Full Moon Menage

ROMANTIC EROTICA

Title: Full Moon Menage
Author: Rebecca Elyon
Publication date: 01/02/2017
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Cliffhanger: No
Rating: 1 out of 5

Amazon blurb
Neda’s life is going exactly as she and her family planned. She is betrothed to an absolute stunning specimen of a man, Luca, who can hardly keep his hands off of her before her twenty-first birthday, at which point she will be fully mature and ready to mate for the first time in her life.

Yet as happy a young woman as she considers herself, there's trouble lurking in paradise. 
​

With prejudice against all shifters on the rise, thanks largely to the activities of the murderous wolf shifters, Neda and her people are forced to suppress their powers, hiding their secret identities from the world for the sake of their own survival.

And when the group ventures into a wealthy village to put on a paid performance, Neda finds herself suddenly overcome with attraction for one of the locals, a nobleman named Auden.

With his gorgeous blonde hair, muscular physique, and powerful status among his fellow villagers, will Neda's once strong love for her fiancé be able to persist intact?

Will she be able to protect her secret from his ever watchful eyes to ensure her family’s survival?

My Review
Sweet Jesus this book is awful. And I say “book” for lack of a better word. It’s actually just a large collection of short stories, linked together with  a whole lot of  “hey, buy my other books and sign up for my newsletter” links.

First of all, I have crappy luck with erotic romance, shifter romance in particular. (I’m looking at you, Gifted to the Wolves). In fact, the only reason I downloaded this book is because I was curious if the misspelling on the cover (“Meenage”) was some kind of intentional clever pun that I wasn’t understanding. I do ever-so-much enjoy clever puns. Sadly, after reading a good bit of the “book”,  I don’t think it was a clever pun, but rather, an embarrassing typo, which is super unfortunate, because it’s right there on the cover for God and everyone to see. Hopefully the author will correct this mistake soon. (Update: The author finally corrected the typo, but that doesn't change the fact that it went out like that in the first place. Sloppy.)

I have so many problems with this “book” that I don’t know where to begin (after the obvious cover malfunction), so I’ll just list them out in no particular order:

• Gypsy is a derogatory term. For all you authors out there, it’s best just to avoid the term. And you definitely shouldn’t use it over and over and over again like this author does.
• The point of view is all over the place in these stories. You shift from being in the heroine's thoughts, to being in the hero's thoughts a paragraph later. Sometimes you even get a third party narrator’s perspective. It’s jarring and headache inducing.
• In the first story, the description of how beautiful and sexy Neda is goes on forever. OK, OK. We get it. She’s hot. Can we move on? Her hotness didn’t really add much to the story.
• After reading this, I’m adding “in the sanctity of her womanhood” to our list of sex terms authors should never use in place of body part names. It’s a vagina, folks. It’s OK to use the world. We’re all grownups.  
• This should be clearly listed as a short story collection. And the blurb only covers one story that amounts to 4% of the overall content of the Kindle file. Anyone looking for an indepth story would be severely disappointed with this.
• I find it highly unlikely that a woman who has only had sex one time before would be game for double penetration—vaginally, analy or both (as is the case in these stories). And two dudes penetrating the woman vaginally at the same time seems really...complicated, logistically speaking. I’m having trouble picturing how this would work without being really uncomfortable for the woman. I know that vaginas are really stretchy (I gave birth to a baby with a big head, after all), but...yikes. I dunno about that. I’m thinking this kind of thing isn’t something that should be attempted by sexually inexperienced young girls. Seems more like advanced maneuvers to me. I guess the point is, if you’re one to question these things (as I am), you’re probably going to be more confused than turned on as you’re reading, which I’m thinking was not the author’s intent.    
• Maybe I’m wrong to expect such things from erotic romance, but...character development? Too much to ask? There’s none here. None. At. All. These are just a bunch of completely interchangeable vaginas and penises.  

That’s probably enough ranting. I think this “book” has already sucked up enough of my time. Be warned, folks. This one is to be read only by those who have a fondness for literary train wrecks and/or unintentional comedy. Other than that, you should avoid this book like the creepy dude in the grocery store who keeps eyeballing you and “coincidentally” ending up in the same aisle as you all the time (or maybe that’s just me).

Does this book contribute to or help crush the romance stigma?
This is the Charlie Sheen of books, folks. No amount of rehab can fix it. Save yourselves. It’s too late for me...

Other reading suggestions
Try anything by Selena Kitt or Emma Holly instead. (Note: both authors write stuff other than erotica, too, so if you’re looking for erotica, make sure you read the blurbs and categories carefully to avoid any purchasing surprises.)

Or really, just read ANYTHING other than this.

---