Guess you’d call this an erotic thriller. Writing is voluptuous (not fat nor minimal) compared to most mod dark romance. Especially like the focus on taste (her honey bourbon tongue for instance) to literally add memorable flavor. Or details like heroin withdrawal making even eyelashes ache.
MC Alex is written as pervy as a man should be (too often female erotica writers make them sentimental and non-visual as straight women). He owns theaters and a cotton candy bar, likes sweet spinner girls as conquests so it fits. His junkie sister Sasha is up my alley in terms of being fashion focused and an ex addict. Hope we get more of her backstory (though not in her LA bitchy dialogue) in book 2.
The main girl Tav is immediately sus to me as she’s a big drinker who’s always looking around, shy then brash, and never done many things like had cotton candy as if she’s Starfire the alien or had her memory wiped Men In Black style. I got honeypot vibes. Love the look though: long hair, tall socks, Peter Pan dresses, lace panties and push-ups.
I will say I don’t like how “perfect” the MC is (though his contrasting nerdy backstory was alright), getting girls in every cutaway. Yet somehow he has never come across one who wanted to be choked even though it’s so popular and he’d probably get bored like the Epstein/scat celebrities? Makes me think the author is old. Sometimes maybe it’s supposed to be funny or arrogant how easy it is for him to get laid but he didn’t feel real half the time because of it. Nor him letting Tav run off with his credit card that one time when at first he basically kidnapped her.
I dug how, without stating it, Tav seemed to regress like a little around fairs, Tim Burton junk, etc., and how we only got her POV occasionally to keep info at a middle ground. I kept wondering who the men she’s talking about are or how it seems she literally didn’t have a childhood a la the Under the Skin movie.
The BDSM stuff progresses each time and it’s mostly light. Whips are so silly to me though candle wax and the spiked pinwheel are interesting. Lewd descriptions are always on point, especially the bursts of color/hums of tension from the hits. Plot twists are always good w/ karmic connections. Especially two-thirds in, that one really made me laugh at the awkwardness I can’t wait to read more of. Really, this book is trying to unravel what this girl Tav is involved in—gang, brothel, cult, gov. testing? At the end, we still don’t know but it was a fun ride even if I’m starting to kinda dislike how she’s even so bad at deflecting questions when she should be kinda used to it.
What talent! Like trad pubbed splatterpunk. Porn-inspired, hence the unnatural step moniker but much more than that. Libby is a mattress actress and even she cracks up at the cheesy dialogue and goofy panty-sniffing her new job entails. Prose is better than you’d expect with “His cologne smelled like sea salt and driftwood. His eyes were icy blue, the skin around them deeply lined in a way that made her think of sunshine and deserts, cowboys and old Hollywood.”
Yet there’s obv some fun despite the usually serious tone after the first few pgs. She calls the step-bro’s piece meerkat-like, says “it drooped over the coffee table like an elephant's trunk reaching for peanuts.”
This seemed well-researched about the industry, given equipment and turnover details. More violent than sexual but creatively so. Doesn’t make me sick even with a severed head used like a hair-swung weapon. Until the end with realistic corpse reactions and…I don’t wanna give it away.
So, bad guys are part of the snuffy Hollywood dubbed Plywood, the performers called there by the schitzo sound of church bells. Feels like a more serious Rob Zombie or Chuck P flick! Clever, the step bro concept outside the porn of her cult fam being mad or jealous of her new relatively normal career.