TITLE: EIGHTY DAYS AMBER
AUTHOR: VINA JACKSON
Pages: 295
Date: 29/11/2012
Grade: 4.5
Details: no. 4 Eighty Days
Received from Orion
Own
Lubov Shevshenko (Luba) was born in the Ukraine and raised both there and in Russia while
she trained as a ballerina. Attracted to bad boys from her teenage years she
has been known to give them pleasure and ecstasy without ever giving herself to
them. It isn’t until she moves to New
York and meets Chey, not so much a bad boy as a bad
man, that she feels enough of a connection to fully surrender herself. Luba and
Chey are made for each other and their relationship is exciting, exhilarating
and filled with passion from the start. But bad man Chey has a darker side.
Officially a dealer in rare amber, Chey often disappears without a word for
months on end and his house contains many locked places. Uncomfortable about
the secrets Chey is clearly keeping from her, Luba is nevertheless content to
stay in their relationship until the day she makes a shocking discovery. Unable
to live with either the secrecy or the implications of what she’s found Luba
leaves without a word, determined to make her life without the man she loves so
very much.
On her own Luba extends the career as an exotic dancer
she started while living with Chey. A career that will lift her to exquisite
heights on a secret but very exclusive circuit and provides her with the means
to live as she pleases and set her own demands. While dancing her way through life,
and various exotic locations, Luba drifts from short-term relationship to
one-night-stand and back again, never able to find anything that comes close to
the perfection she had with Chey. But even a reunion with Chey won’t bring the
easy happy ending she might have dreamed up. Chey’s bad man past will have to
be dealt with before life can settle down again.
This is the fourth book in the Eighty Days Series and
the first one not to centre on Summer and Dominik, although they do make
several appearances in this book. And they’re not the only familiar characters
the reader gets to reacquaint themselves with. It was nice to have an another
opportunity to read about our playful rock-star, Viggo Frank and Lauralynn, the
cellist with very dark desires as well as other, more minor, characters from
the earlier books.
It would be wrong to call this book a sequel to the
three earlier books though. In many ways this book stands on its own. Although
the story in this book intersects with the earlier narrative on several
occasions, it isn’t necessary to have read those books in order to enjoy this
one. Luba’s story can easily be read as a stand-alone without the reader ever
feeling that they are missing out on vital information. Having said that, I do
feel that this book would be more fun if you had read the other books first. Several
scenes from the earlier story are revisited here but from a different
perspective giving the reader a new insight into Summer and Dominik’s story. And,
conversely, this book gives the full story of Luba who was a rather mysterious and
enigmatic character in the earlier books.
Although I have labelled this book as “erotica” I
wonder how accurate that description is. This is contemporary fiction with a
higher than average sexual content. But the erotic scenes in this book are
mostly written as if from a distance. There are few, if any, excruciating
details. Details are either not mentioned or referred to later on, in a memory,
rather than in the moment. And because everything that happens in the story is
completely normal for the characters it is easy for the reader to treat it as
such as well. Some of the acts as described in this book may be far from what
most readers will have experienced or even imagined, but to me it never felt
shocking or blush-worthy.
Vida Jackson (who is in fact two authors
collaborating) seems to be hitting her stride better with each subsequent book.
The writing is getting smoother all the time. Although there was one occasion
in this book when I consciously thought that I had reached a point where one
author had handed over the keyboard to another, the rest of the book could
easily have been written by one single person.
One side remark; I’m still not sure why this series is
called “Eighty Days”, but there is absolutely no mystery why in this case that
part of the title is followed by “Amber”.
As far as I know there is at least one more “Eighty
Days” book to come, giving the story of yet another background character and I
am very curious about what is still to come and look forward to what I think
will be Lauralynn’s personal road of discovery. Although I’m also very curious
about the girl with the tear-drop tattoo and can’t help hoping that we’ll hear
more about her too.
Related posts: Eight Days Yellow
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