Customer Reviews

Tales of the Beau Monde

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Having read Madam Charlie, I couldn't wait to read more books by Sahara Kelly. Her stories are compelling and the erotica is sensual and tangible. And I love the way she incorporates the historical setting to her stories. Tales of Beau Monde is a collection of four intertwined novellas that make good stand-alones. This historical collection set in 1819 England is about four couples who fall in love in the most insatiable, erotic ways. Inside Lady Miranda has a rather confident, uninhibited heroine who seduces Lord Nicholas Barbour in ways he hadn't envisaged. While the first story has a sexually aware heroine, Miss Beatrice's Bottom has the standard virginal protagonist. Having escaped from her abusive father's home, she lands in the arms of Harry Boyd, Earl of Dunsmeer and pathological playboy. But to Harry's surprise, Beatrice goes from naive to wanton in the three months he had been absent. The reason to Miranda and Beatrice's sexual awareness is one Louisa Cellini. A forty-something spinster, Louisa has no inhibitions and she taught Beatrice and Miranda how to pleasure themselves and their partners in a quite unique room full of the most delectable sex toys. Louisa thought she was happy with her freedom and her toys, but she is proven wrong by a sexy scientist in Lying with Louisa. The fourth story, Pleasuring Miss Poppy, is the least connected novella and the biggest stand-alone in the anthology, but it is just as delicious as the previous three.

I couldn't put this book down. The stories are delicious beyond words and the characterization and plot developments are quite impressive for such short novellas. Sahara Kelly reminds me of Emma Holly in her palpable descriptions and shock factor when it comes to language. Holly is far edgier than Kelly, but their styles are still quite similar. The novellas I liked the most were Inside Lady Miranda and Miss Beatrice's Bottom. But I also liked the great erotic ideas I got from Lying with Louisa. I shall definitely give other books by Sahara Kelly a whirl. I have purchased Gypsy Lovers and look forward to cracking it open. In the meantime, I recommend Tales of Beau Monde and Madam Charlie most highly.

There are endless discussions about what is pornography vs erotica vs romance. Well this is definitely not a romance. Although set in the 1800's, there is very little sense of time or place. It has HEA endings, obligatory in erotica, but really, it's nothing but sex scenes with very slight links between them, which is how I think of pornography. Utlimately it was too slight to hold my attention, and it's not a keeper. All that sex with no feelings for the characters or sense of connection between them (aside from the physical, that is) makes it too much sugar, not enough substance. Not a wallbanger, but it didn't work for me.