Decadence

March 1, 2013
Seeking liberation and a fuller awareness of self, Nia Simone Bijou enters a glittering fantasy world of erotic temptations. But some unfinished business shows up at her erotic playground. A successful screenwriter from Trinidad, Nia has no shortage of willing lovers. Most recently, she has indulged in a spontaneous menage a trois with a lovely woman from Vancouver and Bret--Bret, who (like an erotic magician) can work carnal trickery with a basic towel. Recalling a torrid sexual marathon with the exotic, powerful businessman named Prada, Nia cannot deny that she longs for him but finds herself reluctant to pursue a relationship with him, since no one man could ever satisfy her for long. Even worse, he says he's in love with her. Further in her past lurks Chris, her first love and the man who broke her heart. Restless and in search of sexual adventures, Nia joins the exclusive club Decadence, which offers adult pleasures--awarding membership only to the most physically beautiful applicants (after screening them for all known sexually transmitted infections). Initially a voyeur, Nia is quickly drawn into active participation, engaging in anonymous sex with men and women who signal their wealth with Mont Blanc watches and Louboutin shoes. Dickey (An Accidental Affair, 2012, etc.) focuses on aroused body parts (often with pretentious, quasi-mystical euphemisms). Combined with such clinical observation, Nia's minute description of every throb and moan cheapens the hedonistic exploits into crude thrills. Her ostensible quest for a man who can indulge her every fantasy devolves into a three-ring circus of sexual acrobatics. By the time Chris, Prada and Bret return to her life, and Nia must make some real-life decisions with real-life consequences, the reader is numb and ready to go home. More debauched soft pornography than tantric sexual quest.

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November 1, 2012

Fans, you'll love it; this novel picks up the thread of Dickey's popular Pleasure. Four years hence, Nia Simone Bijou has achieved success as a writer but is still striving to master the turmoil within before she moves on to marriage and motherhood. But at the pleasure palace where patrons shed their identities to try on new ones, she's losing perspective. With a five-city tour.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2013
We saw the young Atlanta writer Nia Simone Bijou immersed in an erotic make-believe world in Pleasure (2008). Four years later, she's back and enthralled by even more temptation than before. During a quest for sexual and experimental indulgence, Nia joins an exclusive club for the daring and the wealthy, where wild escapades take place and fantasy meshes thoroughly with reality. Not knowing what is real anymore, Nia questions her relationship with the very mysterious Prada and comes across an old flame who tempts her back into a racy, arousing turnabout she's not sure she can handle. Best-selling author Dickey offers a story line of entangled erotic mysteries in this new page-turner that will leave readers breathless and satisfied.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)