One Shade of Red
I received a free ARC copy by the author to proofread it and to provide an honest review.This book was intended to be a spoof of "Fifty Shades of Grey", but I can tell you that Scott Bury managed to write a book that is much better, more interesting, deeper, and better written than the whole Fifty Shades Trilogy put together.
Damian is a naïve young man that faces a whole summer with the uncertainty of what those months would bring. Worried about making enough money for his next year at college, he couldn't imagine that taking care of his flatmate Nick's business when he left the city would lead him to live the summer of his life. Meeting Ms. Alexis Rosse would turn his world upside down. The expected uneventful summer becomes a real adventure, with plenty of hot sex encounters, love issues, handling friends and overcoming obstacles.
This book is extremely well-written; so well-written that it flows quite easily, hooking the reader right from the beginning. I had real problems to stop reading it, and indeed it just took me three seatings to read the whole book.
One of the best things about this book is that every single character has a distinctive voice, and that fits really well into the story and makes characterisation very good. You can know who is talking and get the mental picture just by reading how they talk. It's brilliant.
This is an erotic book, so yes, there is sex. A lot of sex. Knowing the previous books by Scott Bury, I must admit that I was a bit surprised. However, now I can safely say that he did a great job; the sex scenes are steamy hot and don't interfere with the plot story. I mean, this book is not only about the sex; it deals a lot with Damian's struggles with his feelings and with trying to do the right thing.
So kudos to Scott Bury for creating a well-crafted erotic tale about love and the ways of the world, as the Classics would say. While reading this book, I didn't think even once about Fifty Shades, and you would agree with me that there is no better compliment than that.
5 well-deserved stars for a memorable story.
