Carmen's Reviews > Escorted

Virginal woman hires male prostitute to get rid of her virginity. This is a VERY COMMON erotica trope. It also seems to be popular to make the woman have a position of sexual knowledge: she works writing a sex column, she works as a romance novelist, etc. etc. Here Lori is a romance novelist and 26-year-old virgin. Ander is a male prostitute who hates his rich father.

I don't have an opening quote for this. Also, I'm going to do this review a bit backwards. Which means we start out with

HOW'S THE SEX, CARMEN?

In my opinion, the sex was boring. It was not sexually exciting to me at any time or in any way.

Nothing the characters did to each other was objectionable by my standards... but neither was it interesting or sexy.

If you are reading erotica to get off, which is why I read erotica, this is a failure. I couldn't get sexually aroused reading this. It was blah.

This is because Kent is not writing sex in an exciting way (IMO). Not because the situation is inherently unsexy, although I will get into that later.


I DIDN'T LIKE THE MCS

SUBSECTION ONE: THE HEROINE

I found the heroine annoying. Very annoying. I wanted to smack her for most of the novel.

I have no idea how Ander tolerated her, much less fell in love with her. What was there to fall in love with?!!!?!? I suppose the BEST thing you could say about her was that she treated Ander as a human being and not like a piece of meat. But that's it. Otherwise she was generally annoying, pretty dumb, very nosy with no respect for Ander's privacy, and grating. She drove me up a fucking wall.

Kent seemed to believe Lori was a charming and sweet character. She was not. I don't like reading romance books where I just CANNOT understand why the hero is falling in love with the heroine. It makes no sense. I was scratching my head the entire time Kent was trying to convince me Ander was crazy about this woman. Why? Why would Ander be crazy about this woman? I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA. She sounded like a nightmare to me, tbh.

SUBSECTION TWO: THE HERO

This tale is only told from Lori's POV. Which is kind of unique. But it doesn't give me a grasp of what is going on inside Ander's mind.

But let me just say, from what I see of him through Lori's eyes, he was annoying me. He annoyed me in bed, he annoyed me out of bed. He was just fucking annoying.

For one thing, he fucking brings porn videos to Lori and they watch them for literally hours. So, she's hired him for a five hour session, let's say this costs $1,500. Are you telling me he's charging $300 an hour to sit on the couch and watch fucking porn with her!?!?!?!!??!!?!? JFC. I'm not fucking paying you $300 to show me porn. She can watch porn on her own! Why the fuck is that worth $300 an hour?!?!!? And he says this is what he's doing to get her turned on. FUCK THAT SHIT. Can we please get her turned on the old-fashioned way? Isn't that what she's FUCKING PAYING YOU FOR?!?!!?!?!?! Put your hands on her. Say sweet things to her. Have a lovely makeout session, I don't give a fuck, just don't charge her $300 to watch porn. JFC.

SIDESTEP: THE WHOLE PROSTITUTE THING

I have to say, personally, that this whole prostitute scenario is not sexy to me. The idea of a man having sex with me BECAUSE I'M GIVING HIM MONEY is just sad. It's not sexy to me. It's not romantic to me. It's fucking depressing.

It's depressing not only because I think sex work is soul-crushing for most people and also a lot of people get into it at too young of an age or out of desperation or due to sexual slavery... Don't @ me, bro. I know tons of people want to argue with me about this, but that's my take.

Forgetting this depressing aspect of it - let's pretend people ONLY get into sex-for-cash because they LOVE sex and selling themselves gives them joy-joy feelings. Let's pretend we live in a utopia where people would ONLY become prostitutes because they love every second and it's their true calling. This is complete bullshit, but let's pretend.

She's PAYING someone to have sex with her. She's PAYING someone to be nice to her and tell her she's pretty and act like she turns them on physically.

That's sad. Not because she's desperate (honestly, tons of men would fuck her and wouldn't make her pay), but because - I personally believe - sex should be because two people want to do it. I PERSONALLY would prefer for it to be romantic and involve love and feelings, snuggles and caring. But even if two people are fucking because they want to fuck, that's fine. You're attracted to someone you meet at the laundromat, you take them home. You fuck. You are attracted to them - not because one of them needs to pay rent this week so they accept money for oral sex. That's just depressing to me on a lot of levels.

One, the person who has to put on this big pretend about liking the jill/john, pretending the acts they are doing on the jill/john turn them on, pretending they are attracted to the jill/john. Not being able to be themselves, having to be polite, having to obey the jill/john to a certain extent, having to put up with the jill /john's baggage. For money. Emotional labor taken to the EXTREME.

Two, the jill/john herself. She's PAYING someone to fuck her. I don't find this sexy or romantic. It does not play into any of my romantic or sexual fantasies. I just don't get it. I would not want a man to be with me because I paid him. That makes me feel the opposite of sexually aroused. It makes me sexually depressed.

It has nothing to do with looking down on the sex worker - people have to do what they have to do to make a living. I certainly understand the burdens and hardships of emotional labor. Sex work just takes it to the extreme.

And it has nothing to do with me "pitying" a "poor virgin" who wants to lose her virginity. I understand that. She sees her virginity as a burden to get rid of. Okay.

Instead, it has to do with the fact that someone is paying someone else to fuck them or to fake romantic/sexual interest in them. This is the fact that makes me depressed. Depressed for the prostitute and depressed for the john/jill.

Just doesn't seem happy or sexy to me in any way. And that's throwing out (as most romantic eroticas do) the subproblems of sexual slavery, what age they got into The Life, and other stuff that's considered really not romantic and sexy and is always glossed over in these glamorized portrayals of sex work where every prostitute loves his/her job and loves having sex with whoever is paying them to.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah, the fucking annoying hero.

He was definitely annoying me with the sex. First there was the porn thing. Then the way he took her virginity and acted with her in bed I found highly annoying and frustrating. He's kind of bossy. I get it - he's supposed to be teaching her basically from scratch, but he just keeps telling her to breathe all the time.

The sex is awkward and boring, and even though they have tons and tons of sex in the book, the sex never gets exciting or not awkward. I'm afraid these two simply have no chemistry and are awkward together.

I find a lot of female virgin/male prostitute erotica has this problem. Awkward, non-sexy sex. I know it's not just me and my lack of interest in having sex with a prostitute, because books CAN write this in a more sexy way, like Skye Warren's Escort. But many books that focus on this trope suffer for it. It would be awkward to do this, and books that don't shy away from that are more realistic... but also not helping anyone who is reading them for erotica purposes get turned-on.



OK, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GOOD, CARMEN?

Okay, now that we've discussed that

a.) the sex is awkward and boring. For the entire book.

b.) The heroine is fucking annoying and I can't for the life of me figure out what on earth the hero sees in her. And

c.) The hero is also fucking annoying and if I met him in real life he'd drive me up a fucking wall,

let's discuss what Kent actually does well in this novel.

One, it's free. There's that. Bad sign when I bring that up. But still: the price is right.

Two, Kent wasn't making me DNF. Even though both of the characters were annoying and the sex was boring, I was kind of interested in where Kent was going with this. Was Ander in love with Lori? Could Lori be any stupider? Was Ander ever going to make a facial expression? Was there going to be a big showdown with Ander's father?

I have to give Kent props for making this book semi-realistic. The sex would be awkward. Lori and Ander would face a lot of problems due to his work. Getting romantically involved with a prostitute is a bad, bad idea for A LOT of reasons.


TL;DR Not sexy. It's not a scenario I find sexy, and added onto that is Kent's sex scenes which do NOTHING for me. Both the hero and heroine were incredibly annoying. I didn't like either of them, which just made the book that much worse.

I was able to finish the book. It wasn't exasperating me. I didn't want to light it on fire. It wasn't making me froth at the mouth.

If you want female-virgin-hires-male-prostitute erotica, you can do better than this. Maybe try Escort by Skye Warren or if I find any other decent ones I'll update this.

It's free, so if you really want to give it a try, go for it.

I prefer prostitute stories where someone gets the other person out of The Life, and not ones where they hire a prostitute and then they and the prostitute 'fall in love.' Or, alternatively, I prefer books about strippers if we are having to have a male or female who is in a sell-your-body profession.
For instance, A Private Gentleman by Heidi Cullinan or Wound Up by Kelli Ireland.