After reading the latest bad review of the Siren Bookstrand book at Dear Author (sorry, blog is wonky today and I cannot get the linking function to work for some reason, but I'm sure you know where to look) and following some other links to places where bloggers talk about the number of badly written books being published, I find myself thinking: will a reader forgive a book with poor spelling and bad grammar and awful writing style if the sex scenes are hot? Have you ever kept a book because while you recognize that it's badly written, you like the sex scenes because they work?

I have done this when it comes to some of Thea Devine's books. I'm not proud to admit it because the author often writes as if she's living in her own world of streams of consciousness, what with all that fragmented italicized sentences and all, but dang if some of her sex scenes have me reaching for a cold drink. Same with some of Bertrice Small's earlier books. Horrible books, them all, but as erotica, even with the purple prose galore, some of those scenes are pretty steamy indeed.

I guess it depends on why a reader picks up a book. If the reader knows and expects nothing but a quick steamy read just to get one's jollies off, to put it crudely, I guess other aspects of the story aren't really that important. Kinda like how if you watch a big action-packed movie starring some beefcake of the day, you tend not to expect deep plots and good acting, I suppose.

 

For me it depends on the book's length. Well written sex in a short can make the story. But with longer books, I need a lot more incentive than hot humpin' to make return visits.

I can't say I've had the dubious pleasure of a poorly-written book with a hot sex scene in it. It's almost always the other way around - the prose is decent-to-good, and the sex is hopelessly trite and silly.

Badly written as in bad grammar and spelling mistakes...probably not. But I'm much more forgiving of wonky prose, poorly constructed stories, and lazy characterizations if the sex scenes are hot.

And if a romance doesn't have at least one really good (and I mean awesome if there's only one), hot sex scene, then everything else has to be pretty much perfect for me to feel that I didn't waste my money.

Thea Devine - I have them all and they are completely guilt free pleasure...so bad and yet so hot. :)