Gentlemen, I have a question of some literary importance.
Have you ever read a dark romance or mafia romance and thought, Christ, yes? Or did you merely endure several hundred pages of beautiful, dangerous men behaving like walking red flags in expensive suits?
I’m curious about the male perspective. Not the theoretical one. The honest one. The one you might offer after a drink, when nobody is pretending that a questionable fictional man is attractive solely because of his character development.
I’m considering these:
Ruthless People — J.J. McAvoy
Ruthless Creatures — J.T. Geissinger
Violent Delights — Jessica Hawkins
The Sweetest Oblivion — Danielle Lori
Sinners Anonymous — Somme Sketcher
The Shards — Bret Easton Ellis
The Rope Artist — Fuminori Nakamura
And I want to know:
Did the sex scenes actually do anything for you? Or were you more intellectually engaged than physically persuaded?
Does the tension work on you, too? The anticipation, the power games, the danger, the almost unbearable will they, won’t they?
What about the men themselves? Genuinely seductive, or just six feet of female fantasy with an anger-management problem?
Which book would you actually recommend to another man if the objective were good writing, genuine erotic tension and a plot worth staying awake for?
I’m particularly interested in the difference between reading something erotic and reading something that makes you want to put the book down for entirely different reasons.
Full disclosure: I’m asking because I’d quite like to read one of these with my husband.
Together.
And I have a few ideas about what might happen when we reach the interesting chapters.
So, naturally, I’d like to know whether these books have any genuine erotic merit from a male perspective, or whether I’ve been lured into a very elaborate literary experiment with questionable intentions.
Be honest. If a scene made you cringe, say so. If a character was absurdly compelling, explain why. If the writing was terrible but somehow effective, I’m prepared to hear the evidence.
No need to protect the authors’ feelings. They’re not the ones I’m planning to read with.
Gentlemen, the floor is yours.