cover image She’s All In

She’s All In

Cathryn Cade. Samhain, $5.50 e-book (219p) ISBN 978-1-61921-758-4

Cade’s first Club 3 erotic romance has an inescapable amateurish feel. Daisy Charles, a cancer survivor in her 20s, decides to indulge her sexual desires with Dack Humbolt, one of the owners of her gym, who turns out to also co-own a local fetish club. Her poorly kept secret is a double mastectomy and reconstruction that’s clumsily foreshadowed from the start and revealed when Dack, in a particularly slimy move, gets one of the club’s employees to take Daisy aside for a “private” heart-to-heart while he secretly listens in. The romance is primarily conducted via a series of watered-down sexual activities presented with little excitement. True eroticism occurs only during another scene that Dack engineers so he can confront Daisy about her trust issues, and even then, it’s rather rote. Sweet, shy Daisy can do better, and so can readers. (Oct.)