While Bliss started with a glimmer of promise, it quickly plummeted into gross, illogical erotica that was truly porn without plot. Kara Spencer is a sex columnist whose boss forces her to attend a sex conference. She is supposed to interview a Tantric master to get some tips for her readers. Kara is less than happy to complete this assignment, because she feels like her boss is hinting that her column is stale, and she also considers Tantra a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

On the plane ride to Indianapolis, she is seated to a hunky man who calls himself J.M. They hit it off, and she throws caution to the wind and has a mind-blowing night with him, intending him to be a one night stand.

Unfortunately, J.M. has other ideas. He is actually Jeremy Smith, the Tantric master who Kara is supposed to interview. The minute he lays eyes on Kara, he knows she’s his perfect woman, his soul mate, and he has no intention of letting her go. He will do anything it takes to convince her that their relationship is more than a fling, and he is also determined to get her to love Tantra as much as he does.

At the beginning, Kara and J.M. do have sizzling chemistry, and I was interested to see how they’d ride out their differences. Unfortunately, J.M. crosses into sleaze territory, and I got a chill as I saw how neatly he manipulates Kara into doing what he wants. He only has to look at her with his “simmering chocolate eyes,” and she literally throws herself at him, when only seconds ago she was planning to walk away. The way he talks about Tantra is like he’s the leader of a cult, and I didn’t like that he was always in tight control of himself, in the bedroom or otherwise.

At one point, after Kara realizes who he is, they begin talking about fulfilling her deepest sexual desires. Somehow they not only have a ménage à trois, they later have a ménage à CINQ – that is, five people: four men and her. Admittedly, I am not a three-people kind of girl, but I can read it without wincing. However, I found five people completely ridiculous and disgusting. The scene is also very, very long, and it took me a while to flip through it as quickly as I could.

What made this situation even more ridiculous is that J.M. is, at this point, fully in love with her. I thought it was dumb that he’d be writhing with jealousy as he coordinates these hanky panky sessions. His talk about them being soul mates is more creepy cult-master terminology than romantic hero speech. I don’t like it when the main couple are established but still have sex with others. I like it even less when they have sex with other people at their partner’s behest.

Bliss isn’t an F only because the writing is not bad, and I did enjoy the parts when people were just talking. I think I would have enjoyed the relationship between J.M. and Kara much more if there hadn’t been so much sex. But ha – this is erotica, and I suppose that still means that romance must be pared down in the name of explicit sex scenes.