Title:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to work in the videogame industry. I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say, when At Any Price (Gaming the System) came to my attention earlier in the week via a link in this post by Skye Warren, I was immediately intrigued. My mind began to whir. Was the heroine going to get ‘serviced’ next to the servers? Would the hero decide to ‘review her build’ during the daily Scrum meeting? In my experience, game dev. is a whole load of (stressful) fun, but calling it sexy would be … a stretch, to say the least. Unless you count listening to hundreds of emote .wav files to make sure they don’t sound unintentionally orgasmic, getting shot (repeatedly) with Nerf guns when you tell the dev. team they need to fix a bug the night before manufacturer submission, asking the rigger to make a character’s boobs smaller, and informing the lead artist that the creature he’s spent the last few days concepting needs to look ‘less penis-like’.

However, it turns out that the videogame backdrop for At Any Price (the first in a series of three books by author Brenna Aubrey) is more peripheral than integral, despite the references to patches, servers and avatars. It’s true that Adam, the hero, can code like a god (apparently, he’s the Zeus of C++) but it’s his addiction to his mobile and laptop, rather than his association with MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing) game development, that ultimately define him in Ms Aubrey’s story.

It all starts with an online auction. Gamer girl and blogger, Mia Strong, from whose point-of-view At Any Price is told, is strapped for cash; her mother is recovering from cancer and, thanks to a bunch of medical bills, about to lose her house. Mia herself is struggling to foot her college tuition. What’s a girl to do? Well, if you’re her, you decide, in a rather Catarina Migliorini-meets-Belle de Jour move, to wave your middle finger at the social stigmas surrounding prostitution and sell your virginity online.

 I’ve decided to decry the crimes and impositions put upon my sisters since the beginning of time until now. And I offer, therefore, a new paradigm. One where a woman can sell her purity and enjoy the fruits thereof.

I’m not spoiling the story by revealing that Adam Drake, CEO of Draco Multimedia Entertainment, is the guy who wins the right to deflower Mia. But despite a raft of contractual clauses pertaining to said deflowering, things go a bit … awry.

Hands up, I was more than a little worried that our leading man might turn out to be yet another carbon copy of the dreadful Christian Grey (beware the millionaire with the contract), but, thankfully, he managed to dodge the Fifty Shades of Gaming bullet. So how best to describe Mr Drake, then? What sort of man pays three-quarters-of-a-million for some skin and blood? At the risk of revealing myself as a complete geek, one who is Alpha in both the traditional (me Tarzan, you Jane) and gaming (fully functional but his assets need work) senses of the word.

Mia? She, too, is very much a work in progress – not without her bugs and, like Adam, in possession of an emotional and social codebase that needs a whole lot of finishing.

At Any Price raises some interesting and difficult questions. If you sell yourself for money, just the once, are you a prostitute? Will society continue, as it has done for hundreds of years, to see prostitution in the negative and malign those who engage in it? Independent Institute research fellow, Wendy McElroy’s words seem particularly appropriate in this instance:

“Prostitution is not merely an exchange of sexual favors; it is a financial exchange. At this point, individualist feminists rise to defend the free market as well as a woman’s self-ownership. This is expressed by the question: ‘Prostitution is a combination of sex and the free market. Which one are you against?’”

Of course, I couldn’t help but jokingly accuse a bunch of ex-colleagues of writing At Any Price under a pen name, which lead to some hilarious back-and-forth about whether the hero performed at ‘a consistent 60fps per second’, if he ‘qualified as a Class A’ (for the non-nerds amongst you, that’s the worst type of bug you can get during development and, generally means that no one is getting any sleep for the foreseeable future) and this extremely witty parody from a good friend of mine who is married to an Executive Producer:

“As his fingers pumped the buttons of the controller her thoughts turned to what else those dexterous digits could do… the washing up, putting that picture on the wall that’s been lying around for 6 months, clearing out the garage. #reallifeofagamerswife”

Sexually speaking, At Any Price is relatively tame. But the story is more than interesting enough to carry things along. Some readers may find the coitus interruptus aspect a bit frustrating, but the good news is that although this book is the first of three about Mia and Adam, there’s no make-you-want-to-tear-your-hair-out cliff-hanger.

Tickle your fancy? Click on the following links to purchase a copy.

Amazon.co.uk

• At Any Price (Gaming the System) – Kindle
• At Any Price (Gaming the System) – Paperback

Amazon.com

• At Any Price (Gaming the System) – Kindle
• At Any Price (Gaming the System) – Paperback

*Apologies for the lack of stick figures in this one, troops. My black ink pen has run dry and I’ve yet to buy a new one!

The post At Any Price (Gaming the System) – Brenna Aubrey appeared first on Behind the Chintz Curtain.

Title:

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.’

When her initial email elicits a response, Cathy agrees to meet the advertiser and discovers that he is a man named Michael, an IT professional who wants sex and companionship with no strings attached in exchange for money. Cathy is desperate to ensure that Chloe gets the treatment she needs but is she willing to sacrifice everything to do so? Her morals? Her body? Her emotions?

First off, I want to say that Cathy is one amazing lady. From the very first line of His Sugar Baby it is clear that she is incredibly uncomfortable with selling her body, but she understands that her financial situation places her in the middle of a sticky moral quagmire that does not allow for sentimentality or pious ideals. The thought of prostituting herself is almost unbearable to Cathy, but her daughter means everything to her and doing whatever it takes to save Chloe’s life is, in her mind, more important than her belief that sleeping with a man for money is wrong. In no sense does Cathy take the decision to become Michael’s ‘sugar baby’ lightly. Despite her determination to give Chloe every chance of survival, she is absolutely conflicted about what she is doing:

‘Cathy felt herself start to shake, but it wasn’t the kind of trembling that could be seen. Instead, her entire insides were quivering like jelly. So…here it is. The moment of truth.
She stared at the fold-creased hundred-dollar bill. It blurred, and she blinked to bring it back into focus. In her mind’s eye, superimposed over the hundred dollar bill, was the balance in her check register, the bills that were scattered over the carpet beside her desk, her daughter’s pinched little face. A huge fist squeezed her chest. The familiar crushing sensation made it hard to draw in her breath. She forced her lungs to expand, dragging in some air.’

As the story progresses, Cathy’s attitude to her additional source of income becomes more and more complex, and, consequently, so does her relationship with Michael. To begin with, she is able to compartmentalise her life (she places her paid time with Michael into a very distinct box) but as the weeks pass, their arrangement – it’s purpose and the emotions it engenders – escapes the boundaries Cathy has set and it starts to provide more than just a financial lifeline. It gives succour and respite from her daily life – and, to her, Michael becomes more than a sugar daddy.

In contrast to Cathy, Michael lives a life of apparent ease and can afford to do pretty much whatever he wants – and that includes paying women to have sex with him at his convenience. When we first meet him, his initial detachment, arrogance and selfishness aren’t particularly endearing – to the point that I wondered whether I’d be able to warm to him at all – but as His Sugar Baby progresses and his curiosity and regard for Cathy increases, it’s easier to enjoy his presence. Despite himself, Michael becomes curious about the woman he is having sex with and he begins to wonder more and more about her ‘real’ life – something Cathy keeps very hidden from him. My one criticism (and it’s the only significant one I have of the book)? Michael is ultimately let down by his backstory. It lacked development and felt weak in comparison to the other much stronger character and story elements. I was expecting him to have good, complex reasons for the emotionally crippled behaviour he displays, but in the face of Cathy’s personal sacrifices and Chloe’s physical suffering, they seemed, to me, very superfluous and lightweight. I’m not saying that I disliked Michael – by the time I read the final page I was definitely more than tepid in my feelings towards him and could certainly appreciate some of his gestures towards Cathy – but I was hoping for a bit more depth.

If you’re a mother, you will absolutely be able to sympathise with Cathy’s situation and her desire to do anything for her child. I felt incredibly sorry for both her and Chloe and had everything crossed for them as I made my way through the book. The plot definitely threw up a surprise or two – especially towards the end – and kudos to Sarah Roberts for not taking the easy way out in her treatment of the one the unfolds in the last quarter of the book. The sadness of the event helped underscore the plot’s integrity and believability. (I’ll say no more on that least I reveal a spoiler.)

If you’re looking for a contemporary romance,  His Sugar Baby ticks all the right boxes but be aware that it definitely has a bias towards the realistic rather than the fanciful (read: it’s not all rainbows and kittens). An engaging story with some thought-provoking emotional and moral speed bumps.

Tickle your fancy? Click on the following links to buy this book from: Amazon.co.uk (Kindle ; Paperback), Amazon.com (Kindle ; Paperback).

The post His Sugar Baby – Sarah Roberts appeared first on Behind the Chintz Curtain.