When Dante sees Hayley, he knows her soul. Hayley is the reincarnation of his first wife, Lillith, and his first love, Beatrice. Yet, where both of those women betrayed him and had a core of selfishness, Hayley seems all that is good, all that he could want in a woman. But she doesn't belong in Purgatory, in the hands of a fallen angel who shares his soul with a demon...which leads Dante to realize that he can't have her, and to wonder how she ended up there in the first place.

Sheri Gilmore is one of the few authors I read regularly who includes a significant amount of kink into her stories. It's testament to her skill that I usually enjoy most of what she writes. Hot House: Dante and Hayley was no different, but the sex scenes were a bit more abbreviated in this release. Often, it would start with foreplay, but the scene would end before Dante went further, or stopped for reasons of his own. I found this a bit odd and frustrating, but it did leave quite a bit of time for story and character development. The different, yet sometimes similar, goals of Dante and his demon-self, Dis, were stark. I found the difference between the two selves to be a benefit to the story, even when I wanted to skip over the moments when Dis was in control, as he was certainly more kinky and less restrained than Dante. In some ways, it was a guilty pleasure to read them. While I could easily see Dante's appeal to Hayley, the love was a bit harder to see. From a reader's perspective, Dante was a man that could easily be loved, but Hayley was rarely privy to Dante's feelings. But, despite that, I liked Hot House: Dante and Hayley as an erotic romance, and I'm wondering what happens to a character that shows up later in the story.

Overall rating:
Sensuality rating: Explicit

Reviewer: Tara Black
June 9, 2005