Book Review: Back Door to the Black Door

“Betrayal”

By Velvet

Reviewed by A. Jarrell Hayes

Welcome back to the Black Door, where all your desires can come true. Hidden behind unique and colorful Venetian masks you can take on a different persona. You are endowed with the ability to become a new sexually free person, and experience life as it is meant to be lived: absent of categories, such as son or wife. Just like the fictional Black Door sex club, Velvet’s most recent book in the Black Door series, Betrayal, is much more than a hedonistic romp; it has the ability to grab the reader with its vivid prose and multi-dimensional characters.

The characters come to life on the page and bring their own emotional baggage to the story. There’s Trey, only son of a squeaky clean Supreme Court justice and owner of the New York-based sex club The Black Door; Preston, Trey’s father, who is a bit of a pathos and is too preoccupied with his own life that he blindly trusts everyone around him, to his detriment; Ariel, Preston’s wife and Trey’s ex-lover, the foster child who grows up to have a successful law career but is haunted with abandonment issues; and Michele, the sexy slim-downed ex-fat girl that will use her acquired “influence” over men – and women – to her advantage.

The betrayal in this novel happened previously in the Black Door books. Trey and Ariel have an affair. But at that time Trey is dating Michele and Ariel is with Trey’s father, Preston. Both Preston and Michele discover the betrayal, but Preston has a stroke and can no longer recollect the incident. Ariel then takes this prime opportunity to marry Preston, and enlist Trey and Michele in a cover-up scheme worthy of Richard Nixon and Watergate – the only thing this book is missing is Deepthroat, but there was another kind of deep throat going on in this title.

To add tension and conflict to the novel, Michele, the only reluctant participant in the cover-up, lands a job working as Justice Preston’s secretary and assistant. Obviously Ariel and Michele are constantly at one another’s throats throughout the entire novel, but the only reason Michele keeps her job is that she is the weakest link in Ariel’s chain of deceit used to keep her husband.

Preston, arguably the book’s most successful character, is also the most static. The main plot of the book revolves around him and his lost memory and the attempt to hide the ultimate betrayal from him until his memory returns, which allows him to be pushed and moved by the other characters in a way that seems out of character for a Supreme Court justice. He tolerates Ariel and Michele’s bickering without putting an end to it or choosing a side; he becomes an easy mark for Michele’s seduction and appears powerless to stop her; and he constantly believes anything the other characters say to him, regardless of concrete proof or evidence – especially when Michele glosses over her involvement in the scheme and adds other details not factual into story of the affair.

Even though Betrayal is the continuation of the story begun in the novels The Black Door and Seduction, it invites new-comers to the series with open arms and background reviews of important events portrayed in the earlier novels. The deep detail into the back story does create scenes and sub-plots that at first don’t seem to fit in the action of Betrayal – such as the scenes featuring the private lives of Senator Oglesby and his wife, Angelica, and their involvement with the Black Door club – but they bring to light some of the dark intrigue that effect the moods and attitudes of the characters, especially Justice Preston, and eventually foreshadow possible events in upcoming books.

If you’re expecting a book that is filled with sex for sex’s sake, you’re in for a shocking surprise. The sexual encounters, from the first scene between Trey and new beau Lexi to Michele’s desperate romp with the married Congressman Laird Forester, advance the plot and storyline and seem in no way shape or form thrown into the mix just to make the book an erotic tale. The scenes are tasteful, non-offensive, and sophisticated – just like the rest of the prose. Velvet’s descriptions of the places and smells and emotions are worthy of contemporary classic literature. In contrast, the images Velvet gives for the characters provide just enough detail for the reader to use their imagination and create pictures of the faces and bodies that work best for their own sexual fantasies. That’s what this book is: a fantasy with substance; a guilty pleasure that doesn’t leave you feeling guilty.

A. Jarrell Hayes’ most recent books are “Reign of the Good King: Book Two of the Good King Trilogy” and the poetry collection “Just Another Angry Black Man.” He is an educator and freelance blogger.