therefore I wish I could endorse every book they publish. However, I cannot ignore the generally uneven quality of the book. Because there are a few excellent stories, I won’t write the book off completely, but I will advise readers to proceed with caution.
Sally Jones
Lucy Felthouse
missstresscat
Alana James
scrivener13
dorlamoorehouse
