French Quarter
Lacey AlexanderContemporary erotic romance
Available from Samhain Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-60928-202-8
September 2010
| Liz hires Jack Wade to find out if her fiance is cheating on her. When she walks into his office, she is amazed to find Jack a beautiful man with a sexy Cajun accent. The moment she sees him, she begins feeling sexy and uninhibited. A wild side begins to show in her. Jack and Liz hit sparks off each other immediately. When she goes to a strip club to see if her fiance, Todd, is really going there after work, she notices she's attracted to some of the female strippers. Jack notices, too, and gets one of the women to give Liz a lap dance. Watching Liz and the stripper pushes Jack's attraction to a new level, while Liz is amazed that she liked the lap dance, and more, liked knowing Jack was watching. The more Liz is around Jack, the more she wants to do the forbidden, but only with him. The more they're together, the more they both want to stay together, but neither are able to admit it in any way.
French Quarter reminds me of 9 1/2 Weeks without the disturbing obsession between characters. It's raw, hot, sexy, and gives a thrill of the forbidden. Liz wants to experience everything sexual with Jack, things she'd never even thought of before she met him. Jack is not the typical intense Alpha hero; he has a quiet, simmering intensity to him that is excellent for his character. He was a different kind of hero than I normally see in erotic romances, but he was fabulous. He was also tender and caring of Liz; he wasn't just with her to have meaningless sex. Their relationship starts out as lust and slowly grows into love. At no time did that seem forced or contrived; the author flawlessly merged Liz and Jack's lust into and with caring. Though French Quarter crossed a few boundaries I've never seen in an Ellora's Cave book, it was done with real feeling and an amazing style. The ending was true to the romance genre and will satisfy readers. Though French Quarter was definitely one of the raunchiest erotic romances I've read, I enjoyed the book and will read the author's next one. And it's a rare thing for me to like an erotic romance with some of the content it had, as I tend to read more "vanilla" erotic romance. It's a true testament to the skill of the author that I would recommend this book to friends. I didn't like the parts of the story involving strippers, and there was too much usage of the P-word, but, overall, French Quarter was an extremely hot, satisfying erotic romance. Sexual Situations involving both hero and heroine together: m/m/f menage, several incidents of public sex, lap dances, grinding and touching involving two female strippers, anal play.
Overall rating:
Reviewer: Tara Black |
