PicoBlog

I’m not sure if it’s a reaction to the horror of the news, the increasingly cold weather, or the absolute relief and freedom I feel now that my book is written, published and, to an extent, over and done with (although please consider it as a Christmas gift for someone you love! It’s funny and relatable, or so say the reviews – don’t take my word for it). Maybe it’s all three, but whatever the reason, I am reading a lot of fluffy, spicy, downright smutty books lately, and I thought I’d let you know what I recommend (and what I absolutely don’t).

I’m aware that these are all massively heteronormative stories of (mostly) monogamous, pretty vanilla relationships – with a few exceptions – but I would love to veer away from that, so if you have read any excellent, sexy queer books you’d care to recommend, I’m all ears!

This one is a slight outlier, because I first read it when I was in my teens but, along with Judy Blume’s Forever, it was among the first books I ever read that contained anything approaching sexy sex scenes. (Okay, in hindsight, I’m not sure Forever was particularly sexy, but at the time I just thought, oh, maybe all men name their penises…)

Anyway, Venus Envy – which I didn’t realise, until some time last year, is an obvious pun on the term “penis envy” – is the story of a woman who thinks herself very dowdy and an abject failure, at least compared to her glamorous friends and even more glamorous sister, and is reunited with her college bestie who has become an absolute ride.

There’s a makeover scene, there are funny female friendships and there’s an entire section where the main character runs away to a house in the middle of nowhere to hide from her problems. I’m shocked it hasn’t been made into a rom-com, honestly. Buy it here (af link).

One thing that my favourite smutty books all have in common is that the characters fancy one another with the same fervency I reserved for the guy I obsessed over in secondary school, to whom I handed, one day after school, a Durex gold coin condom in what I thought was a sexy, alluring move.

I remember lying in my bed – not touching myself because, honestly, I didn’t know how at that point – and listening to Toploader’s For a While (of all songs!) while imagining the moment we would finally get it together enough to actually get together.

Anyway. This about a woman with Asperger’s who hires a male escort to teach her how to have a physical relationship, and, well, you can imagine what happens next. Buy it here (af link).

Bonus points to Guillory for featuring a not-straight-sized woman as the leading lady of While We Were Dating (although I would love to find just one book that didn’t focus on women’s bodies at all, which is perhaps a bit of a challenge when I also want incredibly detailed description of what’s going on with said body), the kind of boy-meets-girl-but-they-shouldn’t-be-together story I love.

It’s also kind of nice to read a book in which the female character has more power – fame, money, sway etc – than the male character. Buy it here (af link).

I’ll admit that I keep getting slightly confused between this series of books by Lucy Score, and Roxie Noir’s Loveless Brothers series, but I’ll start with these, a trio of steamy romance novels that all follow the much-beloved trope of couples who want to be together, but simply cannot allow themselves to be happy. (I mean, obviously they get there eventually.)

The bit that gets me – about all of these books, honestly, but especially Score’s and Noir’s offerings – is just how easy these women find it to reach orgasm, although maybe it’s just because they’ve found their once-in-a-lifetime, perfect, rock-hard-abbed, enormous-penised soulmate.

Anyway, Score’s books are especially fun because they’re steamy but there’s also a kind of whodunnit crime element to them, which kept my interest even when we weren’t at the steamy parts. Buy all three books here (af link).

I would also recommend Lucy Score’s Rock Bottom Girl, about yet another down-on-her-luck gal who ends up back in her hometown, where she stumbles across the hot guy from secondary school who is now the hot MAN from secondary school.

This series of five books is actually a stroke of genius, taking us from the enemies-to-lovers story in Enemies with Benefits to the single dad romance Best Fake Fiancé, to the wild woodsman themed Break the Rules, the professor-meets-student romance The Hookup Equation and, finally, rounding out the series with One Last Time, a return to first love romance.

Again, we have tall, ripped men with giant penises meeting the girls of their dreams, while spending a lot of time denying their absolutely undeniable attraction to said women.

There are a lot of orgasms, a lot of sex in places they shouldn’t be having sex, and a lot of detailed descriptions of just how good-looking all five of those darned Loveless brothers are. It’s just not fair. Buy Roxie Noir’s books here (af link).

Between these books and the Taylor-Travis romance, the universe is just determined to force me into taking an interest in sport, and let me tell you, it’s working!

We’ve got ice hockey, we’ve got basketball, we’ve got baseball, in three books about super hot men and the women who get to sleep with them, basically. At their core, these books are really about soulmates, I think, and they each follow a different woman at the moment she meets hers.

I will admit they are really quite sappy but they’re also incredibly sexy, and Mile High in particular features an incredibly sarcastic, totally-not-thin woman who is being aggressively (but not unwelcome-ly) pursued by a very hot NHL star. (That stands for National Hockey League. I’m sporty now.) Again, a trigger warning for multiple orgasms occurring at the drop of a hat (or a hand). Buy them here (af link).

Now we start to go down the slightly darker road of forbidden romance and BDSM, and this combines both of those. We’re talking newly orphaned girl who goes to stay with her estranged step-brother (the “step” part is important) and discovers that he’s really into BDSM, hosting parties at his home that she decides she very much wants to be a part of.

I find that it’s important to suspend disbelief when reading these books, because while I could find this incredibly creepy (and I do, seeing it written down), Scott is very good at convincing you that this step uncle dude is disgustingly hot, and whaddya know, once the man is a massive ride, all of my principles fall away! Buy it here (af link).

The fact that I have no interest in reading the next two in James’ Club Wyld series is a testament to how this book didn’t really do it for me, but if it’s smutty BDSM romance you’re after, I guess it might do it for you.

I got serious Twilight vibes from this, in just how ineffectual the lead character was, and how “protective” (read “controlling”) the older man she meets at the sex club turns out to be (who could have guessed!) – but I like Twilight, so that wasn’t necessarily a bonerkiller for me.

It’s kind of Fifty Shades level smut, so there are a few hard slaps and some nipple clamps, but nothing totally off the wall and there was enough of a “forbidden love” vibe to the first half to keep me reading through to the second. Buy it here (af link).

This is possibly the most taboo of all the smutty books I’ve read over the last month – the fact that I’ve read all of these in the past 30 days shows you just how determined I am to actually complete my Goodreads challenge this year – in that it features a kind of a hint of sexual violence, group sex with two brothers and, er, a sexual relationship with their Dad, too…

That’s not really a spoiler, because the blurb will tell you at least that much, and it will become clear, pretty early on, what’s going to happen.

My one complaint about Credence is that it felt a bit like Douglas was trying to make a deeper point about family and identity and belonging, but it didn’t quite hit home – and the ending felt way too cookie cutter to be in any way believable. Not that it was a particularly believable book but, you know. Buy it here (af link).

I truly left the best til last, because this series of six sexy fantasy books was my favourite of all of my recent reads. We’ve got Hunger Games meets X Men vibes, a little Harry Potter (just in the magic powers aspect of it, I guess) and, in case that’s not enough, we’ve got a lot of group sex.

It’s incredibly graphic and there’s a slightly off-putting focus on bodily fluids, but I loved the background story, of a world in which Gifted and Non-Gifted live side by side, but a group of Resistance want the Gifted to take over, and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals… and the central character is a 19-year-old girl who is one of the most powerful Gifted on earth.

It’s basically a modern, sexy version of Buffy, but this time she has five boyfriends. Buy book one here (af link).

P.S. I know we’re all moving away from spending every single penny we have on Black Friday, but if you’re considering making some bargain purchases from Amazon this weekend, I’d really appreciate it if you’d use my affiliate link. Any and all $$$ I make from affiliates over the next few months is going to go straight to UNRWA, in the (probably vain) hopes that it might help the people of Gaza somehow. It’ll be a small %, but at least that % will be diverted away from Jeff Bezos and towards a good cause, and it makes no difference to your purchase. Click here to shop.

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