Fredrica Alleyn

The Dining Club is more than the name implies. It is a place to discover how far you are willing to challenge your sensuality and discover/expand your sexual horizon. This is erotica at its best.

Our story follows Grace as she discovers David, the man she has fallen in love with, cannot commit to his love for her, unless she is able to discover and participate in the kind of lovemaking that makes him complete. The Dining Club provides a series of tests which will expose Grace to BDSM. If she show more is able to complete the 4 trials involved, David will be able to finally fully commit to her.

The trials, although not extreme, left me wondering how far could someone go to prove love and commitment. Through this serial novel, we come to know our characters in some depth. This serial novel evolves through 8 different insttallments. We ourselves are placed in the trials with Grace, making us wonder how we ourselves would survive each test.

This story is brilliantly written, with full character development and a great plot line. The ending is good but leaves me wondering if the author is considering a spinoff novel or novels. There are characters in this novel I would love to read more about! show less

Desire is part one of a series called The Dining Club which is made up of eight separate novellas. This story was sexy no question, but didn’t have the length needed to get me hooked. I’m not sure if this prevented me from connecting with David and Grace, or if I just didn’t like them. I thought it was kind of sleazy of him to invite her to the super secret members only club for freaky sexy times without at least a subtle heads up. Something like "hey, pack your nice panties because show more strangers might see them."

Grace seemed like a strong independent woman who turned into a wuss in David’s presence. Maybe had the novella had a little more meat I would have a different POV. At $1.99 an installment (for a less than a 50 page novella) I doubt I’ll read more.

It looks like this may be turned into a full length novel that will be published in January 2014. I truly think this will read better as a full length novel.

Note to self: Words like length and meat read super pervy when reviewing erotica. Check thesaurus for alternate wording next time. show less

Basically, if an author of Harlequin Teen novels was commissioned to write a book that had scenes of submissive sex play, this is the book you would get.

There are two major problems with this book - first, that the manner in which the Domination/submissive elements are illustrated is inept; and second, that the romantic storyline that was shoe-horned in was painfully condescending.

This book is NOT for anyone who already has a grounding in the tenets of Dom/sub play. The way it is shown in show more this book is not true to life and will set your teeth on edge. There is no discussion of trust or safe words, or any of the basic rules that any responsible player puts into place.

This book is strictly for people who find the idea a bit hot, but know they wouldn't want anything too heavy. Also, it is for people who need an element of romance to feel OK about kinkier sex - not that this book covers particularly kinky play.

Personally, I felt that having the instructor and student fall in love (is... that a spoiler?) was insulting. It was like saying that women can't enjoy the idea of a good fuck without making sure there was "love" there. Even if that "love" was between two people who hadn't spoken except to get into various sexual positions.

It is also painfully traditional in its gender roles: while both men and women go to this resort to learn to be submissive, the male guests also take a dominant role when paired with the female guests. The female guests, of course, never act dominant. In fact, instructors and others go out of their way to mention how unattractive they find "these kinds of desires in women". Including the 'romantic' lead.

In short, I thought this book was pants. It was quite simply not a hot enough book to make you forget the embarrassingly unbelievable love story or the inconsistently handled Dom/sub play. Not worth the price. show less

This book starts fast, with little to no plot or character development. Lots of unbelievability. However, it does get better as it goes. At first, I didn't care for the female protagonist, but soon found myself sympathizing with and rooting for her. Her "best friend" is horrid and the men are all extremely chauvinistic and self absorbed...ALL of them. A warning for those who find that behavior to be triggering.

Overall....decent vintage horror read.