Grace is given a present of an ancient Greek book by a friend; the book contains a picture of a *very* handsome man - a Greek god in appearance. Her friend insists that if Grace performs a very strange ritual, the Greek god, who is apparently a love-slave, will come to life and be Grace's personal love-slave for a month. Drunk and disbelieving, Grace performs the ritual... and Julian appears in front of her. As large as life, and very, very naked. And ready for action, in whatever way Grace wants him!
Grace, however, isn't a believer in casual sex; her only previous experience was with a man who hurt her very much and then made fun of her publicly afterwards. She's not, therefore, about to jump into bed with a perfect stranger, no matter how attractive he is or how sexily he talks to her. Julian, on the other hand, is compelled to want her as a result of the curse which put him inside the book, and he also recognises that she needs someone to teach her to enjoy sex. And he's determined to do just that!
I thought at this point that the book was going to be a pure romp. But in fact it ended up being very much deeper. Julian is a tortured soul; he had a loveless life before being cursed, and ever since he's been treated abusively by the women who summoned him, in some cases chained to their beds, never allowed anywhere except their bedrooms, and frequently having to plead for food as a reward for sex. To them, he was a body, not a man.
Grace is determined to treat him better than that; he is determined to help her overcome her distrust of men. But even if both manage to achieve their objectives, there is still the hard fact that at the next full moon Julian will disappear back into the book, to be trapped there until the next time someone summons him. Can they treat this as a short-lived relationship? Or is there a way to break the curse?
The book's poignant as well as funny, and I thoroughly enjoyed it - enough to keep an eye out for the second in the series.
wmr-uk
