Hot-as-lava erotic romance is Emma Holly’s stock-in-trade and her ability to create passionate and lusty characters is a talent she often wields with considerable deftness and skill. Holly’s latest, Fairyville, trades her usual risk-taking, freshness for something more familiar, tired -- derivative of herself even -- with a plot that is driven by a quadrangle of lust, three love stories, and an entire nether world of ethereal creatures. The results are, as always with Holly, boldly sexual and not for the reader unwilling to follow along into taboo territory.
Zoe Clare is a hot medium with a cold sex life living in Fairyville, Arizona (a mystical, spiritual town on the order of Sedona). She talks to dead people, has an army of Tinkerbell sized fairies and a going-nowhere crush on her manager Magnus Moore. Magnus’ sexual prowess and appetite are legendary in town. The trouble is his tastes seem to run to every woman but Zoe. What Zoe doesn’t know is that Magnus has his reasons for avoiding her and is every bit as frustrated by their lack of intimacy as she is. What Magnus doesn’t know is that being rejected – even on the unspoken level – opens old humiliating wounds for Zoe.
Into this I-want-you-but-I-can’t-have-you (to say nothing of the Big Misunderstanding) scenario Zoe’s high school boyfriend, Alex Goodbody shows up with business partner and new sex buddy Bryan McCallum. Bryan has been in love and lust with Alex for ten years (though happy to settle with friendship) until a client showed up in their detective offices with a mystery to solve involving Fairyville. Memories of Alex’s hometown, his history there, and the town’s strange goings-on are enough to drive Alex into Bryan’s patient and waiting arms. The catch, of course, is that Alex has loved Zoe – without having any contact with her – for the last twelve years.
Holly’s work is always exciting for the possibility it holds. The standard constructs and boundaries other authors in the genre work within are missing in Holly’s world and therefore the reader is allowed the exhilaration of not knowing what might happen. For example, when it becomes clear that both Magnus and Alex are hero material and that Holly won’t force one to be bad to highlight the other’s goodness, the book’s conclusion -- who Zoe will have her Happily-Ever-After with -- becomes a wide open field of opportunity.
Holly makes the most of that openness by exploring every potential union once Magnus is finally pushed to act by Alex’s return. What follows is scene after scene of sex: between Alex and Bryan; between Alex and Zoe; between Magnus and Bryan; between Alex, Zoe, and Bryan (with the spiritual presence of Magnus though not his physical presence). Most significantly notable is the build toward a four-way sex scene. Holly establishes that her characters are open to any sexual possibility and each attracted to the other three so that an orgy is the natural and likely conclusion. However, this doesn’t happen within the confines of the book’s covers. The likelihood is left open and the reader left to assume that at some point Magnus, Zoe, Alex and Bryan will find their selves in bed together. Which they do, but not until the book’s epilogue “And Then There Were Four” (a chapter not included in the book and only available as a short from Amazon.com). The issue in general with epilogues is that the story’s forward thrust concludes prior to whatever is presented in the coda and therefore anything that takes place is superfluous. Fairyville’s epilogue is no different and is further burdened by being out of voice from the rest of the story.
Fairyville is a cover to cover (and beyond) sex romp that repeatedly brings its four central characters together in various couplings, groupings, and positions. It is entertainment that doesn’t bare too close an examination; however the read is fun and titillating which goes a long way to hide the work’s lack of substance.
You can visit Emma here and buy this book here and here and get the epilogue "And Then There Were Four" here.
