Book Review: Father Figure by Jasmine Dayne

cover copyright Jasmine Dayne

Today's review: Father Figure by Jasmine Dayne, a short story featuring hardcore sex between an older man and a younger woman.

Once again, I was drawn in by the summary. Once again, I decided not to read the sample Amazon provided. Once again, I regret it.

Shortly after high school graduation, eighteen-year-old Kat returns to the home of her childhood best friend after four years away. Her best friend isn't there, but her friend's father is.

Father Figure wasn't as bad as Camping with Daddy. It's not even the worst thing I've read. The premise of the story is good and some of the details (like the fact that Kat once caught Steve masturbating) could have been really great if the story had been handled with more skill and care. My eyes skated over most of the errors (dropped letters at the ends of words, missing words) with no issue. It was well-formatted and the length was nice for a quick read.

I still had several problems with it.

First of all, Kat's relationship with Steve confused me. Early in the story, she told us that she didn't think of Steve as her "dad or anything." Okay, so why is this story called Father Figure? If it's simply older man/younger woman sex without the daddy kink, why give it that title? Is it because Steve happens to be a father? I don't understand. If Kat thinks of him "like a good buddy" then why was her first sexual fantasy about him? The back-and-forth irritated me. I don't think it's too much to ask for consistency, even in a story that is around 5,000 words long.

Characterization was the second set of problems. Kat was clearly an immature person. She bounced from innocent (being a virgin with little experience at all with boys/men, never having had alcohol) to not-so-innocent (masturbating thinking about Steve's dick, showing off her body to him, intruding on him in his bedroom, initiating sex with him). I wish the author had picked one or the other. Steve wasn't any better. At times he behaved in an appropriate fatherly fashion (comforting Kat when she vented about her mother), at times it was inappropriate (serving her beer, treating her like a child when it was "bedtime"). His transition from reluctant sex partner to demanding sex partner would have been much more satisfying and believable if there had been any consistency before that point.

The dialogue regularly made me cringe. It only accentuated the utter lack of characterization. Neither Kat nor Steve spoke in a believable way, with the exception of one line uttered by Steve shortly before the sex.

As for the sex itself, it wasn't that bad. If the rest of the story had been well-written, it would have been hot. I had a personal issue with Kat being a "virgin squirter," but I could have believed it had the context been better.

This story was heavy on the telling and the passive voice, light on the showing and the active voice. I didn't like Kat at all. I could have liked her, and I could have liked Steve, but the story wasn't written well enough.