Today our Aussie author is Denise Rossetti and the story is Gift of the Goddess. This is an adult only novel so kiddies no peeking inside this book! This is an erotic romance with a large emphasis on erotic. To say the sex scenes were steamy is something of an understatement. But I will get to that shortly because I found myself somewhat surprised by this story.
You see what got my attention is the fact that it was fun. It also was totally unique and these characteristics are nothing you see too often. I was expecting to vaguely enjoy the story, shrug my shoulders and place it with the very few other such stories I own and then quickly forget it. Also in so many erotic stories I get bored by the terrible dialogue especially in the middle of sex scenes and since most of these stories don’t have large stories outside the bedroom, kitchen, park or wherever it may be this can be something of a problem. Basically I’m not a huge erotic fan unless the sex is secondary to the story.
Not this story! I met this author at ARRC 2011 just a month ago and I remember thinking as I saw her on the panel for sci-fi /fantasy fans was if only a 10th of her voice showed through in her stories then they would be worth reading. She has a good balance between the sex scenes and the story. She has also done a great job of creating a fantasy world which made you want to learn more. She has a gift for some interesting world-building and characters I could vividly see as she described them. Plus her characters are enjoyable. I had no urge to strangle anyone in the story and I had no urge to strangle the author for creating characters and then totally ignoring them to force the story forward. In fact I wanted everyone to succeed and I wanted the biggest, most beautiful happily ever after that has ever existed in a story.
The story is centred around Anje, a scout for a matriarchal society, Children of the Mother, who have a few similarities with Amazons. She is captured by Brin a priest of the love goddess Lufra, who is a perfect example of a gorgeous man if I have ever read of one. Anje was distracted by the third major character Brin’s friend/ward Trey who is another kind of handsome. Together they are a combination that no woman is safe from. They have been looking for a special woman that bears the unique markings of their goddess and as Anje has those markings they plan to take her back to their home to help save their people. Of course the saving of their people involves sex, lots of sex. You see Lufra is also known as the Lust goddess and these ‘offerings’ are pleasing to her. Unfortunately the ceremony to save their people had been tried before by others and everyone died so this ceremony comes with the very real possibility of death. You can imagine Anje is NOT going along with this plan. There are few other things in the way that I will leave you to discover but basically they have a long way to go before even getting home where they face their biggest challenge for all. IF Anje can be persuaded to go along with it of course.
Now to look at the meat of the book – the love story and the sex scenes. Lets be honest many of us would not be reading if the chemistry is boring. The love story, and it is love not just lust, is actually rather sweet to me. The author brings a certain poignancy to the main character’s feelings which is a great job for a first novel. Please note that the publishers have their own little classification system s – sensuous, e – erotic and x – xtreme. This story was e- erotic and was described and I quote ‘love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to imagination and are high in volume.’ This becomes a three way male-male-female combination that is very hot, if you are easily offended I would suggest the free online story I mention below before committing to a bought book but as for the rest of us, wonderful. Simply wonderful.
The story is such that directly after reading it I immediately craved more and went onto her website. I found the free story The Amorous Adventures of Alice in which the fans were to pick what happens next and I can say that the ending had me laughing for days. So I recommend trying that story if you wish for a preview of what Denise can do. Personally I think I will be placing Denise Rossetti on my ‘must buy upon seeing her books’ list and she is a must read if you have any interest in the erotic romance genre of the very hot variety.
Book Bites is taking part in Aussie Author Month during April. Daily links tweeted using the #ausbooks hash will be collated {here}. Aussie Author Month is also supporting donations to the Indigenous Literacy Project. You can donate through the Aussie Author Month ILP page on on GoFundraise.My posts for Aussie Author Month can be found using the Aussie Author Month or #ausbooks tags.
I was warm. Too warm. I could feel something bearing down on me – at once soft and horribly heavy – and another word joined Tessa in my mind, as if the words were small creatures meeting together. 
