2006-01-04 Escapist romance meets sizzling eroticism. Nice!

Radclyffe's 'Provincetown' series of novels are amongst the finest in lesbian romantic fiction, and firmly in the tradition established by Katherine V. Forrest with her 1983 classic Curious Wine. These books are well constructed, engagingly written, and notable for both their intense romanticism and their focus on the devastating power of physical attraction between women. In other words, love and chemistry! As opposed to the rather pointless substitutes found in many other works of lesbian erotic fiction, such as fetishism, cynicism and other odd bits of psychological and silicone paraphernalia.

Radclyffe has created a wonderfully escapist universe set in the small coastal community of Cape Cod's Provincetown. Her cast of irresistable characters are emotionally intense and monogamously inclined, and the sex scenes between them are right off the scale of hotness. These books are so far up my street that I can even forgive Radclyffe for giving all of her best characters names like Reese and Tory.

If you're looking for hot romantic fiction which affirms the power, beauty and essential rightness of love between women, then look no further than Safe Harbor and its two sequels, Beyond the Breakwater, and Distant Shores, Silent Thunder.