Here’s a review of a romance menage novel, of all things.
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More of the Same
Be With Me is an erotic romance, which means hot semi-nude bodies on the front, lots of graphic thrusting in the interior, and splurting gobs of exploitation plastered across the back-cover blurb . Heroine Reggie Fallon is in love with not one, not two, but three manly hunks — and since she refuses to choose among them, they’ve decided to share her. In other words, this should really be titled Be With Us.
That, though, would be just a little too outré. Author Maya Banks is determined to shoehorn her protagonists’ thoroughly unconventional ménage into a thoroughly conventional romance narrative. She manages this with brilliant obliviousness. Her simple strategem is to treat the three “boys” — Hutch, Cam, and Sawyer — as if they were a single six-armed, thirty-toed, three-dicked heartthrob. Oh, sure, each guy has distinguishing characteristics: Hutch can cook, Cam has glasses, Sawyer likes anal sex. But they were all brought up together with the same foster mother, they’re all business partners in the same architectural firm, and they all live together in the same enormous dream home. When Reggie needs help, they all come running; when it’s time for a romantic misunderstanding to spin out the plot, then by God they all misunderstand her in the same way. They even sleep together, but only when Reggie’s there, because, as they are careful to tell us, they aren’t gay, no, no, no.
Reggie is, of course, herself a thoroughly familiar spunky romance heroine. Her main distinguishing features are (1) she’s a cop, and (2) she’s beaten senseless by a perp in the first three pages. Convalescence fortuitously allows her to be needy and feminine without compromising her independence. Nor does it compromise her libido; once she’s out of the hospital, she cheerfully fucks her way through a series of efficient and crowded sex scenes. If you love generic romance novels, but wish they featured a tad more triple penetration, then this book may just be heaven.