This review originally appeared at Seductive Musings
Review: Escape From Obsession by Dixie Lynn Dwyer
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for an honest review.
I am a regular reader of the “Ménage Everlasting” erotic romances published by Siren Bookstrand, so when I was offered the opportunity to review this new-to-me author, I jumped in with both feet. A MFMM erotic romance featuring three hot and broody military brothers is just the sort of book I love to read, and I had hoped that Dixie Lynn Dwyer’s “Escape from Obsession” would be no exception. Unfortunately for me, what good there was to enjoy in this book was constantly overshadowed by awkward phrasing, excessive repetition and an ending that I found implausible at best.
The story begins several months earlier in New York, when Gia is still Gianna, a young impressionable woman being controlled by her domineering boyfriend, Antonio, who is up to his neck in drug dealing and other major financial wrongdoings. When Antonio attempts to force Gianna to submit sexually to his business partner, Valdere, she realizes she is in a dangerous situation and only manages to escape when another angry business associate crashes into their apartment and the cops show up to drag Antonio off to jail. Gianna moves to Texas, settles in a new job and apartment near her beloved cousin, Teddy, and changes her first name to Gia in an attempt to stay hidden from anyone who might come looking for her there.
Teddy is already in a long term ménage relationship where he shares his wife Deanna with another man. Gia wonders how they can possibly be happy when she is still so horrified that Antonio wanted to give her to Valdere. It’s only when she finally comes out of her self-imposed social exile and joins in the fun at Casper’s, the local sports bar, that she meets a friendly bartender, Garrett McCallister, and realizes that she might be ready to trust a man again. A few days later, she meets Garrett’s brother, Wes, who is the football coach for her cousin’s son Dale, and just as attracted to her as Garrett was. The two brothers then contact their older brother Gunner, a Texas Ranger, once they both realize that Gia might be the one woman they have all hoped to find for a ménage relationship of their own. But Gia is still trapped in her fear of what happened in New York and what might happen again if she lets these men take her as their own.
The McCallister brothers are easily the best part of “Escape from Obsession” but the various ways they are described were also a major frustration for me. We are constantly reminded that they were “commandoes” (author’s spelling) in the “Marine Corp” and that they each have a matching “Royal Commandoes” back tattoo. Although such phrasing kept taking me out of the story, I did enjoy how each of the brothers treated with Gia with patience and love, especially in light of how she was so incredibly afraid to even go out on a real date with any of them. I found Gia’s reactions understandable at first, but as the story went on and on with her continuing to insist that men are pain and that no men could ever be trusted, I got impatient with her refusal to move on and wondered if she’d ever gotten any counseling after her experience in New York.
The other issue I had with “Escape from Obsession” was with the pacing and the plot choices as the story played out. I had a big problem with the moment when Gia decided to finally submit to the McCallister brothers, considering how understandably afraid she was of men attacking her and what had happened to her mere hours before they all had sex together for the first time. But the truly astonishing moment for me came toward the end when all the various threats in Gia’s life converge in a single horrific scene. I found that moment to be so preposterous that I wondered if book length constraints had forced the author’s hand, or if that was the resolution she really intended. At least at the end of it all, we know Gia will be happy and safe with her McCallister brothers, having finally escaped from her own obsession with her unhappy past.
Ratings:
Overall: 2.5
Sensuality level: 4 (MFMM ménage including anal sex, and multiple instances of attempted rape)