coral reviewed The Marketplace by Laura Antoniou (The Marketplace Series, 1)
None
2 stars
This was recommended by a friend (to a whole group of people, not to me specifically), so, after some waffling, I read it. And then I waffled about whether or not to talk about the fact that I've read it. (CW: sex, consent, references to slavery)
It's several shades more hardcore anything else I've read in the erotica genre (this isn't even a little bit "romance," let's not kid ourselves) (haha, I said "shades"), and it is also, uh, not for me. Turns out, the idea of full-time submissives is far more repellant to me than I'd realized, especially when they're referred to outright as "slaves."
Honestly? The hottest thing in the whole book is the fact that the master and mistress of the house each have their own wing. (:fans self:) And, although I'll admit that the second hottest thing was indeed a sex scene, it was the one …
This was recommended by a friend (to a whole group of people, not to me specifically), so, after some waffling, I read it. And then I waffled about whether or not to talk about the fact that I've read it. (CW: sex, consent, references to slavery)
It's several shades more hardcore anything else I've read in the erotica genre (this isn't even a little bit "romance," let's not kid ourselves) (haha, I said "shades"), and it is also, uh, not for me. Turns out, the idea of full-time submissives is far more repellant to me than I'd realized, especially when they're referred to outright as "slaves."
Honestly? The hottest thing in the whole book is the fact that the master and mistress of the house each have their own wing. (:fans self:) And, although I'll admit that the second hottest thing was indeed a sex scene, it was the one consensual scene, between equals, in the whole book.
That all said, the psychology of it was fascinating, and that was ultimately why I kept reading. The characters changed in interesting ways, some of which I'd characterize as "growth," some of it not. I don't know that that's enough to carry me through the rest of the trilogy, when I'm disturbed by a lot of the action (:cough:), but it might be.
*Everything is technically consensual, because these folks signed themselves up to be sex slaves, knowing what they were in for, and they had lots of chances to stop and leave and not do that anymore. It turns out I'm super into in-the-moment consent, though, too.