Sometimes you just hate a book...

I picked up Total Surrender by Cheryl Holt because I was intrigued by the plot description, and the fact that I enjoyed the basic plot of the story kept me reading even though I was tempted to hurl the book away from me in disgust by the writing style many times.



Two major issues marred the book for me: Firstly, it seems like Cheryl Holt sat down to write this book with her trusty thesaurus next to her so she could look up the longest words possible for every adjective and adverb and to make sure she never used the same word twice. Unfortunately, if that was not bad enough, I don't think some of the words she chose mean what she thinks they mean. I'm pretty sure a phallus does not "dilate" even harder, in the context she was using the word. And "enervate" is not the same as "excite." The floridity of the prose - the choice of words meant to impress with length and quantity, if not meaning or appropriateness - made reading this book painful. I felt that I should have had a red pen and edited as I went.

Secondly, I was shocked at the sex scenes. No, not because they were there and graphic - I love erotica. I was shocked at the contempt the author seemed to feel for physical expressions of sexuality. She peppers her descriptions with words such as "degrading" and "aberrant" and "sin". Almost every encounter, be it between the hero and heroine or observed actions of other characters, seems to be portrayed at some point in a negative light. I was left with the feeling that Cheryl Holt doesn't really like sex at all, or at least has a massive guilt complex about it. When I pick up a sensual book I want there to be some joy in the telling. This left me cold.