Night Moves by Nora Roberts

Night Moves (1985) (Silhouette Books)
Nora Roberts
Grade: C+
Genre: romantic suspense
Sex scenes: mild
Source: own

TBR RBC 2015: A romance novel 

When award-winning Hollywood composer and golden child Maggie Fitzgerald leaves her comfortable life in L.A. for a rundown and abandoned house in the tiny town of Morganville, population 142, no one believes she’ll last. Least of all, Cliff Delaney, the local landscaper Maggie’s hired to tackle her overgrown garden. Their chemistry is instantaneous and explosive, yet both parties try to deny and suppress their feelings based on a mutual dislike of the other. When Cliff’s crew dig up a body where Maggie envisages her new pond, a ten-year-old mystery is dredged up that somebody wants to keep a secret …

Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught

Whitney, My Love (1985) (I read the 1999 reissue)
Judith McNaught
Grade: C
Genre: historical romance
Sex scenes: that 80s type; controversial rape/almost-rape scene, depending on which version you read

Source: own, second-hand

The wilful and defiant Whitney Stone has driven her father so completely mad with her unashamed and brazen pursuit of the reluctant Paul Sevarin that he has decided to send her away to Paris with her aunt and uncle. Whitney is distraught; she is convinced that Paul is her one-and-only true love and to be separated from him like this (even though Paul has only ever given the impression that Whitney is a spoilt, childish little girl) ruins all her plans for the future she has planned for them. When it becomes clear that Whitney has no choice in the matter, she becomes determined to come back from Paris such a changed woman so that Paul will be falling at her feet begging her to marry him …

Exit to Eden by Anne Rice

Exit to Eden (1985)
Anne Rice writing as Anne Rampling
Grade: C-
Genre: Erotica
Sex scenes: Oh, I don't know ... erotic, perhaps?
Source: Library

This cover is so blatantly phallic it's painful to look at while I type. While most erotica covers now tend to feature naked people twisted around each other in anatomically awkward (not to mention uncomfortable) positions, I find this cover much more painful to look at.

This is my first foray into erotica, though to be honest, it wasn't as explicit as I was expecting something classed under this genre to be. Considering this is twenty-seven years old, it is to be expected that authors have got more ... adventurous is one way of putting it, with the sexual exploits of their characters. Or maybe I just have a high tolerance to the issues that this book does deal with and my expectations were more in line with a modern erotica novel. Anyway, more about the book's eroticism (or lack of it) later.