A Nix Erotica Review – The Space Between Us by Megan Hart (4.5 Stars)

Telsa is a woman who doesn’t like to define herself. She happily floats through life, avoiding labels and doing whatever takes her fancy. Whilst working at her day job at the coffee shop, she meets the vivacious Meredith. Meredith is fascinated by the customer’s stories, getting them all, including Telsa, to confess their sins. Telsa is attracted to her vitality and it isn’t long before she is looking forward to her shifts on the off chance that she is there.

One day, Meredith makes her an offer that takes her aback; she can finally have her wicked way, but she comes as a package deal with her husband Charlie.  The fact that he’s a man doesn’t faze Telsa (a woman who defines herself as sexually fluid) but the fact that she would be the third piece in an all ready existing, and happy, puzzle does. Of course, this all becomes null when they have their first “date” and sparks ignite between them all.

The three of them fall into a comfortable routine, one in which they take their pleasures and exist as a happy triumvate. But this isn’t a ménage that was set up as a ménage; Telsa joined an already existing marriage for sex and just happened to stay there.  When boundaries start to get tested, when the reality of the situation starts to become apparent, tensions start to rise. Will this relationship stand the test of time? Or will the decision to spice up the sex life of a very happy marriage be the choice that destroys the happiness of them all?

This is not a romance. This is not a book filled with unicorns and sunshine. This is a book about a ménage set up on a whim and lasting far longer than it was supposed to. It shows the real dilemmas that exist in a relationship such as this. From questions about relationship to broaching the topic of their unorthodox relationship to loved ones, this book covers it all and I loved the realism of the situation. Yes, this means that the highly romanticised view of ménage is not present in this book. The sex is hot; the other bits of the relationship are fraught with tension.

It took me a while to get into this book. Written in first person, it’s quite difficult to relate to a character such as Telsa. She is a woman who seems to have absolutely no foresight skills and seems to get herself into situations because of her impulsivity. Her living situation drove me batty. She lives with the man who she had her first sexual experience with who is also the undercover cop who was sent into the religious compound where she grew up to investigate them for drugs. Oh yeah, and he’s married with two kids now. Head explodingly weird. Aside from that she is a very flighty character but I did like her. There are some scenes  from Telsa’s past told throughout the tale in the form of flashbacks. They gave me a massive clue towards where this book was going and I really enjoyed them and her. Then she meets Meredith.

Meredith is a woman who I never got. She was so concerned with making her life “wild”, I didn’t really think we ever really saw the real her. She wanted everyone else’s wild stories, wanted Telsa in her marital bed, took them to strip clubs…. she never had an off switch which just showed how fake it all was. She also wanted the wildness, but didn’t want the ramifications on their relationship. She went mad at Telsa when she invited her brother to the house where they had invited her to live, wouldn’t take her anywhere as a three and didn’t want to actually touch Telsa during sex, even though she was perfectly aware that Tulsa’s attraction to her was the only reason she agreed to the situation. I didn’t like her. By the middle of the book I actively detested her and by the end of the book I flat out hated her and her blasé attitude towards others feelings in the pursuit of her own pleasure. 

As for them as a three? The sex really worked (even with the obvious reluctance of Meredith to touch Telsa at first) but the rest of the relationship was a hot mess that didn’t work at all for me.  I liked Telsa and Charlie together and liked Meredith and Charlie together, but I wasn’t sure how the hell they were going to work.  I haven’t mentioned Charlie as an individual character because he wasn’t introduced as an individual character; he was simply part of the relationship but I really enjoyed every scene he was in.