Fantasy Lover, by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Fantasy Lover (excerpt), by Sherrilyn Kenyon really didn't sound like my cup of tea. I mean, I must have thought the review sounded intriguing enough to buy the book, but by the time it got here I'd long forgotten anything on the review, so I didn't feel at all tempted to read something that sounded so... cheesy, I guess.

Being cursed into a book as a love-slave for eternity, Julian of Macedon has been pleasuring women for over 2,000 years. Over this time, he has honed his sexual skills, learning every which way to please a woman and fulfill her deepest fantasies. But in spite of the intense sexual pleasure Julian is able to provide for others, deep within his own heart lies a fantasy of true love that has remained unfulfilled.

When Julian is summoned to be be Grace's lover for a month, he soon finds in her the potential to help him fulfill his own fantasies of meaningful love as well. Grace's love for Julian might fill the hole deep in his heart, but can it break a 2,000 year old curse?

I'm so glad I finally got around to reading this. It was a B+.

Imaginative, very funny at times, steamy and even poignant, Fantasy Lover was really good. And it didn't hurt that Julian was one of the yummiest heros I've read in a long time. His "tragic past" was almost overkill and at times bordered on cartoonesque, but even so, I felt for him, I really did. Imagine being motionless, trapped inside a book for 2000 years. And being summoned solely to be used as a sex object. Poor baby. What I found wonderful was that all this didn't sour him on people, he was a really good-natured guy, not a brooding sour-face. Oh, and he didn't take it out on Grace at all. A poor opinion about women might have been excused in his case, but I didn't see that at all in him.

As for Grace... eh, well. I have to ask, what the hell is so funny about a frigid sex therapist? I'm sorry, but I just don't see absolutely any humour in that. Plus, there are way too many of them in recent contemporaries and I'm just sick of them. She was strictly a place-holder for the reader, nothing much more than that. It was a bit funny, but her issues rang a bit false. Imagine that, I bought Julian's anguish at having been cursed by a Greek god more easily than Grace's at having been used for sex as a result of a bet!

However, their relationship worked very well, and I ended up seeing (kind of!) why Julian was so crazy about Grace. I did get the feeling his love for her was more because of what had happened to him and the difference in her actions to those of all those other women, not because of anything intrinsic to Grace, but I wanted so much for Julian to be happy, that well, whatever worked for him I wanted him to get ;-)

About the plot itself, it was Fun, with a capital F, especially the mythology. All those gods and goddesses lurking around every corner could have been too much, but it worked. Same thing with the irreverent way they were dealt with. Greek gods did have that element of childishness, that penchant for intruding, with tragic results, into the lives of mortals, so the treatment given to their stories by Kenyon didn't feel awkward.

Anyway, I really liked this. I don't think I'll be getting the next books in the series (even though Kyrian sounds nice), because from the reviews I've read they seem to be more "struggle for humanity", while this one is more "intimate", I guess one could say. I'll be looking for the books she's written as Kinley MacGregor, though.