“Silk” Erotic Reading Book Review
“Silk” by Rupert James is a brand new, full-length book published by Cleis Press. It’s a long book at about 473 pages and about 34 chapters. It took me quite awhile to read – at least 8 hours. The pages are nice and thin and flexible, and this is a soft-cover book. The tagline is “Revent is always in fashion…”, and unlike most of Cleis Press’s other books, this is not an erotic novel.
The plot of this book is pretty basic, but it’s nice and involved. You basically follow the lives of three women: Christine, Victoria, and Isabelle. Christine, a high-powered divorce attorney has put the rest of her life on hold in order to try and make it to the top of her field. Victoria, the mistress of the multi-million dollar fashion manufacturer, is trying to carve out a stable future for herself when everything she sees is requiring this man to stay in her life. Isabelle, Christine’s daughter, is a budding designer who is attempting to launch herself into the London fashion scene but finding that the fashion world just isn’t what she expected.
I love the fact that, throughout the book, you switch perspectives and start to see the world from a different character’s perspective. Each one of the characters has people around them (such as Isabelle’s best friend, Will) that you also get to see the story through. The story changes perspective frequently – especially when you consider that, for the most part, the three characters of the story operate separately with their own lives. It’s only by freak circumstances that the three’s lives continue to intertwine, and that’s part of the entertainment of the book.
As I’m sure you could guess, as this the tagline for the book is “Revenge is Always in Fashion”, things will start to turn downhill for the characters in the book as the book progresses. It’s actually really, really great action that draws you in and keeps you wanting to read. There were a couple parts that were getting a bit too descriptive, but for the most part, throughout the entire book, I would have much rather have been reading than sleeping or being on the computer which definitely says something about the book!
Something I did notice was a couple editing errors here and there. It wasn’t a ton, but it was about 4 or 5 throughout the 500 page book. This actually surprised me as Cleis Press rarely, if ever, has any editing errors that I’ve ever seen. The errors caught my eye, but it really didn’t detract from the reading at all, and it’s something my eyes tended to glaze over.
I was a bit surprised about the erotic content of the book. As in, there wasn’t much. As I know Cleis Press for their erotica, I was surprised to read a book that, while it had a few sex scenes, it was not, by far, the focus of the book. It is definitely a story-first type of book, and it didn’t make the book any less of an enjoyable read. It is a fiction book without much sex in it, and that is just a-okay; I just wasn’t expecting it not to have any.
Overall, the plot is absolutely amazing, and the author put together the book in an enjoyable manner that makes it really fun to read. It does take awhile to get through the book, and you don’t really end the book going “Oh! There’s a life lesson!”, but you do end the book feeling like it was an enjoyable journey and time well-spent. I liked it, and I’d definitely recommend it if you enjoy dramatic books or have an interest in the fashion industry. Thanks to Cleis Press for sending Silk to review.
The Erotic Reading Review is a regular column written by Kayla. This column brings you reviews over erotica, instructional, and other types of sex-related books.
