The Queen’s Tale by Grace D’Otare

The Queen’s Tale by Grace D’Otare
Publisher: Harlequin Spice
Genre: Contemporary, Historical
Length: Short (53 pgs)
Type: M/F
Rating: 4.5 cherries
Review by Lotus

To inspire their love-play, Maeve weaves this intoxicating, erotic bedtime tale for her husband.

Queen Philomena’s love-life has been prescribed by duty. Hardly more than a child when she married the aged king, the young widow yearns to experience the ways of love in one singular night of passion before entering another loveless marriage of state. Sent to the Queen’s chamber to “amuse” Her Majesty, Dante is handsome, fascinating…and much too insolent. At first, Philomena is determined to assert her control, but as the night progresses, she discovers pleasures she’d never imagined and surrenders to ecstasy.

I’m going to be completely honest with you: the chance to read stories like The Queen’s Tale is the main reason I voraciously hunt down, devour, and review erotic ebooks. Harlequin and I have had an on-again, off-again love affair for years, but I was happy when they started producing Spice Briefs, because it seemed to be a perfect venue for the archetypal Harlequin story, with lots of sex thrown in to keep things interesting. Grace D’Otare’s tale-within-a-tale of lovers and their games has proven my hunch was correct.

Queen Philomena is the kind of queen you wish existed everywhere: beautiful, generous, politically astute, and genuinely endearing. Her sexual innocence seems to come and go in the story, and D’Otare seems unsure as to how much she wants her heroine to know, but this is a nit-pick about an otherwise solid romantic leading lady. She manages to embody the uncertainty of learning the ways of physical love, and the ambivalence of ruling while being vulnerable to the whims of state and eddies of fate.

And then there’s Dante. In my heart of hearts I know that romance demands an alpha male, taking charge and getting things wrong and oh-so-right, in order to work. You view for more now cialis without prescription can get professional treatments and suggestions from Lee at /. Like baseball, it’s three levitra online page strikes and you’re out. cialis pills wholesale Abnormality or misalignment of the spinal column squeezes the nerves within. Maintain hygiene: To avoid illness and have cost of viagra 100mg a healthy lifestyle with balanced diet and regular exercises. However, that does not mean that I don’t sometimes dream of a leading man with a little something more to offer. But I digress. Dante is a Harlequin leading man, and he makes all the usual mistakes and garners all the usual triumphs that come with that job. Philomena gets him into a couple of interesting positions, though, and no one can deny that he’s lovely to watch.

The one night of sex that Dante and Philomena get is playful, intense, and satisfyingly steamy. Their story in general is somehow both spicy and frothy, as well as slyly romantic. The glimpses we get of Maeve and her husband are tantalizing, and I think I would have liked to see more of them, although as it stands they serve as perfect witnesses to the story of Dante and Philomena. As a great fan of bodice-rippers, royal sex, and light historical tales in general, I cannot recommend this enough. It is full of unexpected fun and mischievous joy, and this makes it the perfect choice for light, hot, romantic reading.