The Dining Club by Marina Anderson: The Low End of Fifty Shades with Freaky Twins

So, I brought this book from Tesco’s thinking this might be an enticingly dark read with a mystery and erotica. And being a Sunday Times bestseller, urged me to stick it in my basket. How wrong can you be!

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David is a dark, scarred, emotionally stunted cold fish with as much sex appeal as a trout. And delusional Grace is desperate for his love. And after he decided to reveal his secret of the Dining Club where clients live out their sexual fantasies of BDSM, Grace is ecstatic.

But all that happens is that Grace has to pass different tests via the tables of the Dining Club that reveals deeper levels of BDSM. And all this to win the love of a trout! Yes, David has commitment issues, blowing hot and cold and keeping Grace’s heart in suspense. And to complicate matters, Grace seems to have competition via the current female boss of the Dining Club.

I disliked a lot of things about this book,  notably  the twin characters, which seems to afflict a lot of contemporary literature out there. Twins are not freaks, weirdos or sex objects. It seems both are in competition for male attention, getting sulky and jealous over stupid things. Twins do no behave that way because I am one. And these two have just dropped off the conveyor belt to fulfil yet another stereotypical role in literature. The other characters seemed to behave little more than puppets, namely, Grace’s other love interest, Andrew.

The purpose of a novel is to show how a character has changed, developed or evolved. I was left feeling that Grace was supposed to come across like a more whole person, a stronger person. She is no longer a needy sex object of David’s, but now feels ready to become new boss-ette sex object of the Dining Club. She has come far!

I like dark, sexy reads and scarred characters, but those that inhabit the Dining Club are thin, delusional, dislikeable or a bunch of trouts. I struggled to keep with it.