Personal Experiences, Personal series book 1 by Tracy Lee

Personal Experiences by Tracy Lee is a story that pulls you in.  The author clearly knows how to write to pull the reader into her world, get to know her characters, even care about what happens to them.  It is definitely worth reading.  My qualification, however, is that I would not by any stretch call it a romance, or erotica.

The story does include sex, even between two characters who love each other.  It has the boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl gets pregnant, girl decides to protect boy from life (pregnancy) and hides her pregnancy, years later boy comes back and rescues girl.  This is a story that could be fleshed out to be something akin to Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks.

That being said, I like many of Nicholas Sparks novels, this is a good short story.  I would just re-categorize it to sexual drama, not romantic erotica.  This has too many triggers for me to be willing to put that label on it.  Even in its “romance” sex scenes the heroine, Elleny, said no multiple times – which takes even the sex positive scenes to the verge of rape.

This story delves into the life of an abused wife.  Her fear for her family, fear for her life and for those around her is something many abused women deal with. I prefer more consent in my romances.  I would give this book a 4 star rating… but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who triggers on rape or abuse.  That is a very real subject and a very real trigger. Before I could recommend this to anyone I would have to know they don’t trigger on those, and though it is labeled erotica and does have explicit scenes that I would call it a sexually explicit drama not romantic fiction.

4 Stars