CLEOPATRA'S PERFUME

Author: Jina Bacarr ISBN: 9780373605309 4/2009 EROTIC/HISTORICAL Publisher: SPICE
Time Period: World War II

Europe 1939 The world may be teetering on the brink of war, but that's no reason for the privileged classes to deny themselves the satisfaction of their deepest lusts. In exotic and exclusive clubs, they pursue the delights of the flesh with little thought to the world crumbling around them. Eve Marlowe has everything she needs to lead the most decadent of lives: money, nobility, nerve...and an insatiable appetite for sexual adventure. She also has a singular treasure: a fragrance of ancient origin said to have been prepared for the Queen of Kings herself. Seductive, irresistible, even mystical—it is the scent of pure sensuality. The power of this elixir is such that it sweeps Lady Marlowe into a game much more dangerous than those she played in the darkened rooms of kinky bars. As the Nazis devour Europe and North Africa, she embarks on a fevered journey, with sizzling stops in Cairo, London, Berlin—each city filled with new perils and pleasures for one anointed with pure lust.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Jina Bacarr sets her erotic historical romance CLEOPATRA'S PERFUME in Egypt, England, and Germany just prior to and during World War II, where Eve, Lady Marlowe, recounts her tales of love, obsession and addiction. She begins life as a Jewish girl in New York and is now running a spy mission in Berlin to help bring down Hitler’s regime. Following close behind her is an American Pilot, Chuck Dawn, who isn’t quite sure what to believe about this beautiful, sexy woman. One thing he does know is that wherever he finds her, she is wearing her exotic, intoxicating, maybe even magical scent, Cleopatra’s perfume. The perfume just might have properties worth killing for. After a breathless, sexy, confusing encounter with Eve where she disappears after being threatened by a Nazi officer, and the Nazi’s subsequent death at Chuck’s hands, he is left to puzzle things out by reading Eve’s diary. He wonders (and so do we), if he will ever see Eve alive again.

Bacarr creates a most unusual World War II story (written as Eve’s Diary, read by Chuck), and upon reflection, I believe it could rate right up there with the Indiana Jones stories. As a young girl, Eve just wanted to escape the confines of being a good Jewish girl, getting married, and having babies. Escape she does, but there’s a price to pay for her early years of being unloved by her parents. She is so obsessed with finding love that she allows her obsession to transfer to sex, danger, and drugs, instead of something healthier. She’s rescued from her self-made hell by a wealthy English Lord who doesn’t care who she was and imparts many life lessons to her. He becomes the first of three men she becomes obsessed with—that, and his kinky sex games. When he dies in a motorcar accident, Eve starts to spiral, but goes to Egypt to heal because some of her best years with Lord Marlowe were spent there exploring Egyptology and sex. Her second obsession is with a mysterious French-Egyptian, Ramzi, who gifts her with a perfume that he swears will save her from mortal danger. When her obsession with him is quenched by the flames of Ramzi's obsession with her, Chuck is there to pick up the pieces until he is betrayed.

From the very first page, I was hooked, almost as if by some illicit drug, on Eve’s obsessive need for sex; the kinkier for her, the better. And it is, unfortunately, Eve’s drug-induced spiraling that kept hitting me like a cold, wet cloth to my face. I’d be riding a sexual high, or be all caught up in the intrigue of Eve’s adventures, or speculating about the veracity of Ramzi’s claims that the perfume could grant Eve immortality, when she’d go off on a cocaine binge and totally lose me. The rampant drug use did not really endear her to me, or motivate me to support her cause in trying to find and help Chuck. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to pity her and look at her redeeming qualities. In the end, her childlike need for love that is replaced with her obsessions, was something I understood and this humanity kept me following her. I was greatly heartened when, after several rock-bottom experiences, the realities of war finally shake her to her core and give her the reason to turn her life around. I truly felt her pain as she withdrew from the claws of the drug and rejoiced in her ultimate success.

Beyond the sex and drug themes of CLEOPATRA'S PERFUME, Bacarr truly takes us back in time to a place where personal difficulties were made trivial by the atrocities going on around the people who carefully buried their heads in the sand. Her ability to detail a scene is evidenced by my near-constant need for a glass of ice water to combat the swirling sands of Egypt, the sexual heat of Eve and her paramours, and the choking heat of the bombs flattening buildings in London during the Blitz. There are a number of spots that I felt I had to read with my fingers half covering my eyes, hiding them from the horrors before me; but it is, in the end, a very redemptive story. Readers who like being informed while being entertained will enjoy this story immensely.

Susan Barton