*I got this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*
After grading German exams for most of the last three days I finally found some time to read last night, finally – between midnight and 1:30am. Anyway.
“Simply Irresistible” is book #2.5 in the “House of Pleasure” series by Kate Pearce. Everybody knows I love most of Kate’s stuff dearly because it’s hot, it’s passionate and it’s dirty – perfect to take my mind of grading exams.
Nevertheless I am no fan of novellas at all. I think 90 pages is too little to really tell a story, a real story. With 90 page you can tell parts of it and it only works because we already know the protagonists and all the characters, at least kind of.
This one tells the story of Abigail Beecham, who is marriage is a fraud, at least kind of because he husband lives overseas with a man and left her, after she got pregnant with their son – who doesn’t look like him at all but all like Peter, Abigail’s lover. She wants another child, Peter wants one but if James is oversea it is impossible for them to have another kid without making the ton talk. And that’s something they do not want, not for them but especially not for Jamie – the heir of the Beecham dynasty.
So, even being in love with each other, they decide that things cannot go on like that …
Well, I think I already wrote about 2/3 of the story in those few lines. Of course there is hot sex, not only between Abigail and Peter but also Val, Sara, Peter and Abigail but nevertheless reading passionate sex scenes is very nice but it is no storyline.
I am not even sure if I really liked Abigail in this storyline or Peter. She didn’t make me identify with her and Peter, Peter was nice, but not the usual hero, the male protagonist you want in your bed, mind or life. He was so ordinary.
I like her way to deal with passion, sex and that there are no taboos. I think the only book I haven’t finished of this series “Simply Pleasure” which is dealing with the relationship of Val and Peter because I don’t care about gay-romance. I don’t mind MMF or anything connected to it but MM only isn’t my cup of tea.
So maybe I should give up on novellas because I simply don’t find any pleasure in reading shorter stories. I think I like stuff starting around 250 to 300 pages. I read “Anna Karenina” in a month and hated the lead dearly because how can a woman be so stupid. Maybe some readers are made for longer novels or it’s because I read novellas at work a lot with my students (but of course German literature like Schnitzler, Storm, Fontane, Zweig).
For me “Simply Irresistible” wasn’t enough. It wasn’t … as good as the other titles of this series. And I really hope that Kate Pearce will publish one or the other longer novel soon 😉
Result: 3***
se I got some over netgalley lately but after a couple of them I realized that I know the style – it simply had to be …. Kate Pearce.
a knows that she has to get married soon but has no clue about sex, so she makes her cousin take her to The House of Pleasure“ with her but she’s dressed as a man. Of course very soon somebody finds out but finds interest in this mascarade. 
have been in the same brothel, been on the same ship before they were sold. But Peter is darker in his tastes because he likes men a lot, sexually. But it’s not that easy because he loved to be the 3rd wheel in the Val-Sara-triangle. Now that Sara is pregnant Val tells him that he doesnt want him anymore in his bed. 
she was just 18, Helene was already a hero but didnt see it. She gave birth at 15, gave her child in a nonnery and didnt abandon it, got the mistress of an old French lord. At 18 she travelled to London in a travel coach with a young man – Philip Ross, who just came back from India. He is entitled to marry because his brother just died. During the days of travelling they spent a weekend of pleasure with each other. Philip offers to marry Helene but after she tells him that she is a whore he leaves. 
mind reading PWP stories but after two or three in a row I asked myself if Pearce writes more than PWP. Honestly!
Buck is reading .... 