Genres: Pick Your Own Adventure, Erotica, Fiction Book

Author: Joanna Angel

Publisher : Cleis Press (February 9, 2021)
Language: : English
Paperback : 347 pages  
ISBN-10 : 1627783067
ISBN-13 : 978-1627783064
Kindle edition also available.

I read this book courtesy of a PDF file that Joanna kindly sent me prior to it being published next month. I was quite a few pages in when I realized I was scanning through pages of other storylines, kind of ruining their surprises, before I realized I could open the page menu sidebar and jump to the specific ones I needed to follow the path I had chosen. Oops.

Photos: None

Author Background: Joanna Angel is well known in the adult entertainment world. She is a writer, director, performer, exotic dancer and so much more. Many times she has been referred to as the "punk rock princess of porn", a pioneer that set the adult world on fire when she founded Burning Angel. She has managed to create an entire genre of erotic entertainment onscreen, which while often imitated is never duplicated, which probably explains all those trophies she has collected over the years from pretty much every awards organization in the adult world. Fans and critics alike adore her and her brand.

Overview:

I think this is technically her 3rd book published. Her last one, Night Shift, was also a choose-your-own erotic fantasy. Her first book, Burning Angel, was done in collaboration with Brenda Staudenmaier, a New York photographer and is highly sought after by collectors.

Now, I haven't read her first fiction book and have never seen her first book in person but this one sounded intriguing to me. I've met a lot of strippers in my lifetime and been to a lot of strip clubs so I thought choosing my own adventure through the eyes of a fictional stripper might be a fun read. Turns out, I was right.

The story is told through the eyes of Naomi, a former mediocre film school student that gets fired from her job as a barista. Rather than going straight home, she wanders Manhattan and literally falls into a strip club (well she technically falls in front of the club but that's not the point).

She decides to kill some time and check the place out. It is a strip club in Times Square, so why not? What else are you going to do? Hit up a celebrity chef restaurant for some overpriced and probably overcooked calamari? Not on a barista's wages would be my guess.

Before she knows it, she's "auditioning" for a job at the club, fully naked on stage and finds herself not only getting hired but kind of enjoying it. She knows nothing of how being a stripper works but through each path you choose, she will learn a lot about it in a very short amount of time. Each path has its own charm and Naomi discovers things she never knew about herself as she winds through them, making each its own fun little fantasy.

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FInal Thoughts:

I found it to be an easy read, once I figured out that stupid sidebar trick I mentioned above that you won't need to worry about in a physical copy. It flows pretty well along each path I took. I'm pretty sure I followed most of the possible paths but I know there's at least one or two that I didn't follow yet. I'm saving those for another time, which is part of the fun with this type of book. Admittedly, I haven't read this type of book in probably 35 years at least. I quite enjoyed flipping through the variety of scenarios presented.

Will it hit the New York Times bestseller list, or Oprah's book club? Somehow, I doubt that. That's okay with me...I don't read any of those books anyhow and if you are a Joanna Angel fan, you might not either, so does it really matter? You can get this on Kindle or in paperback. If you ask me, get the paperback and have her sign it at the next convention you attend. I have a Kindle in the house, I never use that thing. I know there's a way that authors can electronically sign your book but that seems lame and complicated. It's more fun to chat up an author at an actual event.

Authors are told to write what they know about. That's pretty much rule #1 and I'm pretty sure Joanna knows a thing or three about strip clubs, shopping for shoes, and what the inside of a sex dungeon is like. That comes through in these pages and I think you'll find it an enjoyable quick read and if you have good timing, you can probably slip it into casual conversations over drinks or a bowl of Indica. Highly Recommended, especially if you like to get things that aren't DVDs signed at conventions.