Alright, so this has been a really fantastic reading year for me so far. Largely because I have been eating up audiobooks like never before. I've started to keep lists of my favorite narrators and just work through their backlogs, and that's been a game changer.
Which is what brought me to Face Down Fridays by Sherelle Green. It's the first book in the Crowne Legacy series, and I hadn't heard of it until I searched for more books narrated by Wesleigh Siobhan. It's short; the novella is only 166 pages on Kindle, and the audiobook was only 3 hours. That combined with the fact that it looked a little smutty gave me hopes that it could break the audiobook slump I've fallen into this month so far.
And holy hell, it did not disappoint.
The audiobook opens up with Wesleigh Siobhan's, "Chapter One: First Come F*ck" ... and immediately I was invested. (And don't worry, the rest of the chapter titles are equally fantastic.)
"His mouth was made for licking pussy [...]"
Now that's a first line to aspire to.
So, let's get to the premise. Jade is a young Black woman who runs an adult fantasy club. One night, a sexy stranger wanders in, and there's a little bit of banter before she realizes that he's the anonymous venture capitalist who invested in her company over a decade prior, after hearing her pitch at a conference. Every year, she sends him a VIP box that includes some sexy letters between them, and now he's come to collect ... her. Some family and business drama ensue, but the plot is pretty light (in the best way!) as the smut takes center stage.
The writing in this flowed well and made it a quick and easy read. It's a perfect reading slump buster if you're into something that's more sex than plot.
As for the smut level. Obviously, this is pretty fast-burn. They get down and dirty in her office on night one, and the "just one night to get it out of our system" quickly becomes "just a 5-week sex contract to get it out of our system." It's high heat, with multiple scenes that could not be removed without it changing from the story.
And it gets my seal of approval as a book that's more than a spank and a tickle but totally consensual and never that dark. Aside from the bit of business deception, their communication is surprisingly good, and there's always very clear and enthusiastic consent. While it isn't necessarily as kinky as I hoped a sex club would be, the two are definitely not vanilla either. Scenes include pussy worship, clit ring play, a potentially exhibitionist "cleansing chamber" (bath house), handcuffed orgasm denial while the other person edges themself as punishment, and sucking fruit roll-ups off certain body parts.
I borrowed this from my library, but this is going on my 2022 list of audiobooks that warrant buying and listening to over again. The chapter titles really killed me, and there were so many hilariously quotable lines. I'll leave you with one or two more before I go, but that's all for this review.
Let me know if you pick up Face Down Fridays by Sherelle Green. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
"You haven't been fucked right if he can't bust a nut in your mouth and in your pussy back-to-back."
What are you reading??
xoxo, Cat