To be fair, I didn't go into Kidnapped the Wrong Sister expecting something great. But I thought it would be a fun, sexy erotica read. It really wasn't.
So what's the one thing you feel like you can count on with erotica? Lots of steamy sex, right? There was lots of sex, but I ended up skimming right past most of those scenes by time I hit the 50% point because there was nothing steamy about those scenes. The descriptions were annoying - the overuse of the word "as" drove me batty, not to mention the run on sentences - and it was just awkward. Here's an example I bookmarked at a moment when I got annoyed (but before I started skimming these scenes) it's SUPPOSED to be steamy:
By now her tongue was parrying with his, as he began to playfully nip her lower lip, as she moaned with his actions. His hands moved across her, feeling as her skin became goose-bumpy under him, as she reacted to every sure movement of his hands. Pulling back to look down her impassioned face, he dropped his head to move his teeth to graze against the visible nipples which strained against the material of her bikini as she moaned so loudly, causing him to make such a masculine throaty sound, making her shiver even harder.
I've bolded the more bothersome phrases, but the whole thing just didn't work for me. And that's a pretty typical passage. And Diona is so ridiculous in her reactions to Nikias. He enters the room and she sighs. He touches her back casually and she groans. From the moment she encounters him she's like putty around him. Nope, nope, nope, nope, NOPE!
Its really not fair to pick on Diona. All the characters are a bit ridiculous. Nikias has to have Diona because she's so smart and capable and blah blah blah. I'm sorry - but I didn't see anything that made me think she was anything special, except maybe one scene where she helped to save a young boy who'd almost drowned. Nikias just told me over and over how special she was.
And the whole thing that kicked this off is also ridiculous - Diona's sister had run away to marry a guy she'd known for only a week and Diona chased after her, to stop the marriage, and instead gets mistakenly kidnapped by the brother, who's also trying to stop the marriage.
So here's why I'm giving it two stars rather than one. There's the skeleton of a story I could really enjoy there. Mistaken identity is an old plot trick because it WORKS (hell, Shakespeare is famous for it). But you either have to embrace the ridiculous to the point that you write a comedy (which Kidnapped the Wrong Sister most certainly was not) or make the circumstances convincing. I think Kidnapped the Wrong Sister had the ability to be convincing. And I did read all the way to the end (admittedly skimming more and more over the last 10%) because I did care what happened.
Although it wasn't for me, Kidnapped the Wrong Sister had the right idea. It needed some editing, fleshing out of characters (less tell, more show) and better thought out scenarios to make it a good read. Better luck next time!