A review by triviareads
The Mistress Experience by Scarlett Peckham

4.5

This is a gorgeous, sex-positive, feminist romance that answers the perennial historical romance reader question: "how do all these heroes come by their sexual prowess?" The answer here is sex lessons. 

Thaïs is loud, proud, and unabashed about being a sex worker, and her bawdy sense of humor kept me laughing throughout the book, and kept our hero perpetually blushing. Alistair is starchy, charmingly sweet hero— a cinnamon roll, if you will. Where he deviates from most HR heroes is that he has performance anxiety, a bit of a hair-trigger dick, and he's been celibate for a long time. Enter Thaïs, who agrees to teach him by way of sex lessons. I'm a huge fan of this trope, and the fact that it's a sexually-experienced woman teaching a less-experienced man is something I really enjoyed reading. 

One of my pet romance theories is that when you have a main character who has much-higher-than-average sexual experience, the novelty for them tends to be the emotional rather than physical connection with their love interest, so the author needs to build on that convincingly while not sacrificing the heat (because love can absolutely impact sexual chemistry). And I thought Scarlett Peckham did an amazing job of this; I adored all these lovely moments of growing intimacy between them— Alistair cooks for Thaïs and helps her with her correspondence because she can't read or write very well, and there's so much laughter and tenderness and teasing just because of how different they are. And then there's the hugs; listen, if you'd told me hugs can be written erotically a few months ago, I'd never have believer you, but now I'm a believer. 

And as this intimacy builds, they both unwittingly start to torture one another with reminders of exactly what will happen once their month together ends: Thaïs insists on judging every one of the dossiers compiled on Alistair's potential brides even as she becomes increasingly hurt over them, and in a particularly heartbreaking scene, they roleplay his future wedding night, which NEVER ends well because feelings are always caught, AND YET. Alistair is hellbent upon doing the Right and Proper thing, namely marrying an upper-class virgin, and Thaïs doesn't figure into his future plans. I thought the class difference conflict, and the portrayal of stigma against sex workers, were both handled well. 

Also, can we talk about this cover?? it's so lush and beautiful and harkens back to old romance clinch covers in the best way. 

The sex:

This book felt honest about a lot of aspects of sex in a way not many romance novels are. Alistair's performance anxiety is real and the book doesn't beat around the bush when it comes to portraying it, but I want to clarify, Scarlett Peckham managed to make even this hot. There's a particularly steamy moment where Alistair is washing the mud out of Thaïs's hair and like, giving her a head massage. All it takes is her returning the massage favor (which... was honestly so romantic??) and a kiss, and the man is cumming in his breeches. 

I also thought it was kind of great that he built up his *sexual stamina* by masturbating a multiple times a day— you don't get a lot of male masturbation scenes in HR, so I do appreciate this. And once it clicks for Alistair, there is no stopping this man. Near the end of their lessons, they're going at it 4 times a day, on the desk, on the floor, on the dining table, in the rain, etc. etc. He's insatiable. 

Thaïs is an experienced courtesan and tends to disassociate during sex, and she feels like this is even more critical as her feelings start to grow for Alistair. Because of this, she also doesn't necessarily orgasm every time earlier in their sexual relationship. But once again, once Alistair is able to figure his stuff out (and by figuring out, I mean eating her out), and Thaïs lets go, there's no going back. 

Overall:

I can't tell you how much I appreciate Scarlett Peckham for writing a historical romance that falls outside the norm in so many ways, and yet feels true to the subgenre in the way it merges certain realities with the romance of it all. I had so much fun reading The Mistress Experience, and I'd absolutely recommend it to any HR reader. 

Thank you to Avon Books and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Heat Level: 3.75/5
Publication Date: June 25th