‘Illicit Love’

by Hēdonē

reviewed by Reed James

“Even husband and wives are strangers.” This quote from the book sums up Illicit Lover perfectly.

With modern technology, having an affair has never been easier. Pull out your laptop, whip out your phone, do a few taps on your tablet, and your sexting, browsing cheating websites, sending emails, planing your hook-ups, all while sitting next to your significant other. Illicit Affair is a brutally honest story, painting a sad look at infidelity in modern society.

Told primarily through chat logs and emails of two married people’s illicit affair. OscarW, the screen name of our protagonist, is married to Tara and while he claims to love her, he is no longer attracted to her and constantly belittles her in his thoughts. He is so wrapped up in his online affair with Venus, a married woman who loves her husband and family but is looking for some fun, that he misses what’s going on in his own life.

Their email and chat exchanges are both erotic and real. Illicit Affair isn’t erotica, but erotic literature. It’s intelligent with complex characters that feel so true. Between their chat logs, you get insight into our protagonist thoughts as he becomes more and more wrapped up in their affair. This story is not a fantasy, but reality, and while it was one of the best pieces of literature I’ve read in the last few months, I didn’t like it.

It was too real for me.

Hēdonē has written an amazing book and I do recommend you read it if your looking for a serious, and tragic, look at modern infidelity. Hēdonē draws you into his characters head, pulling you along through their affair. I couldn’t put it down, almost compelled to make it to the end and find out how OscarW and Venus’s affair would affect their marriages.

Despite not liking the story, it’s just not my taste, this is an extremely well crafted novella and I can’t recommended enough if you want to read a true, erotic literature. I give it 5 star for skill, style, and believability that the took in creating this book! At $4.99, ‘Illicit Lover’ is worth the price.

Available from Amazon and Amazon UK.