Elle Kavanagh is a very good accountant. She’s also emotionally dead inside. She enjoys her works, spends her days counting, and her nights having meaningless sexual encounters. One of the things she discovered in college is that sex made her forget. It made her forget her pain, it made her feel needed, wanted, desired, and it stopped her from always counting. This is, of course, no real way to live. Her mother is a shrew, her father is a distant drunk, and her younger brother ran away to California where he could be gay without listening to their mother spew hateful words at him. She hasn’t had a real boyfriend since college. Then she meets Dan.

She meets him in a candy store and for the first time Elle finds herself transfixed by a man. She can’t stop thinking about him. She had given up those meaningless sexual encounters, because ultimately they left her unfulfilled. Now she sees Dan and he excites her. However, Elle is running, always running from anyone who might get close to her, love her, actually give a damn about her. She wants Dan, but she wants him just as a toy. Someone to have sex with. Someone to have orgasms with. Someone who knows the rules and won’t expect anything emotional from her in return.

However Dan has other ideas.

As the plot would suggest, this book isn’t for sissies. In fact, the depression that hangs over the story is often times suffocating – which is good since one wagers that is the tone the author is shooting for. Elle is the antithesis of everything romance readers have been taught about romance heroines. She isn’t particularly likable. She’s empty, hollow, and emotionally devoid of any sort of warmth. Naturally she has reasons for this behavior. No one springs from the womb like this, and it’s this unfolding of Elle’s life that makes the story. She’s carrying the story, written entirely in first person, so either she’s going to work for the reader, or she isn’t. If you need a sunshine happy heroine looking for love, this isn’t your girl. If you’re looking for a heroine with deep seeded pain, unable to emotionally connect, and ultimately a woman who has to learn to let go, move on, and allow someone to come in – then this is your book.

Dan isn’t quite as well drawn as Elle, but he serves his purpose. For a while one wonders exactly what he sees in her, why he pushes her towards something deeper. Sure the sex is great, and she’s beautiful – but is it merely a challenge? Wouldn’t most men be ecstatic to meet a woman who just wanted to have great sex and nothing more? Why can’t he be happy with his free lunch and stop prying into her life? Because while it is lust that brings them together, Dan can’t seem to stop himself from caring about Elle.

Harlequin Spice is billing this as an erotic novel, which is partially correct. It is erotic, and there are a number of sex scenes. However, it’s not what drives the story. It’s a way for the author to explore Elle’s psyche. To show her grow, change, open up, and maybe allow some true emotion to enter her life. It takes her the entire book to achieve this, and when dark secrets are revealed, it serves as a punch in the gut for the reader. No, Dirty is more of a general fiction novel. A chance for the author to take a seriously damaged heroine and explore how she got that way, and how she works to overcome it. The sex serves as a way to advance the plot – which will be shocking for readers who think anything erotic is about nothing but sex.

Dirty is not a book for everybody. While it does end happily, it’s a bittersweet happiness. We know Elle is better than she was on page one, but the tone is entirely different than that of a traditional romance novel. If you’re looking for sunshine happy land, this is not the book for you. It’s emotionally exhausting and challenging at the same time. As the reviewer, I didn’t always like Elle, but Hart makes me understand her. She makes me relate to her in such a way that I knew this character. I knew everything about her even as she was hiding behind defense mechanisms and pushing Dan away.

Megan Hart is easily one of the more mature, talented voices I’ve encountered in the recent erotica boom. Deep, thought provoking, and heart wrenching, it’s a story that sticks with you long after the final page. While it likely will fail among readers looking for fluffy escapism, or pure titillation, it’s an extremely accomplished novel and one that deserves heaps of praise.

--Wendy Crutcher