Codes and Roses by Julia Talbot

Title: Codes and Roses (Bloodrose #1-3)
Author: Julia Talbot
Format: Paperback, 226 pages
Pub. Date: September 1st 2009
Source: Ramblings From This Chick blog

★★

A weak two stars.

Codes and Roses is a set of three short stories about the customers of a sex club called the Bloodrose. Willing paranormal participants are partnered up according to taste for an optimum time, based on an application and experience. It's sort of an in-real-life eharmony or Fetlife for werewolves and vampires. The stories circle around a werewolf, naked Deacon, who gets off on the bite of vampires. He is paired up with a vampire named Kasey, who wants nothing more than to drink from and ravish the sexy werewolf that he has just obtained. The other stories include a rouge shapeshifter, a weird scientist, and a douchebag werecat.

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First, let me just say, I don't mind reading erotica. I don't mind reading MM erotica. So anything I say about this review should be read with that in mind.

-This is one of the few times that I would judge a book by its cover. It's not well done, in my opinion, and it would never get my attention on a shelf.

-Dare I say- there is too much sex. I like erotica just as much as the next girl, but I would actually like a plot. I was only fifty pages into this collection and I found myself thinking, "Oh, we're doing this again?" And when it did happen, it was rather short and anticlimactic.

-On that note, I didn't feel that the sex was varied. There was a very limited vocabulary that made it seem as though I was reading the same scene over and over again. There are a LOT of words out there to use, other than the "c word". It made the book seem a bit trashy and not all too original.

-On top of that, there was some very poor grammar. There were sentence fragments that irked me, but what bothered me the most was the vampires. It's acknowledged in the mythology of vampires (as well as specifically in this book) that they are old, and come from different times. They should speak eloquently, while these vampires seemed like truckers.

-I'm a bit confused on the chronicling of these stories. This novel is supposed to contain books 1, 2, and 3. But when I clicked on the series page, I saw that the "third" story in this is marked as number four, and that there's another in front of it. I have no idea what that's about.

+That being said, I really do like the concept of this club. Enough so that it bumped this rating to a two star review, instead of one. If properly written, it would have been a delightful setting to read about.

If you're into M/M or paranormal erotica, or like when there's constant, short lived sex scenes, great. Maybe you'll like this better than me. If you prefer detailed, slower moving types of stories, give this a pass. I don't really recommend it to anyone.

Thanks to Danielle of Ramblings From This Chick blog for my copy.