I will start by saying this:
Being horny is good.
(Unless you don’t like being horny, in which case, not being horny is good.)
So books, movies, TV shows etc that help you get horny, or enhance your existing horniness, are good, and fun, and I’m not judging anyone who does enjoy things that are purely designed to be good, clean, horny fun.
I also read all four Twilight books. You know, for research.
But please believe me when I say that The Mister – the new book by the author of the Fifty Shades Of Grey trilogy, E.L. James – is the least horny thing I can possibly think of at this moment, including any federal politician you could name, stark naked, chugging a 2L bottle of milk while maintaining eye contact with you the whole time.
“The Mister” sounds like something Alessia, the book’s virginal house-cleaner slash sex trafficking refugee heroine, would water her boss’s delicate pot plants with, but there is absolutely nothing in this book that risks getting you remotely moist.
Here’s an example, from the perspective of our hero, Viscount slash DJ slash model slash mad shagger Maxim Trevelyan:
She tastes of warmth and grace and sweet seduction. Her tongue hesitant and faltering against mine. It’s captivating. It’s arousing.
I have to hold myself back. I want nothing more than to bury myself in this girl—but I don’t think she’ll let me.
Also, Alessia is an Albanian 23-year-old piano prodigy, but whenever she calls Maxim by the titular, uh, title, she sounds like a grubby Dickensian newsboy tugging at a gentleman’s coattails.
“What’s my name?” I murmur against her lips.
“Mister,” she whispers as I run my thumb down her cheek.
Anyone else’s junk just seal up like an airlock on Star Trek?
i'm so amused by the title of EL James new novel i keep giggling to myself over how anyone could think the word "mister" is sexy bc all i think of is mister rogers
— rєч nσвlє ⛈️?? (@reynoblewrites) April 16, 2019
The Mister's version of "she's not like other girls" is that the heroine is still a virgin at 23. pic.twitter.com/IhwvryKtUS
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@Ceilidhann) April 16, 2019
And as if to underline the Britishness, they’re constantly eating the least sexy food possible: fish pie with beer in the pub, or beef and prune stew. That’s stuff you only eat after you’ve been boning someone long enough that it’s hilarious when you fart in bed. I’m surprised that there isn’t a joke about Maxim’s perfect dick not being the spotted kind.
(Said dick does “stir in agreement” at one point, which brings to mind a roomful of bearded men murmuring assent in the House Of Lords, rather than a flash of arousal.)
But it gets worse, because Alessia is an escapee from would-be sex traffickers, and that kind of trauma is heavy stuff that shouldn’t be entrusted to someone who made billions writing about domestic abuse disguised as kink.
“Some people are not equipped to write stories of social realism that delves into topics like domestic abuse and sex trafficking. E.L. James is to these topics what Hannibal Lecter is to vegan cookery.”
If you ever thought “I’d love to read E.L. James’s nuanced take on the trauma of sex trafficking and immigration” you’re in luck!!! https://t.co/A45gRSqmjG pic.twitter.com/22u7qWlWNp
— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) April 16, 2019
“I’D LIKE TO MAKE HER SCREAM IN A DIFFERENT WAY [to how she screams from her PTSD nightmares].”
Hot.
But don’t just trust me and also those excerpts from the actual book! Here are some reviews:
“While it isn’t the ethically reprehensible trainwreck the 50 Shades saga is, this is still a passionless experience that doesn’t even have the decency to be funny in its ineptitude. Rather, it is a dull and plodding book that is somehow just aggravating enough in places to ensure the reader doesn’t immediately fall asleep.”
“The sex scenes, further, are rife with lukewarm recycled clichés and vagueness… and what’s meant to pass for yearning is often just lazy lists of body parts:
“She thinks of him as her body builds.
Climbing.
Higher.
His face.
His back.
His long legs.
She climbs further.
His taut behind.
His flat stomach.
She groans as she comes, and, exhausted, she falls asleep.
Only to dream of him.”
(That reviewer, EW’s Dana Schwartz, also notes that “the couple never engage in anything kinkier than Maxim taking Alessia from behind”.)
“[Maxim is] not a good hero, by any means, but the problem here is that he’s wholly dull rather than morally repulsive (although a moment where his penis is described as ‘Large. Hooded. Flexible’ did make me gag).”
Fortunately, Maxim does care about both consent and contraception rather more than Christian Grey, being very enthusiastic about condom use (“How can one man use so many?” wonders virginal Alessia as she empties his bathroom bin, virginally).
It’s just a shame that apparently the trade-off for a hero who isn’t an abusive piece of steely-eyed trash is the vanilla spice that at least made Fifty Shades remotely interesting as well as deeply problematic.
This book is going to sell millions – here’s hoping the horny people who are excited about it remain unsatisfied, and go out and find a better class of horny fiction.