Book Club: Saddled Up

'Some girls need to be spanked.' Can't argue with that, can I? 'I need to be spanked anyway, not often, but just occasionally.'

And I'm not going to argue with that either, although sometimes it's a bit too occasional from where I'm sitting. With those opening couple of sentences 'Saddled Up' had me gripped, because it could have been me speaking.

And reading on I felt a real connection with the the novel's 'leading lady' Amber Oakley. Later she says 'All my life I've fought against that need, but never managed to conquer it', and again I know where she's at.

Mind you, what follows doesn't seem to involve much fighting against that need and a fair bit of giving in to it it.

I'd say 'Saddled Up' is my spanko fiction find of the year and deserves a Book Club post. The writing tag team of Penny Birch and Miranda Forbes have created a great cast of weird and wonderful characters and put them into a contemporary British setting that I could recognise and feel at home with. 

Their story has lots of humour, but when it gets to the spanky bits it was, for me, seriously sexy. Of course, the horse-riding aspect of Amber's life is the thing that caught my eye, although her interest in equitation goes beyond the normal confines of jodhpurs, bits and bridles and takes in ponygirl play too.

Actually, I suspect bits and bridles are involved in the ponygirl thing too, especially naughty bits. But I digress, personally my horsey interest is of purely vanilla, so the pony stuff left me a bit cold. 

'Saddled Up' touches on one or two non-spank kinks along the way and that does mean that it has a bit of a Quality Street problem. You know, your tin of sweets has plenty to love - but inevitably there's something in there that just isn't your thing at all.

Unavoidable, I suppose, if you're not creating something that is strictly for the spanko community. It does raise a question: how narrowly niche should an erotic novel be? .

For all of that, when 'Saddled Up' was in spanko country it did have lots and lots that I found very sweet indeed. It's one of a series of novels that feature Ms Oakley and I'm going to look out the others - I feel like Amber and I are on the same wavelength.

Book club: Beastly Behaviour

Welcome to my book club. Please sit down and help yourself to a piece of cake. As long-time readers will know our club doesn't bother with dull Booker prize shortlist novels, the sort of thing that thrills worthy lit chicks. We're about fiction that comes with the smack of firm discipline.

Which is why this month's club choice is 'Beastly Behaviour' by Aishling Morgan.

I adore the flair and wit of Aishling Morgan at her (or his?) best. Her writing is funny and clever - and arousing all at the same time. In fact, they deserve to be up there with a classic like 'Frank and I'.

And 'Beastly Behaviour' is among the best of them, although it gets a run for its money from one or two of the others. How can you not love a novel with a notes section that begins with the statement: "The late Victorian era must surely be regarded by all right-thinking persons as the golden age of female underwear." This right-thinker definitely agrees and is just as keen to celebrate the wonder of corsets, drawers and the rest. 

You don't have to have read Conan Doyle's 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' to cotton on to the fact that Ms Morgan borrows heavily from the Sherlock Holmes yarn for 'Beastly Behaviour'. There's the 'bleakness and melancholy' of Dartmoor, a big black hound, a convict on the loose and a detective by the name of Harland Wolff (who is accompanied by his old friend Dr Manston).

Their lady in distress is, however, not the typical Conan Doyle creation - she makes her first dancing in a Wild West whorehouse, where she's being offered for sale by the unscrupulous Nanna Bloss.

And, unlike a Holmes story, 'Beastly Behaviour' is bristling with sex and spanking. Along the way Genevieve, and her bottom, suffer plenty of indignities in a story that has lots of fiendishly inter-woven plot lines.It all moves along at a spanking pace (what else) to the sort of satisfying conclusion that a good AM always provides. In short, I'd say its a spanko treat.