WARNING:  This review contains explicit language.

“I know you want to fuck me. And I know you wish you didn’t. So how about we compromise and you can sit here and say, ‘No, Nora,’ ‘Don’t, Nora,’ ‘Stop, Nora,’ and I’ll ignore all those protests and slide right down on your cock anyway? And I’ll do it because no and don’t and stop aren’t your safe word. So you can finally get fucked and still sleep like a baby in your big lonely bed tonight feeling all clean and shiny and virginal because, after all, you did say ‘no’ and that awful Nora Sutherlin just wouldn’t listen.”

When I started reading The Siren I was expecting to be taken way out of my comfort zone. I was expecting to be challenged, uncomfortable and offended. I was not expecting to love this book as much as I did.

Nora is an author of erotic fiction who not only writes it, but lives it. Her reluctant new editor Zach wants nothing to do with her, but she wants her new book to be something special and needs his help to make that happen. He agrees on the condition that he has final say on whether or not the book gets published. Together they embark on a complete rewrite which must be finished in six weeks. As the rewrite progresses, Nora draws Zach into her world, a world where pain, submission and domination are used for sexual release.

The adjectives used to describe a book like this are almost predictable. Anyone can conjure them up and I don’t think I really need to bother with them. The words I want to use are, beautiful, sublime, tender, honest, lyrical  and heart-felt. The Siren is erotic, but there is surprisingly very little sex.

For me it is one of the best books of 2012.