Suite Seventeen: Black Lace Classics

Vibrant forty-something widow Annie Conroy is determined to follow her late husband's wishes and start having fun again and living life to the fullest. At the Waverley Grange Country Hotel, she encounters the most exotic, sensual and desirable creature she could ever have dreamed of and all thoughts of resistance are completely banished. Is it a man? Is it a woman? Who even cares? Suite Seventeen is an engaging and serious look at a woman, growing older and finding herself sexually. Suite Seventeen is a wonderful book for sitting down for an evening or an afternoon even, just to relax and enjoy. Afterwards the reader finds themselves looking at their own selves and reevaluating their thoughts and feelings on the subject of their inner self. Suite Seventeen is not your normal romance; it is more of a finding yourself romance than a couple romance. Emma Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

This is a sexy sordid frolic into a realm most of us will never know where a tentative widow, Annie Conroy tiptoes into her staid middle years facing life alone. She doesn't seem to see her own genuine beauty or the potential left in life and she starts by playing it safe as she would have in her past. She soon immerses herself in the steamy underworld of a clandestine hotel room where there are few limits and even fewer rules. Like her former life, the hotel room seems ordinary but lurking beneath is the potential for explosive fun and for reaching the heights of ecstasy never even imagined before. All she's ever known is turned upside down when luck and lust bring her a ravishing Latin lover, the mysterious enigmatic Valentino. Like the imitable "Entertaining Mr. Stone," this book too is inspired by the acting of the gorgeous Vincent D'onofrio but the literary Valentino morphs into his own complex, caring and deeply feeling man who looks like a movie star but dominates Annie like a stallion. She quickly submits to him only because from the beginning of their entanglement there is the promise of real love there as well. The romantic antics of Maria Lewis and Robert Stone continue deliciously as ever-randy neighbors who help Annie along in the rediscovery of her long-squelched potential and the ardent love between them gives her both the longing and foreshadowing of her future with the all-consuming Valentino. Her surrender to him in bed is because he's worthy in every other way and it's for their mutual fun while true love percolates beneath. True, total sexual submission is not for everyone and but in the safe world of literary fantasy we can have the empowerment that erotic surrender brings with the right loving partner. Final note, a brief but satisfying sweet glimpse into the lives of Annie and Valentino and Mr. Stone and Maria is provided in yet another fine Portia Da Costa work entitled "In Too Deep."