THE SEDUCTION OF VALENTINE DAY

TITLE: THE SEDUCTION OF VALENTINE DAY

AUTHOR: EDEN BRADLEY

Pages: 291

Date: 05/04/2014

Grade: 4

Details: Received from Black Lace

Own

The blurb:

“She lives in a world of silk sheets, champagne, and expensive hotels...

She fulfils the deepest fantasies of the most powerful men in the world: Valentine Day is a high-class call girl, pampered and adored by her exclusive clientele.

But Valentine has a secret. Always in control, she’s never experienced true pleasure. But now, the woman who spends her life pleasuring others is about to embark on an erotic journey of her own...”

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My thoughts:

“I have never had an orgasm with a man unless he’s paying to have sex with me.”

Valentine Day – Val to her clients – is a high class call girl and has been for almost 10 years. She is good at the job and gets real satisfaction from it. In fact, being paid to be with a man is the only way she’s ever been able to achieve satisfaction. She firmly believes that this is the life for her, that her clients are the only men who can give her what she needs and that this makes her incapable of normal relationships.

Then Valentine meets Joshua Spencer. From the moment she is first aware of him something inside her reacts to his presence. And although she knows better she can’t quite bring herself to reject his approach. Just thinking about Joshua brings her to levels of arousal she’s never believed herself capable of.

“Joshua Spencer has ruined everything for me. But I’m not angry. I’m simply yearning, in a way I never have in my entire life. I’m helpless against it, this yearning.”

Being with him is even better. For the first time in her life she achieves satisfaction without the need for the exchange of money. In fact, she’s discovering levels of pleasure she has never been able to reach, even while at work.

Of course, things are never that easy. Valentine is still a working girl with clients who expect a certain performance from her. But after Joshua she’s no longer able to lose herself in her job the way she used to. And her clients notice.

“Something is missing (...) I no longer love being here.”

The first time she allows Joshua into her house, Valentine is aware she’s on a slippery slope there may be no coming back from.

“Immediately, I am lost. This is exactly what I was afraid of. This is exactly what I’ve dreamed of.”

But she’s fallen too hard to turn the back the clock. And when Joshua declares he wants to be with her even after she tells him about her profession, Valentine knows she has to make big changes.

For Joshua things are simple; they are in love with each other and if their love is strong enough they’ll overcome the issue of her past and find their way to a future together.

“That love exists despite our flaws. Despite my own flaws. Despite yours.” – Joshua

It is a lot harder for Valentine. She has to surrender to love, a force she’s never believed in. She has to accept that she is good enough for this wonderful man who has fallen for her and she has to find a way of coming to terms with her past. During her ten years as a professional, Valentine knew she had to be perfect for every single one of her clients. Learning that perfection is not a normal state of affairs takes time, and trust.

“There is no right way. (...) There is no perfect relationship. There are no perfect people. We all just flounder around and hope everything turns out okay. I don’t expect you to be perfect. I just expect you to be you, to be true to your feelings.” – Joshua

I enjoyed this book and I liked Valentine. She is a believable character. It makes sense that she never questioned her life-style while it was giving her exactly what she needed, on her terms. Just as it was logical for her to start questioning everything once she fell in love and wanted something else from life. The changes in this character were fascinating. She starts of as a self-assured professional woman only to find herself behaving like a love sick teenager when she falls for Joshua. The combination of a rotten childhood, falling in love for the first time and sudden shame about the way she’s made her living turn Valentine into bundle of nerves. But she’s never that uncertain that she doesn’t continue to push herself forward, forcing herself to face her fears and deal with them.

Joshua was almost too good to be true, but somehow that was exactly what this story needed. And his devotion to Valentine, even when he finds out about her history and comes face to face with the reality of it, gives this book the sort of fairytale like quality that can be quite nice in a romance.

This is a sex driven story, and considering Valentine’s job that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Fortunately this doesn’t come at the expense of the rest of the story which is well told, beautifully written and totally captivating. In fact, I’d say the balance between steamy scenes and character and story development was as near to perfect as any reader might hope for.

This was a good book written by an author with a real talent for writing fascinating erotic fiction.