A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1) by Sierra Simone
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
I had high hopes of this book. I thought, maybe, that this would be very different from the other erotica that I have come to read, and though I wasn't off in that train of thought, I was still left disappointed. The premise of this book, until now, still left me scratching my head. Why? The end point, ultimately, was leading all six friends to this sex ritual that had long been forgotten, and they decided to bring it back to life just for the sake of it. They had a choice. They could absolutely choose to say no, and all of them did, actually, but they decided to go with Delphine's reason of 'because it's fun'.
I was trying very hard to like this book, when I realise that there isn't much plot to it. There is a lot of character-driven parts; most of it consist of character-driven parts, actually. We get to read about the thoughts of all six, how horny they are, and it just went on and on. In the beginning, I truly adored the author's words. They are so beautiful, so poetic, but as it went on, it is easy to realise that all these words are there with the main reason of filling up the word count. This book could have been so, so much shorter, and nothing much would have been missed. Still, I did enjoy getting into all their heads and reading about them figuring things out on their own. All the characters had distinct personalities, different roles as well -- except, I've got to say, Becket. He's the most low-key of all, and a lot of the time I wonder what the point was of including him in the story.
Another thing I'd like to talk about the characters: they lack diversity, so much so that I actually wondered, how realistic is this? What was the reason the author wanted to write about a group of six friends who are all bi? Was it because of the rep and nothing else? And... all of them are into kink, just like their parents. What are the chances?
And they kept talking about this force that is making them want to go back. It was like there is fantasy, but there isn't fantasy. It all started with this event back when they were kids, and it lasted all the way until they were grown-ups, twelve years later. If it wasn't fantasy, then what was it? To me, without that explanation, it just felt to me like flowery words, this strange force that kept tempting the six of them back to thornchapel. And after having not been in close contact for so many years, in reality, there isn't truly a reason to always want to meet these friends again. The last they saw each other were when they were kids, for goodness' sake. They couldn't possibly be lusting for each other already then.
It would have been really interesting if more focus was on the disappearance of Poe's mother. That would have made a really awesome sub-story, but it was only mentioned at the beginning, at the end, and nothing in between. The constant reminder of the latin word is not counted.
I think it was quite brave of me to be reading this book. It was so hyped up, I decided to just go for it even though erotica isn't much of a genre I read. I don't often read books with LGBT rep as the main character either, so this was a very good experience. If only the plot was written better.