Book of the Week: Six Degrees by Honey Brown

Why We Love It:

It takes a certain kind of writer to end a threesome with a marriage proposal and still manage to make it romantic. That writer is Honey Brown. In her new book of interlinked stories, Six Degrees, Brown delivers six powerful, sexy and suspenseful tales that will have you begging for more…

In the first of six stories, one of the characters remains profoundly affected by an accident that happened in the past. A character from each of the subsequent stories is in some way connected to this event.  Every story in Six Degrees is further linked by the theme of powerful sexual attraction.

The title of the stories gives a clue to the subject matter – Older, Younger, Two Men, First Time. One story is set in an outback mining town where a scantily clad ‘skimpy’ dances on a bar at night. She’s cajoled and leered at by men but her own sexual preference lies in another direction so, when a rare female worker frequents the pub one night, she can scarcely believe her luck.

The final story tells of an eighteen-year-old girl venturing to a large birthday party on a rural property where she meets the son of the man killed in the freak car accident from the first chapter – and so the stories come full circle.

Each of the main characters has varying ages, backgrounds, sexual experience and inclination – but with every one of them Brown gets deep into their psychology. It’s this ability to honestly convey human desire that renders her scenes, particularly the erotic ones, so convincing. Such scenes aren’t easy to write and Brown deserves full credit for this. They’re not clichéd or clunky – we believe in her characters and their actions and remain in suspense about how their desire will play out.

“After 50 Shades of Grey and the flood of erotic literature, I was frustrated,” says Brown. “So few of the characters hit the mark for me. I was craving some relatable sexuality – female characters that brought their own brand of sex to the table and male characters that were more than the suit and tie they wore.”

Six Degrees is a major departure for Miles Franklin long-listed author Brown who previously enjoyed critical acclaim with psychological thrillers. Her previous novels include Red Queen, The Good Daughter, After the Darkness and Dark Horse.

 Six Degrees is being marketed as rural romance though not all the stories have rural settings and you certainly don’t have to be a fan of the genre to love Honey Brown’s latest book.

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