Cowgirl Up And Ride by Lorelei James
My Rating: 3/5 Stars
Porn can’t compare to erotica. Don’t get me wrong. Porn is good. The sweating, heaving bodies thrusting against each other make the average male pale in comparison. I’m male, so I dig that shit. Although not so much the inadequate comparison. But erotica opens up a world of possibilities. It allows you to imagine blond chesty females with breasts the size of beach balls, or athletic redheaded women in pink thongs and ponytails, or raven haired cuties in fishnet stockings and garter belts and not much else. Whereas with porn, the dialogue may be a bit cheesy, the story sometimes a bit inadequate, as the man shows up to fix the garbage disposal with the woman answering the door in her green underwear and a pushup bra and a set of perfectly white teeth. Sure, that’s an encouraging scenario, but how many times does the plumber get laid in real life? Yeah, not so much. Otherwise, there’d be more plumbers than government employees, and condoms would be handed out faster than socket wrenches.
Even though COWGIRL UP AND RIDE left me with one Long Hard Ride to the point that I forgot who I was for a few hours, and I actually believed I might have been Cord McKay, I found his relationship with AJ Foster not entirely to my taste. Sure, there were multiple orgasms and mind blowing sex and ropes and multiple positions and entry points, and the way Ms. Foster was described pretty much left me in a lust-induced continuous swoon to the point where I wanted to be the star of this fantasy tale. But it felt more like a relationship profile than the real deal, and when I read about uninhibited lust plastered all over the page, I want the whole enchilada or banana or Popsicle or thong.
Since this was an erotica novel, it could have been all about the sex and nothing more, with little to no character or relationship development, but this tale did offer a bit more, and the continuous cast of secondary characters provided more than just background noise. With alpha males and fanning females, there’s fun for everyone (albeit probably not the kiddos).
The plot moved at a torrid pace that oftentimes rivaled the bedroom antics of these sexual beings with the previous sexual encounter often toppled over by the next one. I don’t recall any broken beds or broken trailers or broken windows or punctured handcuffs, although there was at least one screaming orgasm, and others I may have missed.
Since I’ve read more than a few erotica novels now, I do have to admit I am a little curious about how these marathon bedroom sessions actually make it to the printed page. Do authors have a checklist similar to a grocery list? Do they actually try out the various positions with their significant other and chalk it up to field research? Do they interview strippers or porn stars or burlesque women or some combination thereof? I know I’m probably overanalyzing all of this, but on occasion, I do actually think about this shit.
Oh, and on the Janka Hardness Rating (for wood), I’d rate COWGIRL UP AND RIDE about a Brazilian Maple. And before you try to tell me I’m crazy, yes, there actually is such a scale.