Mini Review: Desire: The Dining Club: Part One

Title: Desire: The Dining Club: Part One
Author: Marina Anderson
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: August 20th 2013
Source: Netgalley/Forever

★★

Two stars.

David needs more from Grace. Their relationship is great, from her perspective, but David's kind of love is far more challenging, and far more darkly lustful. He invites her to a special club where he can be himself, The Dining Club. There, she will face her erotic trial. If she passes, she will remain with David in his world, and get all of the bliss that him and the club have to offer.... But if she fails, she loses it all.

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Desire: The Dining Club: Part One is the first short story in an eight part series. Since this is a short story, this review will be brief.

I don't really have much to say about it. The writing isn't awful, but it grows a bit redundant, vocabulary-wise (for example, David says a lot of things quietly).

My main issue is as follows: nothing happens in this first book. It feels like someone took the first chapter of a novel and released it independently. This first part only discusses what the club is, and that Grace is to visit. You don't really learn about the characters much and they come off as cold.

This novella gets two stars based on the concept. I'd very much like to see how this goes. However, I'm not going to collect pieces of eight like it's some kind of literary trading card. I'd rather just wait until they're all out and read them as one full length book than sit through snippets like this. I'd very much recommend that other readers do the same.

Thanks to Netgalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for my copy in exchange for an honest review.