Book Review of Erotic eBook Secretly More by Lux Zakari
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Lux Zakari is an erotica-writing, heart-breaking, gun-jumping, opportunistic, ink-stained wench masquerading as a librarian in the United States. A Renaissance gal who is always both playing and working, she is interested in a variety of mediums, including music, painting, sewing, illustration, photography, and graphic design. More often than not, she gets carried away with an idea—and takes everyone else along for the ride. Some of her claims to fame include reading the entire Sweet Valley High series, completing Rock Band 2's Endless Set List, and almost winning a few hula-hooping contests. If her heart had a voice, it would sound like a Florence + the Machine song. She is currently working on an album, as well as her next novel. Her most recent novel is Secretly More.
Secretly More begins with a focus on the disastrous love life of Kimber and boyfriend, Dane. Dane is a stereotypical twenty-something boyfriend with more interest in drinking and partying than in his supposed girlfriend. Kimber tries to break up with him on a regular basis, but invariably ends up returning to him. The other man in Kimber's life is her best friend Jay. Despite Jay's constant attempts to take their relationship further, Kimber insists on remaining friends.
This pattern is broken when Dane forgets to help Kimber move out of her sister's and into her first apartment. This is the true and final straw for Kimber, who dumps Dane. She then unloads herself emotionally on Jay, who of course helped her move in. Jay tries to kiss her, and awkwardly puts a wedge in their relationship. Kimber is left single and alone, with neither friend nor boyfriend to comfort her.
Luckily, Kimber's sister, Ferney, provides the answer by buying Kimber the one tool that no young woman should be without: a vibrator. Predicting that Dane was as useless in bed as he was out of bed, Ferney convinces Kimber that she is on the verge of a new, more sexually liberated single life and the vibrator is the key to unlocking that woman inside herself. Kimber is reluctant, but experimentations with the vibrator, encouraged by the boisterous noises of her new neighbors having sex on the other side of her apartment wall, indeed reveal what Kimber has been missing all these years with Dane.
Things take a more dangerous turn when Kimber and Jay are invited to a party by a mutual friend. Kimber is eager and willing, if not anxious, to be her new self—single, vivacious, and ready for action. Jay, still madly in love with Kimber, tries to caution her, even when their friend blindfolds Kimber and leads her to a bedroom, promising a surprise lover of his choice for her for the evening. Attempting to help things along, Jay is chosen as said surprise. In the bedroom, things become more heated, as Kimber is all but begging this supposed stranger to have his way with her, and Jay is unable to resist his fantasies finally becoming reality. Of course, his love for Kimber comes through as passion in his lovemaking, and Kimber is completely undone, even going so far as to begging their mutual friend to set the two of them up again. Jay, on the other hand, is continually plagued with guilt, wanting to tell Kimber but knowing how much it would affect her and their relationship. On top of all that, Dane comes back into the picture, apologetically trying to get back together with Kimber, promising to mend his ways.
What makes Zakari's work so palpably erotic is the tension which she imbues her characters and their situations with. The desire overwhelms the base, animalistic sex and heightens the experience for the readers, forcing them to not only engage with the characters and their lives more fully, but also with their release. While the sex scenes are few and far between in this novel, they are so mind blowing for both the characters and such a release of dramatic tension for the readers that, what some might criticize the novel for as a lack of quantity, Zakari more than makes up for in quality.
Secretly More is an exciting, modern novel filled with lust and desire. It is a novel that readers will want to savor, allowing the characters and their issues to build slowly, until they erupt in an erotic frenzy. Zakari paints a tangible world, giving her characters fairly common relationship problems and extraordinary solutions to them, the type of sexy solutions that readers secretly wish there were more of in the world. However, until those wishes are fulfilled in reality, we are left with Zakari's fiction, which is a good place to be.
Secretly More, by Lux Zakari, $5.99 on Kindle
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Copyright February 2012, Joshua Gage
Published with permission from author on OystersandChocolate.com. Copying or reprinting this work in part or in whole without permission is illegal.