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Robert Beveridge's Reviews > Switch
Switch
by
by
Megan Hart, Switch (Spice, 2010)
It occurred to me while I was reading Switch that the “erotic romance” genre—now a business that turns over many, many millions of dollars annually for prestige publishing houses—consists of the same books we had to buy from seedy bookstores we needed fake IDs to get into when I was in high school. Sure, there's a shade more character development and not quite as much sex as you'd expect from a title Beeline put out in the early eighties, but for all intents and purposes, this is porn that cleans up pretty nice. Far be it from me to complain; I had more than my share of Beeline paperbacks in high school and college. The risk, however, with introducing more traditional aspects of the novel is that you'll get people thinking about things other than sex, and thus analyzing your output more closely. Thus, when Switch falls off a cliff in the final chapters, it's a lot more annoying than it was in, say, Suzi Likes It Rough twenty-five years ago. Ah, the stigma of respectability.
Paige is a career girl from the country; she moved to the relatively large town of Harrisburg, PA, in order to both give herself an upward path and flee from the beauty-queen-with-no-brain image—and the husband—she had in rural Lebanon. And things seem to be going well for her. She knows what she wants, and she's got a good idea how to get it. Everything changes, though, when a note accidentally slipped into her apartment's mailbox (meant for the apartment three floors below hers; the address was smudged) gives her an insight into a kind of private life she never knew existed. She finds herself enjoying it, and her new boldness finds her not only flirting with a hunky doctor from her building, but seems to be attracting her boss, as well. And then there's the ex-husband Austin, who's moved to Harrisburg as well, though whether it's to pursue business opportunities or pursue Paige is subject to debate.
It's all going along rather well for a while. Paige is a good character, far better than what I'm used to in books like this (even from more “legitimate” porn presses like Black Lace), with a solid psychological foundation and reasons for pretty much everything she does. Believe it or not, folks, a three-dimensional character in a porn novel. Oh, excuse me, an erotic romance. Because Paige is so finely-drawn, however, many of the book's other characters stand out as being stereotypical or shallow. Paige's dad's new wife is about as stereotypical the wicked-stepmother as they come, and both Eric (the hunky doctor) and Austin are straight out of the pages of half the romance novels you've ever read. (For that matter, if you can't see Kim Basinger in 8 Mile playing Paige's mom from page one, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din.)
Contrasted to that is the sex itself. I'm not sure what book some of the other reviewers were reading, but it isn't Switch. Steamy scenes aren't splashed across every page here, but they're not rare, and depending on your particular kink, some of them are pretty darned hot. (Don't we all have a little of the voyeur in us? Hart plays to it very nicely about halfway through the book.) But then, maybe that's another part of the price of trying to legitimize porn; the real pornhounds are going to attack you for the book not being erotic enough. Unless you're another pornhound, don't listen. The book's all kinds of hot, albeit sporadically.
Something to note, and I apologize in advance if I'm wrong about this (I'm not at all familiar with the D&S community): about two-thirds of the way through the book is a section, involving the subplot between Paige and her boss, that may well piss a lot of people off (Hart links, strongly, D&S games to mental illness). Be warned. I thought the execution of that scene was tastefully done and sensitive, but the association itself left a bitter taste in my mouth. Again, I may be wrong about this, and there may be a body of academic literature to support that link. But be aware it's there.
And then comes the final few chapters... which tell me that this book had a length limit and Megan Hart found herself crushed against the word-count wall. This is as abrupt and frustrating an ending as that of David Cronenberg's film Videodrome, but without any of the ambiguity that made that ending worth talking about. Twenty pages from the end, Hart still has her heroine juggling princes. Then, all the sudden, everything wraps up in the neatest, most predictable way possible. It made me want to hit myself in the head with the book. In fact, I think I may have.
In other words, you may like this book. You may hate it. I don't think it's good enough for anyone to put it on the short shelf of sacred texts, but it's a fun way to kill a few hours as long as you don't mind shallow characters. ***
It occurred to me while I was reading Switch that the “erotic romance” genre—now a business that turns over many, many millions of dollars annually for prestige publishing houses—consists of the same books we had to buy from seedy bookstores we needed fake IDs to get into when I was in high school. Sure, there's a shade more character development and not quite as much sex as you'd expect from a title Beeline put out in the early eighties, but for all intents and purposes, this is porn that cleans up pretty nice. Far be it from me to complain; I had more than my share of Beeline paperbacks in high school and college. The risk, however, with introducing more traditional aspects of the novel is that you'll get people thinking about things other than sex, and thus analyzing your output more closely. Thus, when Switch falls off a cliff in the final chapters, it's a lot more annoying than it was in, say, Suzi Likes It Rough twenty-five years ago. Ah, the stigma of respectability.
Paige is a career girl from the country; she moved to the relatively large town of Harrisburg, PA, in order to both give herself an upward path and flee from the beauty-queen-with-no-brain image—and the husband—she had in rural Lebanon. And things seem to be going well for her. She knows what she wants, and she's got a good idea how to get it. Everything changes, though, when a note accidentally slipped into her apartment's mailbox (meant for the apartment three floors below hers; the address was smudged) gives her an insight into a kind of private life she never knew existed. She finds herself enjoying it, and her new boldness finds her not only flirting with a hunky doctor from her building, but seems to be attracting her boss, as well. And then there's the ex-husband Austin, who's moved to Harrisburg as well, though whether it's to pursue business opportunities or pursue Paige is subject to debate.
It's all going along rather well for a while. Paige is a good character, far better than what I'm used to in books like this (even from more “legitimate” porn presses like Black Lace), with a solid psychological foundation and reasons for pretty much everything she does. Believe it or not, folks, a three-dimensional character in a porn novel. Oh, excuse me, an erotic romance. Because Paige is so finely-drawn, however, many of the book's other characters stand out as being stereotypical or shallow. Paige's dad's new wife is about as stereotypical the wicked-stepmother as they come, and both Eric (the hunky doctor) and Austin are straight out of the pages of half the romance novels you've ever read. (For that matter, if you can't see Kim Basinger in 8 Mile playing Paige's mom from page one, you're a better man than I, Gunga Din.)
Contrasted to that is the sex itself. I'm not sure what book some of the other reviewers were reading, but it isn't Switch. Steamy scenes aren't splashed across every page here, but they're not rare, and depending on your particular kink, some of them are pretty darned hot. (Don't we all have a little of the voyeur in us? Hart plays to it very nicely about halfway through the book.) But then, maybe that's another part of the price of trying to legitimize porn; the real pornhounds are going to attack you for the book not being erotic enough. Unless you're another pornhound, don't listen. The book's all kinds of hot, albeit sporadically.
Something to note, and I apologize in advance if I'm wrong about this (I'm not at all familiar with the D&S community): about two-thirds of the way through the book is a section, involving the subplot between Paige and her boss, that may well piss a lot of people off (Hart links, strongly, D&S games to mental illness). Be warned. I thought the execution of that scene was tastefully done and sensitive, but the association itself left a bitter taste in my mouth. Again, I may be wrong about this, and there may be a body of academic literature to support that link. But be aware it's there.
And then comes the final few chapters... which tell me that this book had a length limit and Megan Hart found herself crushed against the word-count wall. This is as abrupt and frustrating an ending as that of David Cronenberg's film Videodrome, but without any of the ambiguity that made that ending worth talking about. Twenty pages from the end, Hart still has her heroine juggling princes. Then, all the sudden, everything wraps up in the neatest, most predictable way possible. It made me want to hit myself in the head with the book. In fact, I think I may have.
In other words, you may like this book. You may hate it. I don't think it's good enough for anyone to put it on the short shelf of sacred texts, but it's a fun way to kill a few hours as long as you don't mind shallow characters. ***
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Reading Progress
March 14, 2010
–
Started Reading
April 3, 2010
–
Finished Reading
April 15, 2010
– Shelved
