Fuck Buddies Review- Lisa Andrews

Introvert from Louisiana and social anxiety drinker Christa Taylor, agrees to a blind date from hell with New York City's own Eric Adams. He's a social media influencer an all round ladies man, after a heated and very personal yet brutally honest conversation, they agree to never see each other again, after just one night. Once the both become enemies and addicted to each other, they're strained by the most unlikely outside influences, their best friends at their sides. Events force them apart from each other, breaking hearts, estrangement, means together forever. As choices, chances and fate change their eternal outlook on love, forbidden connections, manipulation. Is this a tragedy or a happy ever after?

Huge thank you to Lisa Andrews who has sent me this novel as an ARC, in exchange for my honest review, in no way is this affected by my thoughts.

TW- Pandemic, Aggressive Sex, Infidelity, Lies.

I think the stigma around erotic novels has changed dramatically over the years, since readers of Fifty Shades Of Grey used to be slightly embarrassed to read in public, but nobody thinks like that anymore, it's part of the norm. I actually love that.

Erotica is hard to write. Let's be honest here, to execute an erotic fantasy/novel, well, the writing has to be good enough to suspend the reader's interest all the way through, and not just bang in steamy scenes that can get tiresome, it needs to be emotionally honest and engaging, this does not work if the readers cannot connect with the characters, but Lisa did a fantastic job of emphasising all these criteria's in her masterpiece 'Fuck Buddies'.

There are only so many ways to write the 'traditional' sex scene, and they can become very repetitive and quite boring, I think many of my readers will agree here. Lisa's ability to incorporate her sub-genres were impressive. She let it build, let it fall, heart-break and gave us as readers everything we were after.

Anyway, let's talk about the book...

I'm kind of annoyed at myself how emotionally invested I got in this novel, when I'm telling you over the space of 27 hours, I could not put this down, AT ALL. I was either walking around the house with my Kindle, or pacing the house cooking tea, cleaning with my Kindle app on my phone. Lisa managed to pull me in right from the beginning.

The character development was cleverly portrayed in this novel, conveying the REAL, RAW, and emotional feelings between first, two people, and then she threw in a barrel of conflicting outside influences, which threw this novel in a way I DID NOT expect. I was taken on a ridiculously large rollercoaster, hating Eric and Chrissy, hating Heather, loving all of them, and then rolling my eyes a few chapters later in frustration around their decisions. But that's all what happens when you read a good book right? Lisa knew EXACTLY what to do.

Johnny was my favourite character all the way through, as much as I was rooting for all of them during the book, and then again, getting angry, overly annoyed at their decision making, and the consequences that surrounded them, Johnny stayed in my little heart all the way through, as he was so genuine, true to his feelings, and constantly making the right decision no matter what happened after.

Lisa's writing skills were impressive, not only did she manage to write incredible sex scenes, she also created two different levels of connection with two men. Eric being the kinky, exciting type, but Johnny being the sensual, emotional and 'making love' type, I loved how she portrayed the various levels of connection through each character, and their likes and dislikes.

" Chance can impact our choice, Choice can impact our fate. So is fate determined by chance?"

One of my favourite things about this novel was how unique it was, we usually see love triangles in novels, especially romance, and in first looking at the title, I took the assumption it was surrounding two people, but that quickly changed into a QUADRANGLE. The themes included in this book were intriguing, many friendships are risked, rules are broken and the entire novel is incredibly messy, which if I'm honest I LOVED. As a person not fiction, I didn't agree with some of the choices that Chrissy and Heather made, but that's the best thing about reading isn't it? Pushing yourselves out of your normal comfort zone.

I also enjoyed the narrative in this novel, from dual POVS, to deleted chapters, to thoughts and feelings being conflicted to what has been out in the open. I really enjoyed this book, I won't delve in too much further encase of spoilers, but I'll be gutted if Lisa doesn't write a second book because the ending on a CLIFFHANGER was superb, and I NEED MORE!

This novel comes out on May 1st this year, so if you pick it up, please contact me on social media, I'd love to know who's team you are on! #dontmakemebeg

Thanks Lisa; for the spice, the emotional tugging of my heart strings, and for writing such a standalone, unique novel. You should be proud!