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A F/F/M romance novel about having it all.
Vicky and Sharon had a great place to live, jobs they liked, excellent neighbors and landlords, and a four-year-old daughter they loved. Ten years after they went from best friends to lovers, they were married and prospering, starting to talk about the one thing they were missing. What came next?
Marco Hidalgo was still trying to decide how to tell his wife his show was cancelled when he got home and found the note. Four years after they went from co-workers to married, it was over. It didn’t seem to matter what came next, so he reached out to the one person who was always on his side.
When newly-single Marco turned up on Vicky’s movie set, she called Sharon to ask What If. Sharon said Why Not, and Marco said it might be revenge. Vicky said if it wasn’t at least a little bit revenge, she’d be concerned. So they tried it, and it worked, and now all three of them had to figure out what came next.
Adult situations, themes, and language; 77300 words and a happy ending.
- 1 To Be Read list
Publisher: Independently Published
Genres:
Pairings: F-F, F-F-M, M-F, M-M
Heat Level: 3
Romantic Content: 3
Ending: Click here to reveal
Character Identities: Bisexual, Questioning, Polyamorous
Protagonist 1 Age: 36-45
Protagonist 2 Age: 36-45
Protagonist 3 Age: 26-35
Tropes: Age Difference, Families/Raising Kids, Love Triangle, Married Life, Sex Buddies Become Lovers
Word Count: 77300
Languages Available: English
Sharon and I talked about everything and negotiated well, a thing you find out fast when you start taking dance lessons together. Performing together. Training for the Gay Games together. There was only one bump in our mostly-smooth road, which was sex.
Both lesbian, no men, no problem. Both bi, no men … not exactly a problem, but let’s just say both of us had been known to comment on the vast array of gorgeous male flesh we were constantly faced with and unable to indulge with.
Except ‘unable’ is only the right word for the half of those awesome men who were gay. ‘Unwilling’ is the right word for the other half. Once you get into your thirties, most of the awesome men you know tend to be married, like we were. Some of them have kids, like we do (Sharon got pregnant thanks to the fertility clinic and our longtime coach Dmitri. Our daughter Nina Simone was, God help us, four years old now).
READ MOREWe’d had a couple of those conversations – you know the ones, where you’re sitting in the dark and you’re drinking and you’re talking real low so nobody can possibly overhear, especially not your landlords on the other side of the duplex – in which the notion of opening the marriage had been floated. But when? Where? With whom? Maybe some people put an ad on Craigslist, but we had famous friends and a child. If we were ever going to find ourselves a man, it had to be someone we could really trust.
Thus, we had not even really tried looking. But the other things we’d tried were not really solving the problem.
Being touched goes a long, long way. Being held and cuddled and kissed by the person you love, having orgasms with that person, affirming your love on a daily basis: that goes a long way.
If neither of us ever knew what fucking a man could be like, we’d probably be perfectly happy. But we did know. I, especially, did know. The last man I fucked was Vince, and he’s the kind of lover you think fondly of. I wasn’t jealous of his wife Kelli (I wasn’t. Okay, a little), who by the way was also in this show. She’s amazing. I love her. I would not by so much as a pat on the ass betray their marriage.
And all that said, dancing intimately with a series of spectacular men, some straight, for years, didn’t stop me missing the D. Quite the opposite.
COLLAPSEUndertow is like reading all the fun celebrity magazines and articles but getting the real deal instead of the glamorous window dressings. Set in the world of the Hollywood-adjacent, this strangely sweet novel follows the intertwining lives of Vicky, Sharon, and Marco.
Vicky and Sharon are madly in love, have a great relationship and a precocious daughter. They have great lives, good friends, and careers that allow them to do a lot of the things they want to do.
Marco thought he had the same, until his show was cancelled and he came home to find his wife had left him. Emotionally bruised, Marco is intrigued when Vicky and Sharon approach him for a friends-with-benefits arrangement.
This novel is so well-written, with snippets of lives that are outside the every-day norm, but intriguing for just that reason. One of the things I loved about it is that Sharon and Vicky work on their relationship. They have real conversations about what’s good, what might need attention, and what either of them can’t see working. As bisexual women in a committed lesbian relationship, they both feel like they’re missing ‘the d’. And so they start looking for someone who could fit into their relationship, and provide an aspect of their sex lives that they’d like to improve.
Marco’s wife has left him with absolutely no explanation. He’s feeling unloved, unwanted, unsexy. His insecurities have left him a little raw. So Vicky’s invitation gives him the chance to lick his wounds, have some great no-strings sex, and to emotionally regroup.
I loved how Caluen writes about this big, sexy man having insecurities about his own body, his acting, and his ability to maintain a relationship. Marco has real conversations with Vicky and Sharon about all those things.
Undertow was a fabulous story filled with quirky, interesting characters, hot sex, and a fun backdrop of theater and movie stars living their best lives. This was my first book by Alexandra Caluen, but it definitely won’t be the last.
