Unexpected. Dark. Intense. Angsty. Strange obsessions. This book is many things but mostly, compelling.

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First of all, for any book I have ever reviewed as a moralist concerning fidelity, I apologize as I loved this story, which does contain infidelity. I really wish there had been no Laura character at all because how she was treated distracted me from the story somewhat. She was treated as a convenience.

That issue aside, I really like this author with her ability of seamless story telling, pulling me into this story of obsession, which, appropriately, I read compulsively. The story contains much eroticism along with some minor mysteries and minor intrigues. I don't know how many (there are many) erotic couplings occur in this book but I didn't skim over any of them as they felt key to the story.

What a smug little nerd I was assuming I knew how this book would end. It is a bit of a stretch to have the entire HEA with Caton's past lying and manipulation, but I was on board with them getting together.

Reading other reviews it makes me feel like a some sort of black sheep, but this book didn't do it for me, and I'm not really sure why.

The characters are well written, though for but fleeting moments I couldn't bring myself to care for them. Their journey should feel thrilling, only it was like a drag to me. Nevertheless, I think it's a good book. Guess I just picked it up at the wrong time.

This is one of those titles I would have completely ignored if not for a friend's enthusiastic recommendation. I don't normally go for erotic romances because I tend to skip over repetitive sex scenes and I'll probably just end up skipping most of the book! :) For me, the emotional connect just isn't there anymore when they've done it Nth number of times so let's just get on with the story already. :)

Not this book though. The blurb pretty much explains upfront the infidelity angle. So I was expecting some sexy, naughty but light tale on fooling around behind hubby's back. But the book is much darker, and so much deeper than that.

We have two ladies in unequal stations, one a boss of the other. Boss lady Amelia commits what is essentially, on-the-job sexual harrassment of the other, with mind and D/s games. It is utterly demeaning and shameful, but something in our PA girl Caton has been awakened. And she thirsts and craves for it. At this point we only see the POV of the hapless and lowly PA and how she becomes hopelessly addicted. Amelia controls every encounter--when, where, how, how long, how much. Is she just using Caton and eventually tossing her aside? Or is she herself, addicted? And what in the world is she, the prim, proper, obedient wife doing right under the nose of her husband?

So what makes this book different from the tons of erotica with this same basic premise? It's the author's skill with words. Most of the first part of the book is told from Caton's POV, so we shiver along with her in equal parts frustration of not ever knowing whats going on with Amelia, and equal parts anticipation of when she'd ever again throw Caton any morsel of attention.

At 360+ pages filled with tons of sex, I was a bit surprised I did not skip over any of them. The author is very creative. No scene feels like i've read it a few pages or chapters before. These two ladies practically talk with their bodies. Who needs dates or movies? ;) The erotic encounters move their relationship forward, albeit it repeatedly sputters and stalls because they have no clue what's going on exactly and jumping into bed too fast seem to have stifled their verbal skills. :)

This isn't a BDSM book however so we are not treated to things that get kinkier with every staging. This is every bit lesfic romance. So expect sex, frustration, sex, angst, sex, tension, sex, drama, sex, suspense,sex......and more sex, and finish it with what I can only say is a very Hollywoodish ending. In other words, well worth the money spent.

Rating: 4.25* of fiveThe Book Description: In her now-famous introduction to this first collection by a then-unknown young writer from Mississippi named Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter wrote that "there is even in the smallest story a sense of power in reserve which makes me believe firmly that, splendid beginning that it is, it is only the beginning." Porter was of course prophetic, and the beginning was splendid. A Curtain of Green both introduced and established Eudora Welty as in instinctive genius of short fiction, and in this groundbreaking collection, which includes "Powerhouse" and "Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden," are the first great works of a great American writer.My Review: Her first collection of stories, published *the same year* as her first story appeared in print! ("A Worn Path" in Atlantic Monthly {as it was then}, in 1941.) Diarmuid Russell, the superagent of his era, sold the collection on the strength of that...to a friend of Miss Eudora's who was working at Doubleday, Doran (as it was then). That, laddies and gentlewomen, is damn near inconceivable to today's publishing professionals. A collection by an unknown barely published writer getting published by a major house? Who's she sleepin' with?The Muses. She was a gifted writer, and stories were her perfect métier.It's a first book, though, and no matter how hard one tries, there is the inevitability of imperfection and probability of overexuberance. Here:Night fell. The darkness was thin, like some sleazy dress that has been worn and worn for many winters and always lets the cold through to the bones. Then the moon rose. A farm lay quite visible, like a white stone in water, among the stretches of deep woods in their colorless dead leaf. By a closer and more searching eye than the moon's, everything belonging to the Mortons might have been seen--even to the tiny tomato in their neat rows closest to the house, gray and featherlike, appalling in their exposed fragility. The moonlight crossed everything, and lay upon the darkest shape of all, the farmhouse where the lamp had just been blown out.first paragraph, "The Whistle" in A Curtain of GreenThat's a lovely word-picture, and a kind of eerie mood-setting image. It's also too long and just a widge overwritten. But the story, a chilling little piece, is plenty interesting. It's always good to have an isolated farmhouse with a married couple basking in pale moonlight when something unexplained and menacing in its unexpectedness happens. The story left me physically chilled. And it's not her best work.I am a major partisan of "Why I Live at the P.O." as among the great stories of the American South's culture. It's a flawlessly built, amusingly written moment in a family's life, a piece of time that any Southern boy with sisters or maternal aunts can not only relate to but practically choreograph. So I hope to tell you I marched in and got that radio, and they could of all bit a nail in two, especially Stella-Rondo, that it used to belong to, and she well knew she couldn't get it back, I'd sue for it like a shot. And I very politely took the sewing-machine motor I helped pay the most on to give Mama for Christmas back in 1929, and a good big calendar, with the first-aid remedies on it. The thermometer and the Hawaiian ukulele certainly were rightfully mine, and I stood on the step-ladder and got all my watermelon-rind preserves and every fruit and vegetable I'd put up, every jar."Why I Live at the P.O." from A Curtain of GreenTwo sisters have a spat about a man, and the family weighs in. Hijiinks ensue. It's a chestnut now, it was a chestnut then, and it's damn good and hilarious.This is my idea of a good story collection, and the writer who created this first crack out of the box is my idea of gifted, and there is not one thing I'd say to her except "well done, Miss Eudora" if she stood right here in front of me, not one little hint of a frown or trace of a doubt in my voice. Make those mistakes and make 'em big, Miss Eudora, because if this is the FIRST then the BEST is gonna knock "good" right into "superb."And it did.