Exit to Eden Book

I'd heard a lot of good things about this book prior to purchasing it. I've never seen any parts of the movie that bares its title, but had read some place that Anne Rice had denounced it because it so greatly varied from the original story. I found that encouraging considering the movie is marketed as a buddy cop comedy and I don't really enjoy comedy mixed in with my BDSM erotica, which is what the book is marketed as.

The book's storyline centers around and is told from the first person point of view of two individuals involved in the BDSM lifestyle. One is, Lisa, the female co-founder and operator of a sex club simply called The Club that is stationed on some unidentified island. From the very start you get a sense that she's a woman divided, mostly due to her families deep Catholic faith and her own 'sex is beautiful and never sinful' mentality. The other half of the story is told by, Elliott, a man soon to be employed by The Club as one of its many sex slaves. The impression is given that he has a strong leaning towards being a homosexual and only a mild interest in women.

Soon our two characters find themselves at The Club; Lisa at the end of a trip to visit her family and Elliott at the start of his two year contract as a slave. Elliott is ill-suited for the position of slave and quickly gets himself in trouble. What follows is what one would expect from BDSM erotica and Lisa becomes Elliott's owner/lover, but she's just not as "into it" as she should be. After some good play between the two of them, Lisa ups and bust Elliott out of The Club and they travel to New Orleans. That's where things start to go down hill.

Once out of The Club all BDSM elements of the book practically disappear and its basically all vanilla sex and traditional love story from there on out. That doesn't make it a bad read and it is quite thoughtful and insightful into human nature, but just isn't up to snuff with the book's opening or marketing. Call me old fashioned, but when I read BDSM erotica I want there to actually be some bite to the sex sense.

I'm also not so big on a main character who after falling in love with her "slave" becomes so overcome with guilt and shame at her sexual history that she practically can't function and starts to drink herself silly. A little conflict; a little surprise at having feeling so deeply for someone who'd otherwise have been just a fling or a good time, but hitting rock bottom and crying her eyes out and going around asking her friends is she "bad" because of the way she has lived is way over the top and frankly a bit insulting to anyone with even a little kink and love in their lives. I'm not going to give away the ending for anyone who might be considering reading this work, but I will warn you that it's about as predictable as they come and my impression of the message of this book is that love will save you and cure you of your kinky desires. I think, if this is Mrs. Rice's feelings about BDSM and sex in general, it's a good thing she stuck so long to writing books about vampires and didn't devote more energy to creating erotica. The world really doesn't need more shame over sex and sexuality spread around.