It *is* better written than FSoG on the prose level, so that's why it earned itself 1 star on top of FSoG.

Else this is just another plagiarism of The Book Which Shall Not Be Named. In fact down to little idiosyncrasies, the state of utter immaturity of the MCs, the tics and spleens. Everything and everyone is the stereotype of the trope of what they might be.

Just saying, but why can't there be--just once--a friendly secretary of a CEO? Why do they all get painted bitches?

Why do people behave on first meetings as if sex was a throw-away article? Not just that this isn't very erotic, but I wouldn't want to be with someone treating sex like eating a hamburger (or rather less so, I guess these characters would take greater care choosing a clean restaurant).

I'll not even go into much further detail, I was quite simply bored. And annoyed. Irritated even.

No, I don't like it. I don't exactly hate it either, I'm between "really meh" and "bored to tears". I also do not at all and that is emphatically not at all, get the hype this book is getting.

I'll be frank, please don't bite my head off!

Firstly, it's a rip-off. It's a rather badly disguised concoction of:

1. LaMont Cranston (Lucien and Crane? Even the same initials) is "The Shadow". Which used to be a pulp novel series in the 1930s, was then put on radio (Orson Welles cut his teeth on it), and then made a movie in the mid-nineties with a still very cute Alec Baldwin as Cranston. An American ex drug-lord, ex-junkie, ex-criminal, ex-smuggler chief of mafia-don standing, stationed somewhere close to or in China, who gets abducted by a "tulku" (shaman) and turned into a good person through magic.

This will get very spoilery after the "read on" point.

I love me realistic May/December romances as much as I love reading about awkward male virgins, and I thought this might be a good one for both, written by an author I know from m/m, one I usually like.

Not so, I'm afraid. For one thing the "older woman and widow" is just 6 years older than the male virgin, which quite cancels the May/December aspect.

A man has a nervous breakdown. He is forced, by the firm he works for, to attend a camp in which layman shrinks infantilise and physically, sexually and psychologically abuse people like him until they comply with their standards. This story reads, quite unfortunately, exactly like those religious "we god-love the gay out of you"-camps in which gay youths and men get abused. It reads like the detailed horrors of zealot brainwashing within a sect.

I am shocked at the amount of people who clearly don't grasp what is described here. I can understand fetishists (of rape, non-con and psychological torture) loving these books, because this caters directly to their Id.

But so many people read this and don't even mention in a passing word that what we witness being done to Dale is actually gravest abuse, that it leaves me breathless. I have a hard time believing that everyone who gave it 5* actually is into the abovementioned fetishes. I am myself into BDSM, so I do have an inkling just what the percentages and spreads are. Thus this amount of blithe acceptance leaves me shocked. I keep wondering why this is so. Really, really shocked.

I'm not going to say much about the actual content, as these are shorts and that would give away too much.

However, I absolutely loved this book, for me it went from hilarious to tearjerking, never anything less than erotic, even if sometimes only in minute places, and completely, totally fresh! That was what delighted me most: these are stories you haven't read a hundred times before, they are original, fantastic and in a sense very real, very down to earth.

The author needs to work on her blurb, for it is a pity these stories are obviously read by the wrong crowd. This is rather dark, and no easy erotica or even overblown, tropey Fifty Shades-style erotic romance. If there's one author I'd compare these stories to content-wise then it is Remittance Girl. Not as polished as her, but as original and deeply erotic as her.

1. A Most Surprising Date - 4*

Thoroughly enjoying this! Hilarious! ;)

2. Suzie's Lessons - 4*

Original :)

3. Riding the Devil's Horse - 3.5*

A bit too long, but I loved that, including the ending.

4. Notes from Roissy, Cleveland, Ohio - 5*

A lovely, lovely take on realities. And again a wonderful twist at the end!

5. Topper - 5*

Oh dear, what a lovely, lovely twist!

6. A wife of No small promise - 5*

Bloody mean! And superbly entertaining.

7. A necessary beating - 5*

Ouch.

8. INR - 5*

Fantastic!

9. Portrait of a Wife as a Middle-Aged Woman - 5*

Breathtaking. Reduced me to helpless tears, at times deeply erotic.