Review of “A Bright Summer” by Kate Smoak

Score: 88+/100 (8.8+ out of 10)

A Bright Summer is a super-steamy, hyper-erotic romance novel by Kate Smoak.

If you are extremely horny or read novels in hopes of becoming extremely horny, this may be the book for you!

We're not exaggerating! On a scale from 1-10 on the over-the-top sex, this is probably about a 15!

There are likely over a dozen (if not two-dozen or more) sex scenes in this book, sometimes occurring in machine-gun fashion—one after the other! Geez, Luiz! These characters are friskier than a bunch of rabbits in the spring! No one seems to take a break or have a refractory period at all!

Action movie stars need to reload more often than the people in this book! Geez!

Do these people have like wells of seminal and vaginal fluid stored in their bodies? Where do they store all this stuff, in a black hole?! You need a dam the size of the Himalayas to keep this amount of juices in. Dang, people!

There are probably more sex scenes in this book than Kairn by Fionne Foxxe Farraday and Water Witch by Kelly Brewer COMBINED! And that's saying a lot!

Heck, there might be more sex scenes in this book than freakin' Viila and the Doomsday Affair by Roger Danchik or A Hundred Honeymoons by JS Wilson, but we have to admit that the sex in this book is far less disturbing and troubling than the sex in those books.

In fact, we have to admit: the sex in this book is GREAT! It's vivid, it's detailed, it's descriptive, it's intense, it's passionate. Everything from the scent of the character, their hair, the firmness of their buttocks, their sounds, and their beads of sweat are described.

This wouldn't be have bad if all of this didn't taint our perception of the characters themselves. They're supposed to be responsible, successful, disciplined, and hard-working people. Both Brandt and Elissa are extremely successful and reputable people (or at least we're told they are) and yet... they definitely don't come across that way with their approach to their sex lives and the multiple partners they go through by the end of this.

How callous, flaky, airheaded, and irresponsible can these two idiots be when they have so much riding on staying upright? Their careers? Their livelihoods? Their legacies?

And that's perhaps the point—whether we like it or not. Both Brandt and Elissa grew up and lived their lives with extremely high expectations and rigid discipline. They were brought up to be perfect, studious, upstanding, responsible people. They've been in mental and psychological cages their whole lives. So, when they finally get together and can be sexual/intimate, they EXPLODE! They ERUPT! They become...liberated... in a sense.

The catalyst behind this book (and some would call its main “villain”) is Harold Black, the kingpin and owner of a multi-billion dollar media conglomerate. He is THE MAN. And he comes to Brandt Collins, the young yet successful owner of Collins Global Collective, with a proposition: court and marry his beautiful and academically-successful daughter, Elissa, and—together with Elissa—take over the business together.

Brandt and Elissa are, effectively, the main protagonists and primary voices of the novel. They are also the central focus and main will-they/won't-they couple.

It needs to be mentioned that, while Harold isn't the main focus of the novel, his presence and influence hovers over it. We learn that he is possessive, controlling, neglectful, and even abusive over Elissa, resulting in her being a bit of a perfectionist. Nothing she does is good enough for her father. She is also, ultimately, a pawn in her father's power game, the same as Brandt.

It turns out that Brandt has had the hots for Elissa since he was a senior and she was s freshman in high school. They continuously go on and on about the roudness and firmness of each other's buttocks. Brandt is constantly talking about how his c***k gets hard and makes the front of his pants rise, which is funny and steamy sometimes while being creepy and disturbing at other times, especially when he keeps mentioning it.

There are also two other somewhat-major characters in Rhys and Riley, friends of the main characters, who mostly serve as third wheels. They have their own drawn-out sex scenes, by the way.

There are also Liam, Lexi, and Selena, characters who seem to serve as alternative sexual/romantic partners.

Honestly, a lot of these supporting characters seem superfluous, especially considering that a lot of them get sections dedicated to them and even narrated by them. There's also an argument to be made that they hurt/hinder the likability of the main characters rather than helping or supporting them. We're supposed to be falling in love with the two protagonists. We should be falling in love with Brandt and Elissa. We should be cheering them along. Yet, every time they interact with Liam, Lexi, Selena, or these other partners, we can't help but be angry, frustrated, upset, and disappointed in the main characters.

And here's what it boils down to: most people would probably tell you that if you really loved and cared about someone, you wouldn't cheat on them or sleep around.

Yes, we get that not all relationships are exclusive, and that seems to be the case with this one. However, the way in which the main characters just willy-nilly sleep around and have sex with other partners, often knowing that it will hurt the other person, just makes us pissed off with them. As you might expect, there are also miscommunications and misunderstandings between them which cause tension. It's pretty standard romance novel stuff in that regard.

But this book isn't really about the plot. It's about the sex. And the sex, again, is GREAT! The fire, passion, and intensity between the two leads really comes across through these scenes.

The real issue we have with it (and it's a HUGE issue) is how UNEARNED these sex scenes seem. It's like figuratively and literally having multiple climaxes without having any build in terms of plot or characters sometimes. Normally, in a book, sex (or the first kiss) occurs near the end or middle of the book after undergoing a journey or surviving a crisis. It's supposed to feel deserved or earned.

However, in this book, the characters are figuratively and literally just thrown together and pressed to screw each other's brains out from the get-go. There's barely any lead or build-up to it. Yes, we're told that Brandt had a crush on Elissa going back several years, but being told that and actually experiencing that history are two separate things. A lot of the things we learn about the characters happens long after the fact. So, there's a strange distance we feel with these characters who we're otherwise getting to know physically/sexually. They're almost more like toys than people—toys being crashed together like a bunch of jets or cars. It's a strange comparison, we know, but that's how it felt to us.

There's also a sense we got like the sex in this book was taken for granted and not appreciated by the characters. It seemed like even THEY felt like it was unearned and undeserved—probably because it was. They were just showering in seminal and vaginal fluid. That too becomes problematic because it takes away from the realism of the characters and story. First of all, most of us can't have sex like 20 times a day without requiring a trip to the emergency room afterward. You also get the sense that these two have so much time to have sex, not just with each other but multiple other partners, how do they have time to do anything else? How do they run their business?

It's kinda agitating because, again, it seems like these two don't earn or deserve anything. They're the equivalent of millionaire gamers who sit on their butts playing video games all day. Replace the games with sex.

Second of all, most of us aren't heirs to a fortune. We're not 20-something year olds looking at possessing millions or billions of dollars straight out of college. That's all cool and all, and it plays into the fantasy aspect of this book, but it's also a bit cliché while also being unrelatable. By “cliche” we're referring to the fact that there are a lot of rich-lover romances out there including the 50 Shades of Gray.

How unrelatable can two characters possibly be? Again, it creates distance with the characters rather than drawing us closer to them (like we should be). We kept writing in our notes that one character or another was an “@$$hole” for doing or saying something, particularly with another partner.

There was so much about this book and characters that grinded our gears.

However, it succeeds in one key way: presenting vivid, detailed, steamy sex like no other book we've read—even erotic or steamy romance ones.

Check it out on Amazon if you're curious!