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Topic: How do you know if a book is steamy/sexy/erotic or tame?

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jennyb618 avatar
Subject: How do you know if a book is steamy/sexy/erotic or tame?
Date Posted: 4/22/2009 4:40 PM ET
Member Since: 3/14/2009
Posts: 2,957
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I know likesbooks.com has a rating system in their reviews but they never really have the books I am looking for. Also, Amazon sometimes says erotic on a tag but I wonder if there is a better spot to find this. I like romances on the steamy side but sometimes get bored with too tame or too erotic.

Where do you look to find out what types of love scenes your favorite authors write?

 

Generic Profile avatar
Date Posted: 4/22/2009 4:56 PM ET
Member Since: 7/31/2006
Posts: 14,634
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samhainpublishing.com gives cute and descriptive info about their books - multiple shower scenes, vehicular sex, man on man on man..etc. I wish the others did this. It ends up being hit and miss or I ask here or on romantictimes.com and sometimes amazon.com which books ahve this this and that and which don't have this this or that and just take a chance. :-( also authors I read a lot of I've found tend to write similar on the love scenes from book to book.

Tabbycat avatar
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Date Posted: 4/22/2009 7:08 PM ET
Member Since: 5/29/2007
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I just love the "warnings" Samhain puts on their books!   It helps you know what to expect in terms of steam, gotta make sure you get your money's worth!  LOL

 

 

 

seton avatar
Date Posted: 4/22/2009 7:43 PM ET
Member Since: 7/10/2006
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I usually know what to expect from the epublishers since they give content details/warnings.

 

If its really important to you, I would ask the Erotic Romance forum on Amazon

rubberducky avatar
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Date Posted: 4/22/2009 9:54 PM ET
Member Since: 8/9/2007
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I'm not reading erotica, but I never read anything without a review anymore.  That's partly because I try not to waste time on crummy books, but also because I'm no more interested in tame G-rated stories than I am in erotica.  Well... less, actually:P  I use the reviews at AAR and TRR because they give you the sensuality ratings along with their personal quality ratings and reviews.  If AAR calls it "subtle" or "kisses", or TRR say's it's G-rated, I usually don't bother.  Top ratings aren't essential - I've loved plenty of books that didn't get them - but I prefer R-rated books over most everything else.  PG-13 is usually fine, and then PG gets kinda iffy.  Below that, nyeh.  TRR will say NC-17 for anything hotter than R-rated, and I think AAR says "burning":P

Generic Profile avatar
Date Posted: 4/23/2009 8:36 AM ET
Member Since: 7/31/2006
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what are those websites Kim? ARR is allaboutromance.com right? not sure what TRR is though.

booklover6 avatar
Date Posted: 4/23/2009 9:13 AM ET
Member Since: 5/23/2008
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the romance reader? looks like a nice site.  That's a good idea Kim, I am going to check some of the reviews for books in my TBR and maybe I can get rid of some of them that way :)

rubberducky avatar
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Date Posted: 4/23/2009 10:00 AM ET
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Yeah, TRR is The Romance Reader.  Here's the link to their review archive:

 

The Romance Reader Archives, but they have lots of other nifty features on the site - just click on the "back home" link at the bottom of that page to get to their main page. In all honesty, I've been using this method to find the books & authors I want to check out for several years now, and I've actually had better luck overall with finding good books through TRR than anywhere else - even AAR (yeah, that's All About Romance, or likesbooks.com). I started back into reading romances again about 5 or so years ago. At first, it was just a hit or miss thing at the bookstore and I read a lot of lemons that way. You figure out pretty quickly that the bestseller lists don't really mean much:P So I just started randomly googling for things like "best romance books" etc. and the first things you run across are the listmania lists at Amazon, and then I expanded that into searching for online book reviews. I ran across TRR first and then AAR sometime after that. Not knowing who any of the current & popular authors were (aside from who you see most prominently in bookstores & bestseller lists), I liked TRR because they list everything alphabetically by author, whereas with sites like AAR, you have to know a name to look at their reviews & see opinions on their writing.   At TRR, I just worked my way through the archives alphabetically and complied a list of books that got at least a 4 heart rating (their ratings system), and had at least a PG-13 or higher sensuality rating - because I knew I wasn't going to be interested in anything too tame:P  I ended up with a pretty long list which I later cross-checked at AAR, and also found more books by the authors on the TRR list, but that hadn't been reviewed there for whatever reason. I found what books I could from those lists at the bookstore, and that's also when I started spending a lot of time at the UBS & on ebay, Amazon, & half.com, getting books from my "wish list", as it were, that were out of print and not available in bookstores. I actually pretty much exhausted that list within a year or two - and it was a lot of books - and about then was when I started searching for online bookswaps & I found PBS. From here, I got a lot of things that had been on my list and I either couldn't find elsewhere, or they were considered "collectible" and were too darned expensive to buy online. I didn't use the PBS forums for a long time, but when I found this forum, I had just about run through everything on my list, and then I ended up with a whole new list of books & authors from recommendations from the ladies who post here. Which is another thing that should be mentioned when we're talking about ways to find books & authors to try out; this forum & the recommendations here have been a tremendous resource for me personally. Almost more so than AAR & TRR initially were. Plus, through here, I've found other sites & romance blogs like Smart Bitches & Dear Author, which I use a lot now too. These days, I tell anyone who asks about finding books to check out the threads & recommendations on this forum.  They've been invaluable to me.

Oh - and forgot to say...  Jenny sounds a lot like me, so something like that may work well for her too.  I like steamy romance, but I get bored with erotica too.  Some of it is good, but it gets boring and repetitious to me after a while.  I like the sex in the story, but it can't come at the cost of the story itself.  It's gotta have both:P



Last Edited on: 4/23/09 10:13 AM ET - Total times edited: 1
jennyb618 avatar
Date Posted: 4/23/2009 11:43 AM ET
Member Since: 3/14/2009
Posts: 2,957
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Oh, Kim, I forgot about the Romance Reader with the ratings. You're right, we do like the same stuff because when I see "kisses" I move right on. I have found that Amazon ratings and my tastes are pretty similar so I find a listmania person I like and read whatever she likes. That's where I found some of my favorites: Pamela Clare, Kresley Cole, Erin McCarthy, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Janelle Denison, Loretta Chase, etc.

I'll have to check out Samhain. Just the fact that they put warnings makes me snicker.

Let me know if anyone thinks of anything else. I really appreciate this.

Generic Profile avatar
Date Posted: 4/23/2009 12:36 PM ET
Member Since: 7/31/2006
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heck Ilike samhain's website just for reading the warnings! they're funny sometimes!

mamadoodle avatar
Date Posted: 4/23/2009 12:50 PM ET
Member Since: 2/24/2006
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what is samhain's website addy?

jennyb618 avatar
Date Posted: 4/23/2009 3:05 PM ET
Member Since: 3/14/2009
Posts: 2,957
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http://www.samhainpublishing.com/ 

I randomly chose one and cracked up at this one:

Warning: This title contains hot, sweaty couch dancing; long, slow, hot, wet kisses that last three days, and toe-curling romance.



Last Edited on: 4/23/09 3:07 PM ET - Total times edited: 1
rubberducky avatar
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Date Posted: 4/23/2009 10:34 PM ET
Member Since: 8/9/2007
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Lol.  Those are cute.

Warning: This title contains explicit sex between best friends, graphic language…and a hero who knows how to put the hot in “hot tub”.