The Kindle Sample for Buttercup consists of the prologue and a few sentences from the first chapter. I wish the sample had been longer, because I don’t know that the prologue is a fair representation of the novel. If it is, then Buttercup absolutely isn’t for me. Having a weakness for both the 1930′s and sideshow life I expected to enjoy Buttercup. Instead I struggled to complete the sample.
When we meet Silvio and Buttercup she is dancing on stage and he is masturbating. (I somehow missed that this is an erotic romance, and not a romance with erotic elements.) For reasons I didn’t understand they progress to a one on one physical encounter. Through his arousal, Silvio reflects on events, events that apparently separated them. Here I was confused. Silvio has “bedded the whore, the virgin, the widow” but he is angry that Buttercup may not have been faithful to him. He’s had to seek her out, indicating they were not in communication, but here she is dancing (and disrobing) for him with barely a word.
Because Silvio is revealing their story between “slick sheens of sweat” it was hard for me to stay interested. It seems that Buttercup did something six years ago that endangered Silvio’s life. Four years ago he got out of prison. Two years were spent with his gang, searching for Buttercup while also trying to forget her. Buttercup is apparently indebted to, and protected by, the carnival she works with. She is such a fantasy figure in this prologue that I wasn’t sure she was real. At the end of the prologue is seems clear that this is meant to represent an actual encounter, not a dream of Silvio’s. I also wasn’t sure of the timeline of past events.
“Buttercup was different than in the past, but she was a girl of barely seventeen and he was a kid himself. He paid it no mind. They had both changed. His mind was on one thing. Reclaiming what was taken from him prematurely.” – Kindle Location 219, Buttercup by Sienna Mynx
I think this passage means she is twenty-three, but I had to read it twice. My initial pass seemed to indicate that she’d been eleven during their prior sexual encounter. I know Sienna Mynx is very popular and Buttercup was suggested to me by several different fans but I didn’t purchase the book. As a set up for an erotic novel, the world of a 1930′s carnival is fresh and original. If I were looking for an erotic read I probably would have been more interested than I was. I needed a contrast between Silvio’s sexual needs and who Buttercup is as a person. Because she felt like a fantasy, and he a stalker, I DNF’d the book and moved on.
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