Toni Blake

Contemporary

Overall:
Sensuality:
Cover Cheese:

It's with abject humility that I offer you my answers to three really important questions posing near existential crises for many who care about romance.

1. Erotic romance is not erotica.

2. Romance readers have not jumped ship forever to buy nothing but "pornography."

3. The romance fiction industry is not, in fact, going to hell in a handbasket.

Sales of erotic romantic fiction are soaring because many of us are ecstatic that we're finally being offered romantic stories with sophisticated language about sexual intimacy, sensuality and the human form.

And we buy and read those love stories simply because we adore the feelings of sensual arousal they elicit.

While the best-written erotic romances are influenced by their more carnal big sister, erotica, they should be first and foremost about the humane emotions driving the characters through the sensuality and toward the Happy Ending.

Yet erotic romance isn't just about the sex.

Well, OK, it's a lot about the sex, but the writer's got to make us buy that the characters involved should be having as much of the kinds of intimacy and sex as she's shown on the page. Which begs some latitude because we're talking fiction here.

The trick to finding good erotic romance is figuring out which of the new imprints is publishing what; some promise erotica, while delivering erotic romance or even a kind of "Erotica Lite."

Avon Red imprint is HarperCollins' new erotica line, yet I'd shelve their first single title, Toni Blake's irresistible new sensual joyride "Swept Away," among novels erotically romantic.

Katrina Spencer is spending her last week of single life relaxing alone on her parents' tropical island. The former wild child is determined to get right with the fact that she'll soon be the doting wifey of a rich, straight-arrow attorney.

To escape a mission-gone-bad, FBI agent Brock Denton jumps yacht to escape the smugglers who've blown his cover. He ends up stranded on an isle with the one woman from his poor-boy past he should have loved when he'd had the chance -- Kat Spencer.

In between identifying their feelings for each other -- and avoiding being killed by ticked-off cartel thugs -- Kat and Brock decide how much of themselves they're willing to give without getting back what each really needs.

Calling Blake's "Swept Away" erotica suggests to some it's a novel written for titillation. In reality, she's written very well a fun, heart-rending love story with an exciting plot, only made richer by the emotional arcs and sub-plots involving secondary characters.

So, if you want to read some good erotica, e-mail me for suggestions.

But if you want to read a great romance with wildly erotic sensuality, think "Swept Away," then --

Buy the book.

www.ToniBlake.com

Next week's review and AuthorView: "Book of True Desires," by Betina Krahn