Four stories of eroticism, strength, experimentation, and ultimate salvation.
Cursed after death to live in grey nothingness until they atone for their sins, four spirits have spent centuries doing good for others. Finally they stumble upon the true key to their salvation — because they hurt women in their lives, they’ll only find release by now helping women to become all they should be.
One by one, the spirits meet a woman and as each sexual delight unfurls, the grey nothingness disappears a little more. As the women find their happily ever after, they grant the spirits a chance at peace for eternity.
Follow the journey of four remarkable women — Luisa, Anna, Cara, and Jan — and the four spirits that set them on a new path to sexual freedom and boundless pleasure.
The Review:
Release is a collection of interconnected paranormal erotic novellas, following the sexual adventures of four ghosts who must find redemption in the afterlife by helping women in the here and now. Namely, they must help women find sexual awakening.
I’ve read Elizabeth Dunk’s writing before, both her romance as Elizabeth Dunk and her science fiction writing as Nicole R Murphy, so I was interested to see how she would handle erotic romance. While you can definitely feel her usual tone throughout this collection, which could be summed up as a steamy as hell combination of both Dunk/Murphy’s usual styles, it is also something new entirely from this author.
The first story in the collection is “Believing”, Luisa’s Story, which follows Luisa as she moves into a new house and explores the building and her sexual desire with a ghost who insists on taking her to the edge of orgasm and then disappearing.
“Live and Let Go”, Anna’s Story, is about a woman who has lost her husband to illness and feels that her sexuality has been lost with him, until she finds comfort in the arms of a ghost at the beach.
“Truth in Action” is Cara’s story and this one has quite a bit going on, including the satisfaction of Cara’s threesome fantasy as she explores her bisexuality with a ghost and a mechanic.
In the final novella, “Forgiven and Freed”, the tables are turned in Stephen’s story, as our ghost finds help and sexual healing from an office worker, before he can finally find redemption with his brothers.
While each of the novellas is very different, they come together cohesively in terms of the overarching story and themes. Although these are brief sexy stories, they aren’t quick erotic hits, but very emotionally complex tales of wanting, being wanted, and sexual awakening.
In each of the novella’s we are thrown straight into the paranormal world without much (if any) preamble, and our heroines don’t really question the ghostly presences, as the stories become much more quickly about their emotional and sexual journeys. The sex is very steamy throughout each of the novellas, and although it remains pretty vanilla for the most part, the sex somehow manages to be varied from story to story.
My favorite novella was definitely the first, Luisa’s Story, which is probably the most lighthearted of the lot and a good way to start the collection. Following from here, Anna’s story was the most touching, but I thought all four stories were really well balanced and all end with happy for nows! YAY! (I was a little worried about this, given the whole ghost premise…)
I really liked the way the stories are so interconnected, but you can easily read each story as a separate entity. In fact, even though I binge read the whole collection in a single sitting (because I have no self-control), I suspect they may be even more poignant when read with a few days’ breath apart to really appreciate the emotional journey of each of the characters.
This aptly named collection is a beautiful, emotional and erotic journey with sexy ghosts and sexual awakenings.
Release by Elizabeth Dunk is a paranormal erotic romance collection, published by Escape Publishing on July 1 2014 and available from Amazon and Amazon AUS.
This book was given to Love Reading Romance in exchange for an honest review.
