Tag: Chintzy Lady 1

23

On Dublin Street – Samantha Young

Title: On Dublin Street
Author: Samantha Young
Publisher: Samantha Young (31 August 2012), Penguin (17 January 2013)
ASIN: B0094J01VG
ISBN: 978-1405912983

On Dublin Street has been gathering some serious, serious momentum since its release in August of this year. Originally self-published by its author, Samantha Young, in less than three months it’s been picked up for re-release by Penguin, has over 16,000 Goodreads reader ratings (most four stars and above), and made it into the final round of the latter’s Choice Awards for 2012. That’s pretty damn impressive.

Jocelyn Butler (Joss) is hiding from the life she once knew. Having lost her immediate family in a tragic accident at the age of fourteen, she has spent her adulthood getting as far away from her past as possible. Quite literally, by packing up her entire life and escaping to her mother’s country of birth, Scotland. Emotionally shuttered and unwilling to properly deal with the deaths of parents and sister, Joss is living in a self-imposed bubble, existing without actually living.

Enter Braden Carmichael, a stubborn, sexy and irreverent Scotsman who refuses to let her lock herself away – physically or emotionally. Continue reading →

22

Goodhead Oral Sex Mints: an easy pill to swallow?

What we used: Goodhead Oral Sex Mints
Brand: Doc Johnson
From: Sex Toys U.K.
Price: £7.95 for approximately 20 mints
Ingredients: Benzocaine (10 mg)

 

We’ve all been there. That uncomfortable moment during a blow job when he goes that bit deeper and your gag reflex kicks in. It’s not a particularly pleasant feeling. Enter Goodhead Oral Sex Mints. The question is, do they work?

 

First thoughts

Lizzie
Fellatio is not my forte. I always have the best intentions – and genuinely enjoy doing something that Thomas finds so pleasing – but man alive, my gag reflex is terrible. My technique has improved somewhat over the years and I’ve learned a few tricks to compensate or curtail it slightly (lying on my back with my head hanging over the edge of the mattress to give a nice, straight line to the throat, placement of fingers, angling my head to better use my cheeks, etc.) but I’m no Linda Lovelace. Not even close.

Goodhead Oral Sex Mints claim to repress the gag reflex with a mild anaesthetic, which, in theory, equals a bit of deep throat action for the person you’re fellating. Per the packaging:

 

‘Numb your throat to take him deeper… with less effort!’

 

Needless to say, I was intrigued to see whether they really would give me a little more, er, capacity. Continue reading →

15

A touch of glass: the Spartacus Smooth G-Spot Dildo

What we used: Smooth G-Spot Glass Dildo with finger loop
From: Spartacus
Price: From £29.99
Material(s): lead free borosilicate glass

Dildos don’t vibrate, but they do have their charms … Lizzie and Thomas play with the Smooth G-Spot Glass Dildo from Spartacus.

First thoughts …

Lizzie
A couple of months ago, Thomas and I had a major toy box clean out. We threw out a load of stuff – things that we’d bought and didn’t like, mostly, but also some toys that we’d enjoyed and thought were past their use-by date. Amongst them, a monstrously large dildo that Thomas purchased for me as a birthday present. It was an awful, flesh-coloured thing that was eye-wateringly large (he didn’t check the size properly before ordering it – or so he told me) and smelled strongly of latex. So strongly, in fact, you could smell it halfway across the room if the lid on our toy box wasn’t shut properly. Still, we had quite a bit of fun with it before it was eventually consigned to the dustbin, although I can’t say it really sold me on dildos generally; vibrators always seemed to have far more to offer. Needless to say, I was pretty ambivalent about the Spartacus Smooth G-Spot Dildo. Turns out, I grossly underestimated what a well-designed, well-made toy could do for me. Continue reading →

11

Polo – Jilly Cooper

Title: Polo (Rutshire Chronicles)
Author: Jilly Cooper
Publisher: Corgi; New edition (07 May 2007)
ISBN: 978-0552156165

Horses, bad behaviour, and lots of orgasms. Polo is the third book in Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles series and is, hands-down, my absolute favourite of the – currently – nine-book line-up. (I may be a bit biased, though, as this was the first Jilly Cooper I ever read and the sex scenes it contains have been indelibly burned into what was my (somewhat) innocent teenage brain. In fact, Polo was my introduction to the concept that more than one orifice could be utilised during intercourse …)

Polo was originally published in 1991 but re-reading it over twenty years after it first hit the shelves hasn’t resulted in any loss of enjoyment. The characters still feel over-blown and awesome, their carry-on both awful and wonderful, and their sexual shenanigans fun, hot and captivating.

Although Rupert Campbell-Black, the bad boy of Riders and Rivals, continues to make his presence felt in Polo, the stage belongs to ‘moody, macho, and magnificent’ Ricky France-Lynch (a nine-goal polo player suffering through personal tragedy) and fourteen-year-old, polo-mad Perdita MacLeod (who wants nothing more than to get Ricky into bed). A brilliant cast of charismatic supporting characters push the pair through the story, their actions outweighed only by their outstanding names (who wouldn’t want to jump in the sack with someone called ‘Red’, ‘Angel’, ‘Dancer’ or ‘Jesus’?). Continue reading →

28

Sheds, Shelves and Shame: the best of the Fifty Shades parodies

‘Reader, I buggered him.’

 

Talk about an alternative ending to a classic. I never imagined Jane Eyre as a Domme, but now I can’t stop thinking about her pegging Mr Rochester.

 

It isn’t easy to write a good parody; limp jokes and tawdry puns abound – and many are about as entertaining as watching cement set – but in this post-Fifty Shades world, they’re being churned out left, right and centre as people try to cash in on the badly-written-BDSM-erotica revolution. Standing tall amidst the forest of downloadable dross, however, are three works of comedy that are absolute masterclasses in how to take the mick out of awful prose. Shenanigans with Thousand Island dressing, rimming the Black Gate of Mordor, and romantic nights at the Holiday Inn: will Fifty Sheds of Grey, Fifty Shelves of Grey and Fifty Shames of Earl Grey please stand up? Continue reading →

25

This story is about a little vibrator. Her name is Gigi

What we used: Gigi rechargeable G-Spot vibrator
From: LELO
Price: £53.90 – £69.00 (depending on retailer)
Material(s): Body safe silicone (main shaft) and plastic (base)

 

Do good things come in small packages? Lizzie shares her thoughts on Gigi, LELO’s rechargeable G-Spot vibrator, who she’s been getting to know for a while now.

 

First thoughts …

Lizzie
As you may know from reading my A not-so-Happy Rabbit review, I’ve been using vibrators – alone and with Thomas – for quite some time. But Gigi was a bit of a departure for me because, at the time I bought this little G-Spot gem, it represented a number of firsts. One, it was made by LELO, a brand I’d not tried before. Two, it wasn’t a rabbit (and up until Gigi’s arrival, all my vibes had ears). Three, it was the smallest vaginal vibrator I had ever purchased. Gigi was a bit of stab-in-the-dark, to be perfectly frank; I’d just divorced my latest rabbit – things hadn’t worked out between us – and I was desperate to find a vibrator I enjoyed using again. Continue reading →

24

Scarlet – A.C. Gaughen

Title: Scarlet
Author: A.C. Gaughen
Publisher: Bloomsbury (07 June 2012)
ISBN: 978-1408819760

This fresh and clever re-telling of the Robin Hood legend, is easily one of the best books I’ve read this year. I stumbled upon Scarlet quite by accident – it came up as part of a random search I was doing on Goodreads – and the stylish jacket and high reader ratings were enough to make me buy it on the spot.

In this case, judging the book by its cover was entirely appropriate. Scarlet has all the things I would expect in an action-based romance – a great plot, a terrific hero, a horrid villain, moments of suspense – but what makes this book really stand out is the author’s unexpected twist on the character of Will Scarlet, who, as you may have gathered from the book’s title, appears in the staring role. A.C. Gaughen, quite uniquely, makes Will a ‘she’ rather than a ‘he’. Continue reading →

03

His Sugar Baby – Sarah Roberts

Title: His Sugar Baby
Author: Sarah Roberts
Publisher: Siren Publishing, Inc. (04 October 2011)
ISBN: 978-1619263956

I almost didn’t buy this book because of the title. I guess it’s the images and connotations that the terms ‘sugar baby’ and ‘sugar daddy’ inevitably conjure in my head – none of them particularly positive. (Yes, yes, I realise I’m being judgemental.) Thankfully, His Sugar Baby surprised me. It wasn’t a sickly sweet tale of an overly-indulged heroine who does nothing more than have sex with a man for superficial gain. Nor was it a boringly straightforward ‘destitute woman meets rich man and they fall instantly and unrealistically in lust’ story. Rather, it was an exploration of a mother’s unconditional love for her child and what she is prepared to sacrifice – physically and morally – to protect her offspring.

Cathy Somerset is a single parent in an awful situation. Her only child, Chloe, is suffering from cancer and when we meet her at the beginning of His Sugar Baby, she has reached breaking point – financially and emotionally. Her health insurance cover has reached an end, her job is no longer able to provide enough income to sustain her daughter’s treatments, and she barely has the cash to buy food and pay rent. Quite simply, Cathy is drowning beneath the relentless tide of her daughter’s mounting medical bills and crumbling with the stress of caring for a seriously ill child without the support of a partner. Desperate times call for desperate measures. To her own disbelief, she responds to an online personal advertisement:

 

‘Mature Sugar Baby wanted—I’m seeking a slender, attractive woman, 22-34, for a friends-with-benefits arrangement that will provide you with up to seven Benjamins per week or about three grand per month.’ Continue reading →

30

Do TheyFit? The new frontier: custom-fitted condoms

What we used: TheyFit custom-fitted condoms
From: TheyFit
Price:  £6.99 for a pack of six
Material(s): Latex

Custom-fitted suits? Pfft. So last year. You can now buy condoms tailored to the length and width of your penis. Thomas gets the opportunity to try out TheyFit’s unique ‘sized service’.

First thoughts …

Thomas
I have to admit that when Jane got in touch about trialling custom-fitted condoms, my first thought was ‘are they going to send someone round?’. I had visions of a seedy individual arriving on my doorstep with a tape measure and some chalk (or perhaps a roll of Clingfilm). Disturbing.

But as it turns out, there’s no bloke in a raincoat. You simply go to the TheyFit website (www.theyfit.com), print out a template, and use it to measure the width and girth of your todger. Armed with your vital statistics, you then submit your size code via TheyFit’s online ordering service and they send you one of 95 sizes, ranging from modest to bloody humungous (my words, not theirs). I’m intrigued … Continue reading →

28

Woohoo! Good clean fun?

What we used: woohoo! water-based intimate lubricant
From: Boots
Price:  £5.99 – £6.99 for a 50ml tube
Ingredient(s): Aqua (water), Cyamopsis tetragonolbus (Guar gum)*, Ceratonia siliqua (Locust bean gum)*, Aloe barbadensis leaf juice powder (Aloevera)*, Camellia sinensis (Green tea extract)*, Equisetem arvense (Horsetail extract)*, Carrageenan (Red seaweed extract), Phenoxyethanol, Potassium sorbate, Citric acid

*Organically grown ingredients.

Is organic better? Lizzie shares her thoughts on Soil Association-certified woohoo! lubricant.

First thoughts …

Lizzie
It’s very easy to get stuck in a lube rut. You find one, it makes things sufficiently slippery, job done. Thomas and I often use the same brand for months at a time and then, usually because the one we’re courting is out-of-stock at our supermarket (we tend to buy lube as part of our grocery shop), we switch and the cycle starts again. Occasionally, a new lube will catch my eye when I’m in the local pharmacy, generally because it has some sort of twist to it (‘cooling!’, ‘heating!’, etc.) and I’ll pick it up, but I’m fundamentally a simple girl and have discovered over time that I like my lube plain and simple – non-irritating, water-based and with a decent texture to it. If I want hot and cold, there are other things around the house the work just as well – but that’s another post entirely.

woohoo! is a bit of a departure from the status quo for me as I consider organic products a ‘nice to have’ rather than an essential – I don’t make a habit of buying them – but I do have to say that I’m not immune to the appeal of slathering a chemical-free substance on and inside myself. Continue reading →