Juniper L.H.'s Reviews > The Mansion

In terms of being a work of spicy sapphic erotica, this novel completely succeeded, 5-stars. If you are looking for straightforward smut that doesn’t waste any time getting to the point, then this novel is for you. The writing was also overall well done, for what it was. I liked how despite how saucy the novel was, they took time out to have proper communication and boundaries and whatnot. This was a great touch.

As a “more complete” novel however, this drops the ball somewhat. I had difficulties figuring out how to rate this because 1) I usually rate based on “what its trying to be”, in this cause smut, but 2) it is a full-length novel and advertised as such, and I was disappointed that there wasn’t more substance to it. In the end it was between 3 or 4, and I rounded down.

The downside to this novel was that there wasn’t much else outside of sex scenes. There wasn’t really a plot, there wasn’t really any character development, and there were barely even characters. I don’t know anything about these characters except for that they like to have sex and they know each other, and their job titles. This is fine if you’re exclusively looking for smut, but I think it would be a lot stronger if the characters had a bit more depth for the reader to connect with; as it was they were essentially faceless cardboard-cutouts moving through the scenes.

There was a POV switch part way through, which I think was a terrible choice. I was surprised how much I disliked it, and I can’t figure out why the author did this. The character we were following was abandoned right as it got into the more intense parts where I would have liked to continue seeing their POV and reactions to the situation, and the new character we knew almost nothing about before that point. If there was a plot to this novel, it was Vi’s journey of self-discovery and as such abandoning her POV was a very strange choice. There was also a romance plotline developing in the first sections (which was very sweet and nice) which was entirely abandoned after the POV switch and never seen again. The entire second half lost a lot of the fun and interesting aspects that the first half had, and was exclusively just descriptions of sex scenes.

Lastly, and this isn’t something I care about too much or am holding against the novel, but they explained the beginning of Wendy and Brenda’s relationship at one point, and it annoyed me that it directly contradicted the short story “Shopping”. I feel petty pointing this out, but it’s a pet peeve when an author contradicts their own Cannon as it’s a very simple thing to avoid.