A well-told erotic story can definitely be a good thing. However, just because a book is filled with sex acts and sex words doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still owe it to the readers to have a good plot, and most importantly, characters the reader can relate to or care about. In this case, Bliss River provides plenty of body parts in heat, but little else.

Charles Elliot goes to Bliss River – a place created by a man named Moreton Estabrook, in order for people to indulge in all sorts of pleasures, and where morality and monogamy are foreign concepts – searching for a woman from his past. Immediately, Charles is intrigued by the woman he refers to as “the queen,” Georgiana Maitland.

Georgie has been bred for the pleasures of the flesh, but when she is sent to entertain Charles, he refuses her, something that (of course) no man has ever done. When she tries a second time and he again refuses her, it becomes Georgie’s obsession to, uh, have her way with Charles. As if their relationship isn’t murky enough, Georgie and Charles have their mothers to contend with.

Lydia is Charles’ mother. Lydia approached Moreton Estabrook when she’d felt desperate to leave her first husband. Moreton rescued her, but at a heavy price.

For years, Lydia believed Charles was dead. It is only when she sees him at Bliss River that she realizes he’s (obviously) still alive.

Olivia is Georgie’s mother. Olivia wanted Moreton from the very beginning, but Moreton married Lydia, even though he was sleeping with Olivia. I didn’t waste a lot of emotion on Olivia, a character who asks her daughter if she serviced Charles properly (because she’s back home too early!).

Oh, and another thing: Lydia and Olivia are sisters, which makes Charles and Georgie first cousins.

The plots intertwine when Lydia tells Moreton that Charles is her son, and that he is out for revenge. Moreton then teams with Olivia to get rid of Lydia and set up Charles to take the blame for it. Charles, desperate to escape his fate as a framed murderer, and Georgie, eager to escape her depraved surroundings and find her own father, make a nipple-filled journey to England, where more death awaits them and where they find that they cannot so easily escape their enemies.

Where do I begin? I’ve never reviewed Thea Devine, so I decided to give her a try. In terms of character, plot, and location, this book failed. I didn’t hate the characters as much as didn’t care a whit for them. Not Georgie, “I come naked and ready to f***” Maitland,” nor Charles, “the most voracious lover of your nipples.” The dialogue and descriptions went beyond the melodrama of their circumstances. The secondary characters, especially Olivia, are irritating in their constant hysterics and plotting and scheming.

Bliss River provides plenty of campy, lurid, 1980’s miniseries-style entertainment along with some hot foreplay and descriptive sex, but these things were not enough for me to give the book a recommendation. It’s possible that hardcore fans of Ms. Devine’s work may enjoy this more than I did, but she did nothing to gain a new fan.