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Title

 Valerie

Author

 JS3729

Story Code(s)

 M/F, F/F, Cons, NC

Length

 17,700 words

Rating

 Grudgingly Good

Arousal Factor

 Average

Story Factor

 Low

Summary

 Kevin returns to hometown after his wife dies. He runs into his high school sweetheart, who he has not seen in over twenty years, as well as a few other people from his past.

Commentary

 I commend this author for trying to write a story that has a plot. Generally speaking, sex stories with plots are better than those without. The fact that there was some build up to the sex made it, for the most part, more arousing that it would have been otherwise.

One problem I had with this story was the rapid fire manner in which it is told. There are no lulls in the action. The story proceeds at an extremely quick pace. Because of this, it was hard to take it at face value. It seemed more melodramatic than serious.

On the other hand, the melodramatic mood did soften a couple other elements that I found disturbing. The first, was a scene in which one of the characters is punished by being raped. Considering the tone of the story up until this point I did not see this coming. The fact that the story for the most part did not seem to take itself seriously made it easier for me to stomach this scene, but I still found it distasteful. The story coding did not include "nc" or "rape"; it should have.

The other element that bothered me was not quite as overt. If I went to some lengths I might be able to "prove" that it is present, but I'll settle for telling you how it struck me. I am referring to what seemed to be a homophobic message in the story line. At first it seems that the main character just has a problem with accepting lesbianism and bisexuality, but by the end of the story it seems as if part of the authors intent in writing this story was to show how he or she believes things ought to be.

If you eliminated the homophobia and the rape from this story it would still need some work. The plot is extremely complicated and would have worked better for me if it had been paced a little more slowly.

ASSM Link(s)

 Part 1 (of 1)