(no subject)

[babydraco]

I suppose one of the things people like is that the sub hero sandwich is in his forties while the domme is 32. He's masculine and tough, he's a cop and he likes motorcycles. He's also a foodie who loves to cook for her. The BDSM club and the BDSM play are mostly safe, sane and consensual, well researched (some moments are a bit unbelievable but not in a disturbing way) and observing all the acceptable protocols. The people involved in the local S&M community are shown as happy, healthy people who are all there because they want to be. No one forces sex on anyone who doesn't explicitly want it. Sad that this is such a novelty that I have to call it out and applaud it. The hero's ex lover is a perfectly decent person who isn't still interested in him (no dark back story they used to be together and now they're not, that's all) and has a mature conversation with the heroine in which she gives her decent advice.

Hero and Heroine are both reasonably likeable and intelligent. The hero is an alpha type but stops short of being an alphole. I never once wanted to throw him out a window. Whenever he sees himself approaching alphole territory, he checks himself like a rational adult. When she's in the hospital and he desperately wants to take her home and care for her, and her coworkers initially greet this idea with suspicion, he starts to bristle and then remembers "oh yeah, none of these people know me".

The revelation about what the heroine does for a living was pretty fun. The hero and heroine also think and behave like people who have the jobs they do. I haven't always seen fiction where that was the case. The story stays true to the urban Florida setting and has a lot of Hispanic and African American characters. Many. They almost outnumber named white characters so if casual racecblind casting is your thing...

But they didn't spend a lot of time solving the murder mystery. It's weird, but I wanted more murder mystery solving and a little less explicit sex. It's one thing if your story purposely has no plot other than the romance, but to present readers with an actual really interesting b plot and then keep forgetting it exists,then rush to end that plot with a frankly ridiculous conclusion? I found the Big Climactic Scene to be ridiculous and over the top. And unbelievable, this is not a well constructed murder mystery at all. Mysteries need to be structured in a way that allows the reader or viewer to try and solve it themselves. Hill doesn't do a great job lining up suspects. The only time a named character is indicated to be a real suspect is right before they actually reveal themselves as the murderer. And of course they were the scariest, weirdest pair of characters in the story, exactly the people you'd look at and think "oh, they must be up to something".

I'd rather read a murder mystery with a strong undercurrent of sex and a handful of hot scenes than a romance chock full of explicit sex that has a vague murder mystery attached. I don't need excuses for porn, if I want porn I'll go read porn. And if I'm looking for plotty erotica, then I want the plot to be absorbing and well done. I don't know if it's my mood or what but a lot of the sex in Natural Law didn't do anything for me. I thought it would.

That's the thing about sex and erotica though. If you're reading/watching something that's on some level not your preference, or you're just really not in the mood at all, it's not hot. Sex, when you're not in the middle of it or when you're not desperately wanting to be in the middle of it, is funny...or incredibly dull. It's so tricky.

Comments

[coneyislandbaby]

I haven't read this book but often in 'mainstream' mystery romance novels, the same issues come up of finding the right mix of romance (including sex) and mystery. I've yet to find one that really gets it right for me, to be honest.

[babydraco]

there are so many mystery stories that seem good until you look closer and realize how badly constructed the puzzle was. Romance is tricky too, so when you try to put them together, that's probably the hardest thing to get right

I'm a fan of the Stephanie Plum series, which has murder, comedy romance *and* a little kink but the series is starting to get repetitive.

[coneyislandbaby]

This is true. I'm sure it is. I thought about trying those but I get hesitant about committing to a series.

[babydraco]

There's something like 20 books in the series at this point yeah I can't keep up

[coneyislandbaby]

About the only books I can read in series without stressing about getting them all are romance novels that are say about a group of friends. I can read one of those and not bother with the rest because the storylines tend to stand alone fairly well, it's just that you can sort of tell the supporting characters who were probably the main characters in the others in the series. Anything else, I get completist over.