Black Lies
by Alessandra Torre
Published by Alessandra Torre
296 pages
Genre: erotica; romance
4.5 / 5
Summary:
Brant:
Became a tech billionaire by his twentieth birthday. Has been in a relationship with me for 3 years. Has proposed 4 times. Been rejected 4 times.
Lee:
Cuts grass when he’s not banging housewives. Good with his hands, his mouth, and his body. Has been pursued relentlessly by me for almost 2 years, whether he knows it or not.
Go ahead. Judge me. You have no idea what my love entails.
If you think you’ve heard this story before, trust me – you haven’t.
My Review:
I love Alessandra Torre’s books. The Blindfolded series (otherwise known as “Reasons to Wish Brad De Luca was Real and Dating Me”), The Girl in Apartment 6E, and Sex, Love, Repeat are hot, steamy, and pretty well-written. Torre takes our traditional look at love and twists it around, forcing you to accept that love comes in different sizes and shapes for different people.
Such is the case with Black Lies.
Now, this book is terribly difficult to write about without divulging a huge plot twist, but I’m going to try my best to do so.
Layana (okay – that name is just flat out awful) is a wealthy, entitled daughter of wealthy, entitled parents, the sort who expect her to grin, bear, and present the stiffest of upper lips. She no longer lives with her San Francisco parents, but she’s close enough. No, they don’t pay her way (a trust fund takes care of that), but this isn’t to say that Layana (that name … even if she’s also called ‘Lana,’ it doesn’t help) makes her own way in this world.
Stuck at another certain-to-be-dull fundraiser, she meets Brant, a technological wunderkind to whom she finds herself immediately and irrevocably drawn. Brant is one of those men whose focus tends to be solely on his job, and no one is more surprised than he is when he and Layana (aren’t you picturing a stripper teetering on lucite heels?) leave the dinner to go rock the headboard back at her place.
A romance of sorts begins, and before too long, the two are professing their love.
But this is Alessandra Torre, so you know something bad is going to happen.
In this case, Layana has been warned by Brant’s Aunt Jillian that he harbors a Dark Secret. When Layana finds out what it is, she is utterly gobsmacked.
She is also, however, in love with Brant, and she is determined to stay with him. Then she meets Lee, and she is every bit as drawn to him. He is Brant’s opposite in nearly every way: he works as a landscaper, he’s rough and coarse, and he likes his sexy times rough and coarse.
And Layana (you know you’re at least picturing a Waffle House waitress, smacking her gum while writing out your order with a pen that has a bobble head on the end) likes Lee. A lot. A whoooole lot, in fact.
She keeps warning us that if you knew – if you understood why – you wouldn’t judge her for spending time with Lee. For falling in love with him, even. And it’s true. You do forgive.
Brant’s secret, the cause of the “black lies” between him and Layana, is heartbreaking. It makes you adore him even more, and it even helps you respect Layana’s choices. While she tells the story from her perspective, Torre occasionally gives us Brant’s point-of-view, which only cements our affection for him. He’s a good man, deserving of someone’s unconditional love. The question is whether Brant – all of him, every piece and part of him – loves Layana enough to let her love him in return.
Now, with Alessandra Torre as the author, you know you want to find out about that headboard rocking. Strap on your vibrators, girls, because you will need them as you read this one. I’d also have a spare set (or two) of batteries handy. Brant and Layana leave a scorched path on the sheets, and Lee – oh, Lee – can make the magic happen like the stuff of fantasies. When he demands that Layana drop to her knees on a cruddy bar bathroom floor, you’re surprised it takes her as long as it does. And it does not take her very long. He’s a snarling, hair pulling, hard thrusting kind of man who is intent on his pleasure. Brant, too, is a focused lover, but he demands that Layana feel as much, if not more, pleasure than he does. Lee? Lee wants his “release,” and if Layana is lucky enough to enjoy hers, so be it.
I enjoyed this book so much. The writing is not perfect, and the story has its share of holes. Torre addresses the latter in her afterword, in which she acknowledges that to tell the story of Brant and his secret, she needed to play a little fast and loose with certain facts. That’s acceptable, though. What proves more nigglesome is the occasional sappy dialogue and the straight-out-of-Central-Casting bad guy and girl.
This is Brant’s story, though. His, far more than Layana’s. Can love heal? Is it enough? Is any one of us able to love someone so completely that we can withstand their darkest, blackest secret?
Brant makes you think you could.
(As an aside: I read an ARC of this book, and I hope – I really, truly hope – that the phrase “I could care less” was fixed prior to publication. That phrase is a particular pet peeve of mine because IT DOES NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS.)
Vox Libris 