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Beyond Eden - Kele Moon BEYOND EDEN begins with a bittersweet moment between Paul and Eve as teenagers. Eve goes to New York to study art and Paul stays behind. Through circumstances Eve comes back to Tampa ten years later and meets Danny, her and Paul’s best friend since they were young. From him she hears that Paul is going to get married in six months yet hidden desires, reigniting feelings and their friendship steers Eve, Danny and Paul on to a new path.

It doesn’t happen often that a novel takes me by surprise but Kele Moon with her debut dark erotica romance BEYOND EDEN has managed to do so. In the midst of my paranormal romance reading spree I thought to give myself a breather with a change of genre and was completely awestruck by the intrinsically explored Ménage I found. It features tropes like voyeurism, BDSM & D/s (without safe words) and challenges certain morals that are thought provoking. Kele Moon voices this dark erotica with an evocative writing style which allowed a variety of emotions to thrive and touch my heart with every twist and turn. BEYOND EDEN is a condensed story of three characters, nothing more and nothing less, yet I was completely engrossed with the erotic and romantic development from start to finish!

Let me introduce you to these three incredible characters I got to meet. Eve Everton is an artist; she is flamboyant, chaotic and zealous. She really struck a chord with me in her creativity being so entwined with her personality and passion. She is open-minded enough to deal with the fetishes of herself and her two men yet also has a few fears to give it a realistic edge.

Danny. He is one tough nut to crack. I liked him, I loved him, he irked me, he angered me, and he got a rise out of me, pure and simple. He is the Dominant with a dark sensual magnetism and his self-confidence and actions did not always make him likable. Still, his character development was so incredible done as step by step the layers were peeled of him to reveal his true self. What I found was a man who loved so deeply, so completely, he shot a ‘love me’ arrow straight through my heart.

The last one to complete this threesome is Paul. Paul was like a double-edged sword of pain and pleasure. His situation of being engaged to Trisha and to want to meet the expectations of his father brings a bittersweet and daring element to this story. It wasn’t as simple as black and white or right or wrong, it is a situation that explores the grey areas and it made me reach for tissues various times in the story. He is a fantastic man; caring, charming, sensual but he also has a dark side. This dark side, this need for punishment and pain is catered by Danny and really delves in to their psyche and relationship dynamic. Paul was never weak or weird and all the characteristics of him made him a fascinating man to unravel and get to understand.

There is no real cast of secondary characters save Paul’s fiancée, Trisha and in the end I got to meet Circe, a Domme. There are no secondary storylines, instead all of the two hundred and sixty-three pages are devoted to the romance, eroticism and relationship growing between Eve, Danny and Paul. This created room for the author to carefully and gradually bare the souls of her characters and I could only read with bated breath. Next to the attraction, the fiery and abundant sex-play and the romantic feelings there is also room for anger, angst and jealousy. This is by no means an erotic romance where the playful, lighter side of BDSM is portrayed. Instead BEYOND EDEN encompasses all the sides of love, the strengths and the weaknesses, the good and the bad, the joy and the pain and blends it in to story that kept me mesmerized from page to page.

Mid-story there is an emotion-laden and elaborate erotic scene that was very insightful and allowed Danny, Paul and Eve to connect with each other on multiple levels. The beauty and sexuality Kele Moon captures in her sex scenes would get me all hot and bothered one moment to alternate the next with an unexpected emotional rush. The stark reality of the things impossible gave the growing love between the threesome a sharp edge and at a few times made me wonder what kept Paul from changing his mind. There is so much warring inside each character but with Paul I really wanted to shout; “See what you have, isn’t that worth it all!!?” Of course he had to come to terms in his own time and while the ending wasn’t a surprise it didn’t diminish the profound emotional impact for one second.

The debut by Kele Moon; BEYOND EDEN, is a stunning, poised, intensely sensual story that nourished all I desire from a dark-erotic romance. This author made herself known in the erotica genre with an outstanding debut that any seasoned reader of the genre will be satisfied by!

4.5 stars