Reviewed:
"No. Don't say it now. It's easy to say now. Wait for another time, when it may be really hard to say, because then you'll say it only when you're really, really sure."
In erotica, when one half of a teen couple is about to say those three little words for the first time to the other half, and is headed off by a warning like the one above, well . . . you don't need a flashing red neon sign to know that something extreme is in the offing.
Particularly if one is reading a story in the "Naked in School" universe . . .
That's the tricky path on which the author, peregrinf, sets himself in "Beth Naked in School." Can he bring about a resolution that works both in the extreme and as a satisfying tale of young love? Will the one half of the couple accept the other's "experiences," and if so, will the reader buy it? Will it still be a romance, when all is said and done?
And the good news is that peregrinf treads that path well, and provides a story that's both romantic and sexually stimulating, and as reasonably realistic as a format like "NIS" will allow.
The titular character, Beth Finch, is familiar with her school's program. She's seen her boyfriend, Carl Walker, experience it ("Carl Naked in School") and then got to tell that story from her point of view ("Carl Naked in School - Beth's Story"). But now her number has come up, and she finds that experiencing both the terror and titillation of having her own body exposed to the rest of the school body is something different than looking in from the outside.
Peregrinf's NIS series ("Beth" is the third of six as of this writing) develops the format of "The Program" so that it's more than a justification to write stories about horny youths groping and probing naked classmates, who learn the pleasures of supreme mortification, under the auspices of a government-approved program. There's still a good bit of that in "Beth;" when she vacillates between being an enthusiastic participant and being traumatized by the goings on, it often feels peregrinf is serving the plot more than the character.
But the payoff is worth it, and the author successfully tells a romantic story that dovetails well with the tale of a shy girl who sheds her inhibitions and grows stronger as a person for doing so. To say that the plot rolls to an explosive conclusion is putting it mildly.
Although it's not mandatory to read "Carl" and "Carl - Beth's story" before reading "Beth Naked in School," the reading experience is much more enjoyable if you start from the beginning. And that will also put you in the mood for digging into peregrinf's subsequent NIS stories starring Carl's sister, Dee, in which the author fully plumbs the possibilities of writing in this kind of fantasy scenario.