Everything I Am Review

 



Also available from Amazon

Blurb

IT WAS THE SINFUL ATTRACTION THAT NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED…

Kinsley wasn’t supposed to fall in love with her mother’s best friend but she did.

Kinsley Cooper was always the only one for Seattle’s notorious playboy, Dr. Justin Walker…

So, what caused their illicit affair to end abruptly, tearing them apart and causing Kinsley to flee to find solitude?

After seven years, Kinsley has returned as Seattle’s newest sexologist, working at her mother’s clinic - the very one her ex-lover, Dr Justin Walker, works at also.

All she wanted was a fresh start but that’s harder said than done when the secrets of her past threaten to unravel the new beginning that she’s fought so hard to create.

How will Kinsley keep her past secret as she fights her guilt for her tempestuous affair from being discovered by her mother, all the while still being attracted to the one man who devastated her life..?


A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR

WHAT DREW YOU TO THE SUBJECT MATTER OF THE BOOK AND ALSO THESE CHARACTERS WITHIN?

I knew I wanted to write something that broke the conventions of “normal” relationship dynamics. I don’t think you can help falling in love with a person, no matter if they should be considered off-limits. I really wanted to shock readers with a relationship that was unusual. I don’t think I could have not written this book, especially when my dream was so vivid about Kinsley and Justin. I know dreams in reality only last about seven seconds in our minds but the whole plot played out in a dream that felt like hours.

A huge part of the storyline, which I won't spoil for readers, centralises around a very personal yet common medical condition. Having lived through this, was a way for me to move through the pain, grief, and loss. Giving a voice to my emotions and articulating my very last thought through Kinsley and Justin was therapeutic for me and gave me the opportunity to tell my story.

I had so much fun making these characters come alive on the page. I chose my ideal, over the top, swoon-worthy characteristics and put them all into Kinsley, Justin and the supporting characters. While 90 per cent of the salacious storylines are so far removed from my ordinary life, I have taken 10 per cent liberty from my life and those closest to me, lives, threading the real with the unreal. I love being in the drivers seat and knowing I am in control of shaping the story, manipulating the characters to my will, and narrating scenes that drives fans into a frenzy.

Who doesn't love to escape from reality for a while and leap into the sauciness of a good romance? I am an avid romance reader, just look at my Goodreads profile, I think I'm up to about 300 for the year, so I knew I had it in me to create something just as great as some of the ones I've stayed up all night reading. I like challenging myself, and I knew writing something like, Everything I Am, would push me out of my comfort zone and help me evolve as a fiction romance writer.

HOW DO YOU SELECT NAMES FOR YOUR CHARACTERS?

This is such a fun part! I pour over lists online and Mum groups to find the most inventive names I can. The more unique the better. Sometimes for the fun of it, I use my family’s names for lesser important characters just so they get a kick out of it. When I think about the main protagonists, I like to think about what name would suit their physical features. Kinsley’s name came about from my Mum’s group on Facebook, one of the ladies called her daughter it and I loved it. Justin to me just sounded sexy when I was thinking about my character. I think the more memorable the name, the more memorable the book as well.


Ornery Owl's Review

Rating:
Four out of Five Stars

This is a story that never plays coy. It begins with the youthful heroine, Kinsley, reminiscing about a steaming hot romp with Justin. Is Justin perhaps a pre-med student she met at college? Nope, Justin is a full-fledged doctor, and he is Kinsley's mother's best friend.

Normally I'd be appalled by the idea of a 36-year-old man fooling around with an eighteen-year-old, but Kinsley isn't a real-world eighteen-year-old. She's what my thirty-two-year-old son would refer to as a Smut-O-Verse eighteen-year-old. I might pull a synapse doing it because at my age I'm thinking back over close to four decades to remember being eighteen, but I recall I was certainly nowhere near as sophisticated as Kinsley. Most eighteen-year-olds are fumbling in the backseat of a car with one of their equally inept peers on a Saturday night, not seducing their mother's male friends.

This story reads like a soap opera but with explicit sex. It was fun waiting for the other shoe to drop when Justin came back into Kinsley's life after a seven-year separation, and now each of them is trying to keep the secret of their tryst from Kinsley's mother.

Overall, the story was a fun, lusty romp, but there were a few sticking points that detracted from an otherwise smooth ride. 

I find reading about perfect bodies a bit of a snooze. However, as long as the story does not contain overt body shaming, I'll let a lack of body diversity slide. Most people are all too used to porn star bodies and thus expect such when reading erotica. Unfortunately, Kinsley makes an internal quip about Justin's new girlfriend Maxine's breasts being "clearly fake and smaller than mine." 

I'll chalk this up to Kinsley behaving like a petty jerk because of jealousy. There is nothing wrong with breasts of whatever size. I hated my modest endowment when I was a teenager and swore that I would get breast enhancement surgery as soon as I graduated high school. Fortunately, I realized that even my not-so-large breasts had an annoying tendency to get in my way, and I realized they made a great jackass barometer. If a guy thought my chest wasn't Penthouse enough, who the hell needs him? Besides, my more amply endowed friends complained of backaches courtesy of their generous sweater puppies. I decided my petite pups were fine as is.

Regarding the anal sex scene where the only lubricant used was saliva: when depicting anal sex, there should be multiple partners: a giver and a receiver, plus lube, lube, and more lube. I don't mean spit. Saliva doesn't provide adequate slickness to protect the anal tissues from friction. I mean an actual lubricant such as K-Y jelly. A slick lubricant protects the sensitive tissue of the anus and minimizes the chances of tearing. The following post provides education about lubricants and anal sex.


I'll blame this next sticking point on modern porn. I don't know who first decided that having one partner spit in the other's mouth is sexy. It's the polar opposite of sexy. Perhaps some folks might find this an odd opinion. After all, we've all heard the phrase "swapping spit" as a euphemism for passionate kissing. Perhaps I'm an old fuddy-duddy, but I do not find the idea of having my partner hock a loogie into my open mouth the least bit appealing. In fact, I would deem it a deal-breaker. 

I give Everything I Am four out of five stars. The book ends on a cliffhanger. I hope the author will write the next chapter in the story of her intriguing and lusty characters but leave any instances of body shaming at the curb, bring lots of lube to anal sex scenes, and don't look for inspiration from modern porn, which is an abundant source of bad ideas. 




2 comments:

  1. You are more generous than I am. Cliff hangers are a huge turn off for me. Mind you, I suppose I read (some) series which are when all said and done cliff hangers.
    And spitting in my mouth? Definitely a deal breaker. Eeeuw.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In fairness, many of my stories are part of a series and end with a cliffhanger. I'm also guilty of writing ambiguous endings, which some readers don't like.
      Modern porn does absolutely nothing for me. I think I first saw the spitting in a partner's mouth thing about 10 years ago. I have no idea how anyone thought that would be sexy.
      I do write about practices I wouldn't personally engage in (i.e. BDSM) but which I find intriguing on a psychological level. Personally, I'm very vanilla when it comes to bedroom activities. (Okay, at this point I'm about as active as a sack of grain with bedroom activities, as in have no partner and don't want another one, but if I were still active, I'd be very vanilla, like I always was.) The spitting thing isn't even psychologically intriguing, it's just gross. If I were an editor (either literary or film) I'd always say "this has got to go!"

      Delete

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