by Simone Blue
2021
The marriage between Kyle and Valerie is like oil and water, and as Simone Blue´s erotic novella opens, is reaching a tipping point. Feeling frustrated and trapped, 36-year-old Kyle had originally hoped that 39-year-old Valerie would be enthusiastic about starting a family of their own together, that she would contribute towards helping to restore his family´s estate in the English countryside. But upon realizing her husband´s true wealth (less than she expected), how much work is required to maintain such an old property (more than she expected), Valerie has become increasingly brazen in her choices. She works less, drinks more, and doesn´t even bother attempting to conceal her interest in other men or her contempt for her husband. So far, Kyle´s solution has been to just keep his head down, stay busy fixing things up around the house, and not give in to his fantasies of reprisal.
Hot Revenge opens with the couple in the middle of yet another of their vicious brawls, quickly establishing our sympathy with Kyle and our disdain for Valerie. Refusing to join her at some social event where he knows she will simply continue to humiliate him in public, he opts to stay home and do household chores. He also wants to make sure his 19-year-old stepdaughter, Cara, doesn´t have another one of her spontaneous parties with her friends, like the last time. Kyle is tired of coming home and finding the liquor cabinet raided, clouds of pot smoke throughout the halls, money missing and family heirlooms irreparably damaged. If he stay home, Kyle can keep at least some semblance of stability and control.
Cara is also sexy as fuck, and readers uncertain as to where Blue´s story is headed may simply refer to its subtitle: a "pregnant by stepdad dark erotica". The fastest--and arguably, the most enjoyable--way to get even against his harpy of a spouse? Not only have a secret sexual affair with her daughter, but to get her pregnant in the process! If the premise seems a bit over the top, it´s because Hot Revenge is more than just a fiction, it is a farce. It is also seriously raunchy, and will delight readers who want to imagine and fantasize about experiences they would never want to actually enact in real life.
Nearly all of the eleven chapters of Hot Revenge features a steamy scene between the "Daddy Dom and his Little Girl," a role-play dynamic from BDSM which Blue transposes into a mostly realistic setting. Kyle is surprised that Cara is more than willing to do what he asks, sexually, and the author depicts the scenes between the two of them with steadily escalating heat and eroticism. There´s even a couple of moments of genuine humor, such as when Valerie nearly discovers her daughter giving stepfather Kyle a blowjob. Thank goodness for those kitchen islands! Blue also includes a couple of scenes to offer some additional emotional depth between this taboo age-gap couple, handling the depictions of tenderness with simplicity and maturity. By the end of the book, you want them to make it; you almost believe that Kyle and Cara are a real couple.
Of course, they are not. They´re completely made up. Hot Revenge is a work of fiction, and the author is not endorsing such behavior in real life. But apparently, we´re living in an era where fact and fiction are interchangeable when it comes to sex and the erotic, because Amazon has banned the digital version of this book on the grounds that it violates their "Content Guidelines" (if you want a further head-scratch, Amazon still provides printed versions of the book for sale). And apparently, Blue is not the only one: a number of other authors in recent weeks (particularly those writing stories about "taboo/age-gap" dynamics such as stepfather/stepdaughter) have also had their titles taken down.
The fact that Hot Revenge and other titles in erotica like it are fiction seems to be beside the point. Amazon (and vendors such as Visa and Mastercard) want to have the content of made-up stories be separated into good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable. It is noteworthy that such standards are not applied to other forms of fiction: no one is asking that crime fiction be sanitized of its grisly depictions of violence and murder, for example, nor is anyone assuming crime writers are "endorsing" such violence simply because they write about it. Yet with erotic fiction, it seems that what kinds of situations, characters, and reactions to sex we are "allowed" to read and "permitted" to write about are becoming increasingly regulated by....Jeff Bezos?
A silver lining is that a number of independent self-publishing authors of erotica are raising this issue on their social media networks, expressing their solidarity with authors who write about taboo subjects. Some of us still believe that we should all be permitted to write about whatever the hell we want, and that you should have the freedom to read it, if you want.
Simone Blue´s Hot Revenge is sexy, well-written, humorous at times, and touching at others. Support freedom of thought and purchase a print copy of her book today!*
*(While you´re at it, pick up one of my books, too!)