Review: Not Just An Orgy by Sally Painter

You know whenever I see the word "orgy" the first thing that comes to mind is a room full of men and women, a mix of total strangers and good friends, all in a room or a house, and all having dirty, sweaty and raunchy ass sex.  When I see "orgy" I'm thinking of nasty scenes where there's much changing of partners, and much pulling of trains or ladies playing with each other once the guys have all tired themselves.  Hot and slamming, banging action!  Taboo encounters one on top of another!

Well, first of all let Me assure you that Not Just An Orgy by Sally Painter really doesn't have any of that.  Because Not Just An Orgy falls under that "erotic romance" category, and not only that, but it's another piece of cheese from Ellora's Cave.  You may note that it shares the same cover as the previous story I reviewed, Wynter Daniels's The After Party.  I'm guessing that Ellora's Cave uses the same cover for all their freebie stories, and considering the stories I've read from them so far I would have to say that that is a sign that the production they offer their authors is cheap and cut rate.  It's one of the reasons I'm glad to be fully independent.  For all you "erotic romance" writers out there, let Me say this: You do not need to share your profits with an eBook publisher.  It's so easy.  All you have to do is a little research on Amazon as to how to publish on Kindle, submit it, and at least you'd recoup some money because 99 cent books do just as well as free ones.

But anyway, back to Not Just An Orgy, though a more appropriate title would be Not Much Of An Orgy.  Actually what the title is actually meant to foreshadow and imply it that there is a twist at the ending, which I will get to later, but for now just let Me say it comes too much too late to really add any impact to the story and leaves the reader feeling, Well, now that was dumb.

The story follows Alexia Wrightman a, well, fledgling reporter...wannabe reporter, it's never really clear exactly what her credentials are, or if she even has a job reporting anywhere, because she's sure the scoop she's working on is going to land a prestigious job and make her a big name.  The scoop?  She's out to expose the fact that the owner of a nightclub, Hayden Tate, has a secret room in his club where orgies are held.  It seems there are a lot of rumors about this place, but so far no one else has investigated the story.

HUH?

Okay, is sounds almost as if it the theme for an Our Gang or Little Rascals short, with adult elements.  I mean like really.  It's the 21st Century.  I have a feeling that this is not the way you land a job or make a big name for yourself in journalism.

But wait, I haven't mentioned that said night club owner is a hot stud who just oozes sexuality, and our erstwhile heroine will do anything to see his secret orgy room, even if she has to have sex with him.  And oh, she's definitely willing and ready to do that, even to the point she's been dreaming and hoping and wishing very hard that it would happen.  So with the help of her partner, Ollie, an unseen video genius sidekick who has mounted a hidden camera in her hair clip, (and yes that's a real WTF, really, little plot element), she sets out to do just that.  Yes it sounds like some of the more terrible twists that went on in the declining years of 24, and I almost hate myself for having to admit that.

As a basic trash romance story Not Just An Orgy works for the most part.  It works in that fact that it's standard fare where you're presented with a strong female character who all too quickly goes weak in the knees and is ready to swoon and do anything for a hot and powerful stud.  The heroine comes off as pretty much a conniving status seeker who just turns into a blubbering little fuck toy, and is pretty much unlikable.  On the other side of the coin the club owner, who should come off as a sleazeball, comes off as a hot stud who doesn't seem like much of a bad guy at all.  Oh, I'm sure everyone who's ever written a dime romance about mail-order brides, betrothed women, and women captured by Indians that the female leads all start out hating their sleazy partners until they fall in love with them three quarters of the way into the story are shaking their heads and weeping in shame at Sally Painter's breaking of that rule and style.

Surprisingly, the word "fuck" is actually used a couple of times near the end of the story.  However, AGAIN, it is an EROTIC ROMANCE story, which means that, despite the fact there's an orgy going on all around them, the heroine and her hot stud, will be making love.  With each other for the first time.  In a situation where usually some other guy would probably "make love" to her once they're finished.  And again, EROTIC ROMANCE.  There's plenty of people having sex in the same room in this story, but it seems all the coupling couples are monogamous with their partners.  I suppose that why I didn't have to bare any mood killing condom putting on scenes as in The After Party.  But since the sex scenes were eeeeh anyhow there wasn't much of a mood to kill.

And of course the high points of Not Just An Orgy are lines that Mrs. Painter has written, thinking that they were oh, so hot, and brilliant, but are either corny, or just plain stupid.  Such as:

"The moist tip of his cock pressed against her anus and she stiffened.  She'd never had anal sex and licked her lips."

She licked her lips?  Honey, you need to stretch your neck out like Mister Fantastic and lick your own ass, or at least slob a little on that knob, because if you've never had anal sex before IT'S GONNA HURT!

"The outer rim of her channel ached with the need to feel his cock scrape past the folds of her pussy."

??????????

Is the "outer rim" her labia, or are the "folds of her pussy" the labia?  More to the point do the labia really ache with need?  I know I'm just a man but I was always under the impression that it was the clit that usually ached with need.  And sometimes the nipples.  And occasionally the anus.

"Alexia clung to him.  Sweat drenched him, making his shirt stick to his back.  She pushed the shirt over his shoulders and he quickly shed it, letting it fall to the floor."

Okay, so when you're clinging to a guy and he's holding you up against the wall "making love" to you isn't it a little hard to get his manly sweaty shirt off his shoulder?  He would have to be super human to get it off so it could fall to the floor without letting go of her or her letting go oh him.

OH, BUT WAIT!  I almost forgot the twist ending.  Here, let me give you a multiple choice and see if you can guess the right one.  Is it:

A. Alexia really is not a reporter, and Hayden Tate is not a sleazy club owner, but they are a married couple doing some role play and this reporter and sleazy club owner thing is a hot little sex game they play to spice up their marriage.

B. The police break in and Alexia is arrested because it turns out all the other women in the room are actually prostitutes and they assume she is one too seeing her engaged it some gash for cash love making when they bust in.

Or,

C. Hayden Tate and everyone else in the secret room are vampires, and he wants to turn Alexia into his undead bride.

The answer, obviously is C!

Just like Master Tang in Kung Pow! Enter The Fist it would have been better if Mrs. Painter had went with Plan A, had she though of it.  Vampires?  Really?  I mean considering the pussy assed orgy in the story I'm pretty sure those vampires are as sparkly as RuPaul's panties.

Of course not everyone apparently finds the story to be so terrible, but overall it still only managed to get a score of 2 and 1/2 stars on Amazon.  The reviews are mixed and ranged from those who loved it to those who apparently hated it worse than I did.  One common observation among Amazon's reviewers was that the story might have worked if it were longer, perhaps in a novel format, and that adding vampires in at the very end was a huge flub on Mrs. Painter's part.  It was a high school creative writing assignment mistake, and it's not the first, and unfortunately probably not the last time, I will see it from an independent writer whose stories look like cut rate YA stories with a little sex thrown in to spice them up.

I do have to say I saw one last bit of unintentional comedy in the About The Author blurb where it reveals:

"Nowadays, when not writing hot sexy gargoyles, vampires and futuristic hunks, she takes off on a new adventure with her soul mate husband, enjoys her family and hangs out with friends."

Sexy gargoyles?????????   Listen, not even Disney could make gargoyles look sexy.

I give Not Just An Orgy one star, and that's pushing it.  If you really want to see for yourself if you think it was bad you can get it free for Kindle from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Not-Just-an-Orgy-ebook/dp/B003SX124E

If you want to know more about Sally Painter and her works you can check out her bio at Ellora's Cave.



Master Vyle