Dream Lover Book Review
Dream Lover is a book of paranormal tales of erotic romance which is edited by Kristina Wright. The book is 242 pages long, and it follows the same format as most Cleis Press novels. There are 17 different short, erotic stories in this book, so as you can tell, these stories tend to be a bit longer in length than the average erotica book due to the involved plot of each story.
I hate to be a spoilsport, but sometimes, I just have to. I just really was not fond of Dream Lover. I think it was a mixture of the convoluted plots as well as the odd sex. When I read the tagline, I had assumed that Dream Lover was going to be a book about vampires and werewolves and such. Those types of stories, while usually a bit on the cliche side, are still usually close enough to human that they’re very sexy to read.
With this book, though, I got a lot more than I had imagined were part of it. Not only do you have the idea of vampires and werewolves, but you have so much more. If you love the idea of “more”, this will be great for you. However, for me, I think I found myself turned off by some of these other ideas of more. There are things like ghosts, being inhabited by spirits, gargolyes, birds turning into humans, and a lot of other things. It’s an interesting group of paranormal types.
This book does have some pretty amazing plots, though. I definitely have to give it that. While other books may stick to the basic plots that are more standard to erotica, this book has a ton of interesting plots that come right out of left-field. I never expected to see some of these plots in an erotica book, and I must say that each story really does read like it’s own little adventure. It’s really surprising and it’s like reading some sort of book creative writing rather than an erotica book. With this, I definitely was impressed.
However, I do feel like a lot of the stories really needed more background in order for me to really appreciate the characters, their situations, and the sex. These short stories pack in a lot of detail at once, and I can’t help but find myself a little confused and turned off by a lot of the situations. Maybe if there was more background and plot, it would help, but maybe it’s also because paranormal reading isn’t for me.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some really good stories as long as you’re willing to suspend your belief in logic and reality. (And that’s a good thing; reading books is supposed to help you do that, but I can’t say that I’m very good at it) One of my favorites was Dreaming by the Sea by Delilah Devlin. This has just the right amount of realism, sex, and a plot. This story features a girl who finds herself going out to the beach daily, but she’s terrified of the water. One day, a naked man washes up on shore. It turns out that the main character has a secret background she had forgotten about, and of course, the two of them have some hot sex.
Overall, if you like reading paranormal books that include ghosts, spirits inhabiting bodies, or other types of paranormal stuff, this will definitely be a good one for you. Each story has an amazing plot that you can definitely get pulled into. I must say that I didn’t enjoy the scenarios and such because of my personal reading preferences, but if those types of things are your usual reading, this will be a great book to check out. Thanks to Cleis Press for providing Dream Lover for 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.
