Window (Paris Secrets #1), Michele Renae

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Publisher: Swell Cat Press

Genre: Het Erotica Romance

Tags:, Erotica, First in Series

Length: 114 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: amazon.com

I tried to keep spoilers out but I can’ t promise that I succeeded. Keep that in mind before reading this review.

A woman is a research assistant living in Paris. She is not interested in any type of relationship with the exception of an occasional one-night stand. She has an active imagination and is content pleasuring herself when she gets the urge ( and she gets it often). She works at home but has a part time job working for a shop that sells maps, some of which are old and very rare. She’s happy with her life and doesn’t feel she needs a man to make it complete.

A man moves into the next building. With the way the two apartment buildings are placed, their bedroom windows face each other with only about fifteen feet between them. Both have third floor apartments and their windows can’t be seen from the street below. Before long both the male and female are flirting with each other with hand gestures and smiles. Then it’s taken one step further and they begin putting on a show (so to speak) for the other and they begin masturbating while watching the other. Names are not exchanged, though they do eventually write notes to each other and hold them up to the window for the other to see. The woman makes the rules in the voyeur relationship and one of those rules is that if they see each other in public they are to go the other way. She likes the safety of the windows. She is scared to take it beyond there.

The shows performed for the other are pretty sexy. Granted, I feel that the author put too much emphasis on the female character than the male (which I know is the norm unfortunately) but it was still sexy. While the man did pleasure himself, each scene was predominantly focused on the woman. The man is listed as an almost afterthought.

The man, I liked a lot, though he did one thing that seriously bugged me but I can’t list it here without giving a spoiler. I found him to be extremely patient when he probably should have shut the curtains after being denied the chance to meet her face-to-face so many times. The woman, I never did get a feel for. There is so much of her inner dialogue and her fantasies, etc. and I have to say that I was not that impressed. She is described as one who is not adventurous and would never do anything like she is doing for this stranger in the next building but yet she does things that would almost make me blush and I’ll do pretty much anything. She’s doing this in front of a total stranger who she knows nothing about. I didn’t buy it.

The premise for the story is an excellent one. Two strangers who meet and communicate (in more ways that one) via actions through windows. This goes on for a period of time before the woman realizes that she has to make a choice. Is she willing to take this odd relationship to the next level? Or will she give up who might be the man of her dreams simply because she’s too scared of what may or may not happen between them?

This is the first story of a trilogy about these two so of course it ended with a cliffhanger (of sorts) ending. The reader is left wondering what will happen next. The woman holds all the cards in the relationship so the reader must wait to see what her next step will be.

While I enjoyed the story (and I really did enjoy it) I would have liked to have been inside the man’s head, if only for a little while. This is told in first person from the woman. I was not impressed with her thought process and I found myself wanting to skim a little. I didn’t but I admit to wanting to. The masturbation sessions are pretty hot but as mentioned above, it’s mostly focused on the woman. Don’t get me wrong, the man does his share of stroking but not enough where I was satisfied. Maybe it’s just me but there are seriously only so many times the “flicking of her wet clit” one can read before the reader will say “Okay, we get it. You are rubbing your clit. Can we pan over to the man now???”

I would like to say that I will be reading number two in this series but I can’t really say for sure. I felt that this, while relatively short, still dragged on a bit. It was basically the same thing night after night after night. Sure, the woman switched things up a bit and a kinda/sorta relationship had started between the two but I have to ask, will the next story be more of the same? Of the woman constantly debating with herself over whether or not she should move on to a real relationship with the man who is no longer a real stranger? Does the reader have to wait until the final pages of the third story for everything to be resolved? If so, I’ll pass. I need to see more than what I saw in this book. Give me the man’s point of view and I might consider it. Otherwise, I will list numbers two and three as a maybe.

I wavered on my rating for this. I couldn’t decide if I would give it 3 or 4 stars. I’m meeting in the middle and giving it 3.5. I know I am going against the grain with my rating and with my review but I can’t rate it higher, nor can I word my review any differently.

I do love the cover.

This book was provided by Net Galley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

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