THE LEMON GROVE by HELEN WALSH

The Lemon Grove
by Helen Walsh
Published: February 2014
Publisher: Tinder Press
Genre: Adult, contemporary
 "The story takes place over one week in the heat of Deia, a coastal village on an island off the southeast coast of Spain. Jenn and Greg go for a break to enjoy languorous, hot afternoons by the pool. But the equilibrium is upset by the arrival of Greg's daughter (Jenn's step-daughter), Emma, and her boyfriend, Nathan. Jenn is in her early 40s, loves her husband and her daughter and she is content, to an extent. But when this beautiful, reckless young man comes into her life, she is driven by a sexual compulsion that she's seldom felt since adolescence. The holiday progresses and her world is thrown into tumult as the lines blur between desire and obsession--it is not just the idea of sexual fulfillment that Jenn finds attractive but the suggestion of youth: by Nathan's side, Jenn is young and carefree once again, and at this stage in her life, the promise of youth is every bit as seductive as the promise of passion. What follows is a highly charged narrative liaison that puts lives in jeopardy and percolates with just enough sexual tension to make it impossible to put down." -taken from Goodreads

I only really picked this book up because I have seen it everywhere recently and so I wanted to see what it was about. All I really knew was that the stepmother starts to have an affair with her daughter's boyfriend when on holiday.

I don't really think that this book had much depth at all, I felt like it was just trying to achieve the shock factor but the relationships between the characters were not very well developed and were rushed. The only thing that was fairly well done was the descriptions of the location, but even they were boring.

There was no progression of feelings from Jenn about Nathan, it just sort of happened, it could have been explored with so much more passion and feeling, but it just fell flat. The blurb says that this is a 'highly charged narrative', I honestly don't understand how that can be said when there was nothing of the sorts.

This was quick paced read that lacked anything special. I would give this a miss because even if you are into erotica, even those scenes were rushed and just tacky. I understand why it had such a buzz to it because the plot is so taboo but it could have be done so much better and so much more realistically.

3/5 STARS