dtaylorbooks's review
3.0
Choose your own adventure porn. Yes, please. That’s what SilkWords does and I fully support it. STORM AT SEA was super short. I was surprised when I came up on the end so suddenly. It was rather anticlimactic in that regard because it ended so quickly but most of it I did like.
The sex was hot. Really freakin’ hot. Loved it. I did two passes through the story to get a little more well-rounded experience of choosing my own adventure porn and all of the encounters that were had that didn’t include the protagonist’s husband were amazing and creative and so incredibly steamy. I loved them.
But the encounters that involved her husband as the main source of pleasure? Incredibly overwritten. The author decided to use her cache of ocean metaphors for that scene and it just completely drowned out the sex (pun somewhat intended). It was about the protagonist finding herself and opening up and blah blah blah ocean waves blah. She basically wanted to reignite her sex life with her husband and I found it really disappointing that the sex scenes with the two of them, which should have been the steamiest, were the most lackluster and “profound.” Like the author didn’t want this to be entirely porn without plot so all the substance was dumped into that single scene. It was the main reason I went back through the book again because I wanted to see if I could get a different outcome with the husband. Nope. He got shafted.
Had it not been her husband and was just another random dude she met in that club I wouldn’t have had such an issue with it. But the story is a husband and wife doing this together to forge their bond. Except their bond was buried under water metaphors to the point where the sex was barely visible. Soured the book for me a bit. The rest of it was fantastic but the husband was like a bucket of ice water. Total killer because, I don’t think, he was done right and given what was due for the story.
Still, I fully support choose your own adventure porn. Just not this one so much. I mean, read through it and just choose the scenes that don’t involve her husband as the main source of pleasure and you’ll be fine. Defeats the purpose of the overarching story but there you go. Sacrifices must be made.
3.5
I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The sex was hot. Really freakin’ hot. Loved it. I did two passes through the story to get a little more well-rounded experience of choosing my own adventure porn and all of the encounters that were had that didn’t include the protagonist’s husband were amazing and creative and so incredibly steamy. I loved them.
But the encounters that involved her husband as the main source of pleasure? Incredibly overwritten. The author decided to use her cache of ocean metaphors for that scene and it just completely drowned out the sex (pun somewhat intended). It was about the protagonist finding herself and opening up and blah blah blah ocean waves blah. She basically wanted to reignite her sex life with her husband and I found it really disappointing that the sex scenes with the two of them, which should have been the steamiest, were the most lackluster and “profound.” Like the author didn’t want this to be entirely porn without plot so all the substance was dumped into that single scene. It was the main reason I went back through the book again because I wanted to see if I could get a different outcome with the husband. Nope. He got shafted.
Had it not been her husband and was just another random dude she met in that club I wouldn’t have had such an issue with it. But the story is a husband and wife doing this together to forge their bond. Except their bond was buried under water metaphors to the point where the sex was barely visible. Soured the book for me a bit. The rest of it was fantastic but the husband was like a bucket of ice water. Total killer because, I don’t think, he was done right and given what was due for the story.
Still, I fully support choose your own adventure porn. Just not this one so much. I mean, read through it and just choose the scenes that don’t involve her husband as the main source of pleasure and you’ll be fine. Defeats the purpose of the overarching story but there you go. Sacrifices must be made.
3.5
I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
rosepetals1984's review
2.0
Quick review for a quick read. So this is my second (or it might be third, I can't remember which) foray into choose your own adventure type style adult themed reads. This particular read's specifically in the vein of erotica/erotic romance, and quite like the last few times I picked up this type of read, the idea comes across as an awesome way to write a story, but the execution leaves much to be desired. The problem with this book was that the plot was so rail thin it was hard to keep my attention in the story. There were times when the prose suited the encounters fine, while others either took far too long to get to the purported scene or overwrote the exchanges to the point where it threw me out of the story.
Story - by its bare bones - revolves around Joss Smith, a reporter checking into a sex club called SEA (Society of Erotic Adventures). She wants to write an article about her experiences there, and accompanies her husband for something of a self-discovery journey for the two of them as a couple. I felt like this really didn't do much with its CYOA qualities, because it took forever for you to get to the first choice, and even then, it wasn't really a choice (I'm quite a number of years over 18, mind you. I think some picking up this e-novella would probably side eye the book for that inclusion.) Then the second choice took forever to pop up and then finally it hit a series of places where you could choose what you did in terms of the encounters/roleplay. Some parts were better written than others, with the pacing matching just the right stride, but others were too bogged down with nothing really happening and very little connectivity to the characterizations. I think that aptly describes my experience with this novella, I couldn't connect to any of the encounters or situations because I had very little connection to the characters or their plight.
In the end, I wouldn't pick up this particular story again, but I am curious to see other works by Skyler White, just to see what she can do with a fully developed novel or something outside of this particular style (which is very hard to pull off in its own measure). Maybe the next read might strike me better despite how much this wasn't my cup of tea.
Overall score: 1.5/5 stars.
Note: I received this as an ARC from NetGalley, from the publisher.
Story - by its bare bones - revolves around Joss Smith, a reporter checking into a sex club called SEA (Society of Erotic Adventures). She wants to write an article about her experiences there, and accompanies her husband for something of a self-discovery journey for the two of them as a couple. I felt like this really didn't do much with its CYOA qualities, because it took forever for you to get to the first choice, and even then, it wasn't really a choice (I'm quite a number of years over 18, mind you. I think some picking up this e-novella would probably side eye the book for that inclusion.) Then the second choice took forever to pop up and then finally it hit a series of places where you could choose what you did in terms of the encounters/roleplay. Some parts were better written than others, with the pacing matching just the right stride, but others were too bogged down with nothing really happening and very little connectivity to the characterizations. I think that aptly describes my experience with this novella, I couldn't connect to any of the encounters or situations because I had very little connection to the characters or their plight.
In the end, I wouldn't pick up this particular story again, but I am curious to see other works by Skyler White, just to see what she can do with a fully developed novel or something outside of this particular style (which is very hard to pull off in its own measure). Maybe the next read might strike me better despite how much this wasn't my cup of tea.
Overall score: 1.5/5 stars.
Note: I received this as an ARC from NetGalley, from the publisher.
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