Book Review: Naked

Book Review

Title: Naked

Author: Alexandra Christian

Where to get: https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Phoenix-Rising-Book-1-ebook/dp/B071CRSKV2

Star Rating: 5

Age Rating (IMO): Rated Rrrrr

Fair warning, Naked is an erotica. One would hope that one would deduce it to probably be an R rating just from the title itself. It is more than an erotica though. It is also adventure, spy, mystery, romance, and scifi. Our story takes place in a future, perhaps a not so distant one. We are also given explanation about some past disasters.

In this book we have shifters, some are were animals, some are dragon, and there are vampires. It reminded me in some ways of a story that one of my friends wrote as there was a creature called an “ultra” and she had once talked with me about ultras long before this particular book came in front of me. I can only assume that the ultras are also a shared thing in the shifter subgenre books, so now I am simply going to have to look for more shifter stories to find out if my thoughts are correct.

There is also a little bit of magic, but it is not gone into in detail as to how the ONE person that is encountered can do magic actually gets down to it. I would have liked to know more about that character due to my interest in magic.

I enjoyed the conspiracy theory in this and having to figure out who may or may not have been a double or perhaps triple agent. I enjoyed the genetic aspect to the shifting and how the characters grew. Since it was an erotic book I expected from the beginning that the lead man and woman would fall in love, or at least lust. I was glad to see them as complex characters though and not cookie cutter, which is all too easy to do. Derek Machine to me felt a little flat though, but it is super hard to make a good 3D villain. I wanted to know what made him so crazy, what drove him to such greed and disrespect. Was he simply a psychopathic narcissist or had something happened in his past?

I also have to point out that I greatly liked that Phoebe became a phoenix. I did have to groan though as I know someone that often gets called Phoebe, helps in a virtual library reading aloud, and has a rather fiery avatar in Second Life. I couldn’t help the chuckles. I very much doubt that Phoebe in the book had anything to do with this person, but I’m forever going to giggle about the coincidence.

It was a good book, I definitely enjoyed it, and I will be very likely to look for more. This book leaves an opening for another, so I am indeed curious about what happens with Cage and Phoebe next.