Review: The Story of Rachel

Reviewed by Shelly
 

When I saw the blurb for this story, I was pleasantly intrigued. I was even more titillated when I started reading. This is the debut story by McLean and after reading her blogsit,e I found the answers for some of the little nagging questions I had. One of course was – it there such a place called Pandora? I knew what the answer was going to be, but there’s always a 50/50 chance, right?

Rachel Collin's story starts off with a bang, there’s no downtime or pondering of ‘what shall I do’? She’s a go-getter (not aggressively so, thank goodness) and knew what she didn’t want in a man (especially after the disaster that her marriage turned into.) It was just a matter of time before she found what she did want. After trying the online dating sites and the occasional blind date, Rachel finally meets her man -- out of all the popular pick up places, it certainly wasn’t where I would ever think the magic would strike.

Like Rachel, Michael Evans is a writer. He’s a tad bit older than her, but he’s well preserved and pulls off the rower’s body quite well. After their initial get together, the conversation gets turned up with phrases like BDSM. I had many moments of laughing out loud reading Rachel’s response. If some dude, no matter how nice, smart or good looking, who I just met, brought that up to me, I would like to think that my reactions would have been similar to Rachel’s.

Michael is completely and totally attracted to Rachel – but he’s convinced that she’s only going to last three months, just like his past relationship have. It’s amazing how people pray and wish for a thing and when they get it, some will subconsciously sabotage it. To me that was the big difference between Rachel and Michael -- both of them got what they most desired/wanted/prayed for but the way they separately handled it was really well done.

I kinda sorta felt bad for Michael because I just knew that he had more to give and I could see him really putting forth the effort by giving and doing for Rachel without expecting any reciprocity. But like a lot of people, when they’re given what they want, they tend to freak out. To his credit, other than Rachel, he’s got some things burning on the fire – writing a book, interviewing with the NY Times – he’s hoping to be in the movers and shakers crowd.

Together these two had tons of chemistry, even outside of the bedroom. Now that doesn’t mean that their sexy times were anything tame, because that would be so wrong. Michael knows how to turn it up and on for Rachel. And I loved, loved that Rachel was so willing to try new things – first because that would make Michael happy and then because it made her happy. Isn’t that how we find out what we like, by trial and error?

When Rachel gets to Club Pandora there are some interesting characters there -- if there wasn’t, I would’ve been so disappointed because, really, it’s a sex club! Because I just couldn’t help myself, I found out from McLean’s site that a couple of the characters will have their own stories in the series. I eagerly await Annik’s story – that should be an interesting tale of redemption.

In the end, I liked both Michael and Rachel and wished a happily ever after for them. Maybe they’ll be some of the upcoming stories in the ‘Tales of Pandora’ series. Good stuff so far.

Happy Reading folks!

Rating: B+

*ARC provided by author for review

Click to purchase: Amazon

The Story of Rachel

by KD McLean

Release Date: January 15, 2013