Charlie J Forrest

Stately pleasures is available now and is published by X-Cite.

Well, it was bound to happen. As soon as I started looking at doing reviews I knew the day would come when I read a book and just didn’t like it.

I will preface this firstly with the vague excuse that this is just my opinion and you may enjoy this book a lot more than me. I’ll also stress that Stately Pleasures definitely falls into the category of erotica rather than erotic romance, so a lot of what’s to come is essentially irrelevant in many respects. I didn’t really like this book, but not to the extent that it could join Jeremy Clarkson or Rupert Cox on my unfinishable books’ pile of shame. But there are some things that bothered me:

I think the choice of perspective is something you only really notice when it doesn’t fit. Unlike romance, it seems the considerable majority of erotica is written from the first person, so Felthouse’s choice of third person is a bold move but one that I found uncomfortably distancing. This was coupled with what felt like a great setup that wasn’t fully followed through. I don’t want to post plot spoilers, but for me there wasn’t enough weight behind the central plot device. The characters felt like they were all pretty much on the same page which makes for great happy sex, but undermines the overall tension of the piece.

Lastly, I just didn’t really buy into the characters. No this isn’t necessarily important, but I felt from an early stage that the book’s core theme of two fit blokes and a curvy lady suffered a little from not making the characters distinctive enough. (I’d be tempted to call them Thing 1 and Thing 2, but that’s both a Freudian and Zeussian nightmare!) This may also be just due to my perspective. I mean, whilst I’m a never say never kind of guy, I think a simple abundance of cocks and hunky manflesh doesn’t make the top ten on my bucket list. In which case, well, that’s my fault and please feel free to ignore me. Also I’m not saying that there isn’t a good variety of activities in here, in fact many of the scenes are pretty good, particularly with their focus on sensuality, and there’s a healthy proportion of kinky stuff going on as well (and no I’m not going to clarify what I consider a ‘healthy’ level of kink the same way I’m not going to tell you how long this piece of string is).

Stately Pleasures is a light piece of escapism that felt a little too light for my tastes. There’s lots of kinky fun in here and the protagonist is explicitly described as a realistically proportioned human being, which is always a plus in my book. I’d say that, for me, it over-stayed its welcome by about a hundred pages, but, as I think we’ve established, this is probably just because I need to learn to stop worrying and love more cock.

Have I said the word cock enough in this review? Perhaps not… COCK!