Publisher: 8th
Circle Press (eBook and Trade Paperback)
Tantor Audio (Audiobook
CD and Download)
On-Sale
Date: July 11, 2017 (Worldwide)
Genre: Erotica/Paranormal Erotica
Page
Count: 248 pages
Retail Links: Amazon | Amazon Australia | Amazon UK | Amazon Canada | Barnes &
Noble | iBooks | iBooks Australia | iBooks UK | iBooks Canada | Kobo
Goodreads Link: Goodreads
Blurb
Mona Lisa St. James made a deathbed promise
that she would do anything to save her mother's art gallery. Unfortunately, not
only is The Red painted red, but it's in the red. She soon realizes she has no
choice but to sell it.
Just as she realizes she has no choice but to sell it, a mysterious man comes in after closing time and makes her an offer: He will save The Red if she agrees to submit to him for the period of one year.
The man is handsome, English, and terribly tempting...but surely her mother didn't mean for Mona to sell herself to a stranger. Then again, she did promise to do anything to save The Red...
The Red is a standalone novel of erotic fantasy from Tiffany Reisz, international bestselling author of The Bourbon Thief and the Original Sinners series.
Just as she realizes she has no choice but to sell it, a mysterious man comes in after closing time and makes her an offer: He will save The Red if she agrees to submit to him for the period of one year.
The man is handsome, English, and terribly tempting...but surely her mother didn't mean for Mona to sell herself to a stranger. Then again, she did promise to do anything to save The Red...
The Red is a standalone novel of erotic fantasy from Tiffany Reisz, international bestselling author of The Bourbon Thief and the Original Sinners series.
Review
When
I pick up a book by Tiffany Reisz I know to expect the unexpected. I know,
without a shadow of a doubt, that she will take me places I’ve never been
before and make me enjoy and marvel at storylines that should probably shock if
not horrify me. All of that was reinforced while I read The Red. In fact it is
probably safe to say Mrs Reisz surpassed herself with this story when it comes
to making shocking and graphic scenes not only tantalisingly hot but also
borderline normal.
Mona
knows she will do anything to keep the promise she made to her mother on her
deathbed. She won’t stop at anything when it comes to keeping The Red, the art
gallery she’s inherited from her mother, open. So, when a mysterious man named
Malcolm offers to provide her with the money she needs to avoid bankruptcy in
return for her willing submission over the course of a year, she barely
hesitates before agreeing.
I
won’t go into any details about what follows, if only because it might lead to
the review not being accepted on certain sites. What I will say is that Malcolm
takes images from famous paintings and re-enacts them, stretching Mona’s body
and boundaries with every subsequent encounter.
“By
the end of her beating, she couldn’t tell the crop apart from his kindness.
They were one and the same to her so that every strike of the crop was as
tender as a kiss and every word of tenderness made her crave the crop.”
It
isn’t long before the boundaries blur. While Mona tries to convince herself
that she only puts up with Malcolm and his kinky scenarios, which are too vivid
to be mere dreams, for the money he’s promised, it soon becomes clear that
she’s becoming addicted to Malcolm and the exquisite torture he introduces her
to.
“She
could either see Malcolm or she could see reason, and Malcolm was a finer sight
than anything as dull as reason.”
Which
leads me to the warning I feel I should issue. This book is not for the easily
shocked or offended. When I say that Malcolm pushes virtually every single
(sexual) limit a person could have, I’m not joking. Many things which you might
feel are or should be taboo are exactly the experiences that tie Mona ever
closer to Malcolm. Her journey is shocking, beautiful and mesmerising.
I
have to be honest here and admit that for the longest time I thought I wasn’t
going to adore The Red. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, was mesmerised by it
in fact, but had this nagging feeling that it was missing that something
special that had made me love the Original Sinners stories so much. And I can’t
deny that I never connected to Mona or Malcolm in quite the same way as I did
to Nora & co in that earlier series.
But,
I should have known better than to even consider for one minute that The
Red lacked substance or originality. This is, after all, a story by
Tiffany Reisz. And she is in a league of her own when it comes to pulling
threads together. Few authors can match her when it comes to taking you by
surprise long after you think you’ve got it all figured out. Just when I was
absolutely sure the story I had almost finished was a rather exquisite version
of ‘Mona in Carnal Wonderland’; an
intriguing, deviant and endlessly
erotic fantasy with little rhyme or reason to the underlying story, it suddenly
all made sense without the final reveal diminishing the dreamlike quality to
the story. And what’s more, I loved that the ending implies that the journey
Mona had undertaken with Malcolm was only the start of our heroine’s life as a
perfect whore.
So while it remains true that the Original
Sinners books will more than likely forever be my favourites, I can’t deny that
I did thoroughly enjoy this paranormal, very erotic, and addictive fantasy.
“And
the devil had smirked, not smiled, because the devil does not smile.”
About
Tiffany Reisz
Tiffany
Reisz is the international bestselling author of the Original Sinners series
for Mira Books and Mills & Boon, including the RT Book
Reviews Best Erotic Romance 2012 winner The Siren and
the LAMBDA Literary Award-winning The King. Her novel The
Saint won the Romance Writers of America RITA® for best Erotic Romance
in 2015.
About
8th Circle Press
8th Circle Press is a Lexington,
Kentucky-based publisher of literary friction. For more information, visit our
website at www.8thCirclePress.com.
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