Paperback

Published: 17th July 2012

RRP $17.95

$12.50

30%
OFF

 Add to Wishlist

• Click here to read a review of The Secret Lives of Emma by novelist Kylie Ladd
• Read an extract from this book.

Click on the Google Preview image above to read some pages of this book!

Booktopia Comments

Read our interview with Natasha Walker click here

Book Description

The first in a series of erotic novels that tap into our deepest, sexiest fantasies, from the publishers of Fifty Shades of Grey

BEGINNINGS....

Thirty-something Emma Benson is a free spirit. For her a good life means a life of sensuality.

So it’s a surprise to everyone when she marries David, a successful businessman, and settles down in the suburbs.

One year on, and she’s trying so hard to be loyal to her man. Not easy to do when you’re passionate and uninhibited.

But then, while sunbathing in her garden, her neighbour’s eighteen-year-old son appears. And Emma has found her new project…

She will be his perfect teacher…

About the Author

Natasha Walker is a Sydney based author who found writing her memoir confronting till she discovered the joys of fabrication.

From Kylie Ladd's Review: After the FIFTY SHADES OF GREY phenomenon, it is refreshing to find a female erotica lead who is older, experienced and very much in touch with her sexuality. Quite deeply in touch, as some scenes reveal, but I digress. More interestingly, Emma, like her Jane Austen namesake, is intelligent, self-assured, forthright, scheming and definitely likes to get involved in the lives of her neighbours. Walker’s occasional asides through Emma’s eyes on the nature of monogamy or Australian politics or the particular private school type peculiar to Sydney’s north shore are witty and subversive, a delight to read.

To me, the trouble with the vast majority of erotica is twofold:

(i) the quality of the writing is far more disturbing than anything the protagonists might do to each other, literary merit not usually being the most lasting effect the author hopes to create;

and (ii) there are, to put it bluntly, only so many ways tab A can be inserted into slot B – or even slots B, C and D, simultaneously or in-turn.

As such, I’m not a huge fan of the genre, often finding it predictable, dull, less believable than the letters to Penthouse Forum, and worst of all, execrably written. It’s not that I don’t like smut, it’s just that I’d much prefer to serendipitously stumble across a nice bit of filth in a novel I am already engaged with, where the characters think and feel, and any slot/tab sightings are integral to the plot.

The Secret Lives of Emma: Beginnings has the potential to change all that. Natasha Walker’s debut novel is eloquent, measured and articulate, its tone – in surely a first for erotica – both wry and playful. More to the point, it’s dirty enough that Walker adopted a pseudonym to write the book, and readers may feel in need of a shower after finishing it, cold or otherwise.

Emma Benson is a 32 year old housewife, not so much desperate as desperately sensual, in thrall to her own carnal nature and, though she loves her husband, questioning her ability to remain faithful to him after less than a year of marriage. Salvation comes in the form of 18 year old schoolboy Jason, who literally drops into her lap when she is sunbathing in her backyard one afternoon. Though tall, good looking and an accomplished sportsman, Jason is (surprisingly but conveniently) untutored in the ways of the flesh, something Emma sets out to rectify over the course of the book.

One of The Secret Lives of Emma: Beginnings’ most impressive achievements in this regard is how Walker establishes the sexual tension between the characters early in chapter one, then not only sustains, but mercilessly ratchets it up, for the remaining 250 or so pages.

After the FIFTY SHADES OF GREY phenomenon, it is refreshing to find a female erotica lead who is older, experienced and very much in touch with her sexuality. Quite deeply in touch, as some scenes reveal, but I digress. More interestingly, Emma, like her Jane Austen namesake, is intelligent, self-assured, forthright, scheming and definitely likes to get involved in the lives of her neighbours. Walker’s occasional asides through Emma’s eyes on the nature of monogamy or Australian politics or the particular private school type peculiar to Sydney’s north shore are witty and subversive, a delight to read.

Still, that’s not why you buy erotica, is it? Perhaps I should just say then that yes, the book is filthy, arousing, and features plenty of tabs and slots, with the two sequels to be released later this year and in 2013 promising even greater levels of depravity. Walker – and Emma – are women to watch. I predict The Secret Lives of Emma: Beginnings will sell like hot cocks. Sorry, cakes.

Kylie Ladd is a novelist and freelance writer.
Her essays and articles have appeared in The Age, Griffith Review, Etchings, O magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Medicine and Readers Digest, among others.
She is the author of LAST SUMMER and AFTER THE FALL.

ISBN: 9781742758442
ISBN-10: 1742758444
Series: Secret Lives of Emma
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 336
Published: 17th July 2012
Dimensions (cm): 19.5 x 13.0  x 2.2
Weight (kg): 0.25