Title: Between The Sheets Volume(s): 1 Creator(s): Erica Sakurazawa Format: Unflipped; Right-to-Left Publisher: Tokyopop MSRP: $9.95 Genre(s): Romance Rated: Mature (18+)   Buy From Amazon.com: Coming Soon Buy From Right Stuf International: Coming Soon

CONSUMER ADVICE

Parents would do well to keep their kids away from this book, as there are many scene's of explicit sex which earns this book its much deserved Mature rating. People who are looking for a good romance book will have to look elsewhere, as there is pratically no romance in this book at all. Fans of Erica Sakurazawa might be a little disapointed in this book as it fails to give the readers any reason to care about the characters or where the story is going.

When I first read one of Erica Sakurazawa's books, I must admit that I was pretty impressed with what I had just read. The story "Angel" was a simple, sweet, emotional, and sometimes very moving story about a bunch of people who's lives are "touched by an angel" (sorry about the bad pun). I don't think it will ever win any major awards, but I did give the book a B+ rating, and it would have been an A- had the artwork been a little better, but overall it was a good book. When I got around to picking up another book by Erica I had two choices (at the time as these were the only books of hers at the store): "Angel's Nest" and "Between The Sheets." I decided that I needed to take a break from the angels so I picked up "Between The Sheets." Oh boy. Man, I can honestly say that I had NO CLUE about what I was getting into when I bought THIS book!!! The story begins with the two protagonists of the story -Minako and Saki- in a bar. They are doing what all single college girls like to do on Saturday nights; have fun, drink a lot, and meet cute guys. Okay, so that last part isn't true, because when one guy shows up to hit on the girls Saki (the blond one) tells the guy that she and Minako are a couple, and they prove their case by sharing a passionate kiss together.

Back at their apartment we find out the "passionate" kiss they shared wasn't real, it was just some gag to get a drunk to leave them alone. While they are joking about their performance Minako secretly wishes that the kiss had been real, and that she and Saki were a real couple. As the audience can clearly see Minako has developed strong feelings for her best friend, however there are two obstacles that are standing between Minako and Saki becoming a couple:

1. Saki is currently going out with her on-again-off-again boyfriend Ken.

2. Saki is not a lesbian, and has no plans of becoming one anytime soon.

So yeah, Saki and Ken are dating, and this makes Minako hate Ken because he's getting in the way of her quality time with Saki. However one night when Saki leaves Ken and Minako alone in their appartment, Ken makes a move on Minako, and before you know it the two are in the sack getting it on. This scene is SUPPOSED to suggest that Ken is a dirty cheating scumbag who sleeps around with every other girl whenever he gets the chance (which is true), but this scene turned me off because it made Minako look weak and stupid (and quite honestly, SHE didn't seem to be any less dirty then Ken was at this point)! I mean if Minako hates Ken's guts so much then why didn't tell Ken to get out of the apartment, or to back off, or something? Does Minako offer any kind of resistance? Nope. She just plays along with the whole thing as if this is the kind of thing she is supposed to be doing. After this happens nothing is ever said about the event until MUCH later on in the book, and it's kind of funny that this one scene represents what this book is REALLY about: Unlikable people having sex with unlikable people! Seriously folks, for something that claims to be about bold new relationships you'd have to have the bar for what you'd consider to be a bold relationship pretty darn low to find any sort of bold relationship here, as the "bold relationships" in this book don't feel like real relationships but rather long dates.

In fact, I can honestly say that you won't find ANY relationships in this book...period! I say this because the people in this particular book think that a relationship is getting knocked up by your friends boyfriend/girlfriend. Seriously. The whole book will feature Saki having sex with Ken and other various boyfriends, Ken having sex with Minako, Minako having sex with Saki's old boyfriends, and on and on...seriously folks, these people have sex with so much people I can't help but wonder how everyone avoided getting someone pregnant (not that I was paying too much attention, but no one APPEARED to be using a condom)! But is there development on Saki and Minako's relationship? Kind of. What this book considers to be a good relationship worth caring about is when two people start to hate each other more and more. See, the focus early on in the book seemed to be about how Minako feel in love with her life long friend, however the older the two get, the more they grow apart. Saki particularly becomes quite a slut, having a new boyfriend every new week, drinking and having wild sex galore, and treating her best friend Minako like dirt. Wanna know what the sad thing about this is? The sad thing about this is that the more bitchy Saki becomes, and the more Saki distances herself from Minako, the more Minako loves her!!!

Excuse me?! Maybe this is just me being ignorant, but don't you usually start to love a person less when they become someone you cannot stand anymore? But seriously, I honestly don't think that what Minako was feeling was love for Saki, I believe that she was simply afraid of losing her childhood friend. I wish I could say that because of this we care for Minako, the problem is we don't because Minako is no more of a likable character then Saki is. Saki may be a rude selfish witch, but Minako is just freaking creepy! She's always thinking about her dear Saki, saying that no one knows her better then she does (which doesn't help the audience much since she never lets us in on anything she knows about Saki), and at one point she has sex with one of Saki's old boyfriends because in her mind if she has sex with someone that Saki had sex with, then maybe some of Saki's love will rub off on her. I'm sorry, but with thinking like that it sounds like Minako should REALLY be in a mental hospital, or at the very least she should be popping some pills (if she hadn't started already)! And then we need to talk about the sex. In my humble and honest opinion I can't for the life of me figure out why Erica Sakurazawa had to shove the sex in our faces.

I personally do not care to see every character's butt, I don't want to see these people wearing shirts but no pants (*_*?), and I certainly don't need to see what everyone's doing in bed every five pages. One sex scene or two is fine by me if the sex scene's would contribute to the story, however these sex scene's do not. What Erica does it take sex and she completely bombards the audience with it! Not only does the sex actually look unattractive, but it adds absolutely nothing to the story, which is very strange since this book could've USED more story! Instead of giving us a compelling story and characters to like we're given a COMPLETELY unlikable cast with a bunch of sex, which I'm actually going to expect was included to distract the readers from realizing that the story is severely flawed in more ways then one! In short, there was NO reason for this book to have had as much sex and nudity as it ended up having! Okay, now let's get back on the topic of what this book is SUPPOSED to be about! The quote on the back of the book proudly claims that this book introduces "a new type of relationship for girls." Again, I'm not sure what the back of the book means by "a new type" of relationship for girls, but if they are referring to the fact that these two girls have no relationship at all then the quote didn't lie.

I wasn't a very big fan of the artwork in Erica's other book "Angel," but it was ten times better then the artwork in this book. The character's are constantly off model, there is very little detail in the locations that these people hang out at, and the squiggly lines started to make me think of Squiggle Vision, which is a squiggle technique used in shows like "Home Movies." Trust me, that's NOT a compliment! So while the art was a little lacking in "Angel" I can honestly say the artwork in this book is absolutely horrid. In fact, the sad fact of the matter is that I couldn't find one single thing to like about this book. This book is truly a train wreck, and Erica Sakurazawa should be forced to apologize to everyone for writing it! This is only my second Erica Sakurazawa book I've read, but my opinion of her works so far is truly a mixed bag. How could I go from loving her last book to despising this one? I'm not sure, however I can say that "Between The Sheets" is a waste of your money and time. If you want to read pornography there are much better and cheaper sources to get it then here. The story, characters, and everything else about this book is just plain awful, and while I haven't read a good amount of Erica's books yet, I do have a feeling that even hard-core Erica Sakurazawa fans will have a hard time defending this one.