The Four Leaf was a short romance book, that took a deep dive into BDSM and primal play. 

I found this book and downloaded on a whim because I liked the cover art, and I saw it was getting good reviews, and I love smutty romance books.  While I was reading it I was kind of disappointed at how short it was (and it is very short), but I was not overall disappointed with the story.

Adrian and Sam have been friends for what feels like forever.  The problem is, Sam wants more than friendship, but was friend zoned many years ago.  However, when Adrian stops into The Four Leaf and offers to fix a sink, something shifts.  (Yes, I am aware this sounds like the plot of a porno.)

This book does well in shifting the relationship between Adrian and Sam from friendship to intimate relationship.  However, as this book is only 106 pages long, this shift happens incredibly fast.  What kind of concerned me, was the dive into BDSM and Primal Play.  Hopefully everyone reading this book is an adult, and so they know what consent is.  Adrian has been into primal play for a while, but Sam had never experienced it before.  When she expressed interest in it with Adrian, they kind of just leapt into it and let whatever would happen, happen.  As we saw with the Fifty Shades craze, people read stuff like this (or watch a terrible movie) and end up wanting to act it out and participate in it without any real research.  I can tell from reading this that the author at least took the time to really look into this and see what primal play was, insisted on writing about safe words, and made sure to stress consent, but it doesn’t stop that little bit of concern in the back of mind that some people are just plain stupid.

Overall – I did really like this book, and I liked that the sex in this book was not your normal romance book.  It was a relationship built on friendship, trust, and mutual desires that everyone was willing to consensually explore.    

Plot – 8/10

Characters – 8/10

Originality –  8/10

General Joy of Reading – 8/10

Overall Score – 32/40

The Four Leaf (A Holinight Novella) by Lee Jacquot

Cost* – $2.99 for Kindle, $12.99 paperback.  This book is included with Kindle Unlimited

*Cost is based upon what the book cost when book review is published