"Sunstone, Vol. 1" by Stjepan Sejic

BOOK TITLE: Sunstone, Vol. 1

AUTHOR: Stjepan Sejic

YEAR: 2018

GENRE: Graphic Novel

SUBGENRE: BDSM Erotica

GRADE: A

People generally don’t mind sexualized characters as long as they’re three-dimensional beings and not cardboard cutouts. Lisa and Ally are definitely not in the cardboard cutout category. In addition to being lesbian friends with benefits, they’ve got hobbies, lives, and ambitions of their own. Lisa wants to be a successful author and Ally wants to play videogames and destroy her opponents (button mashing aside). Their biggest flaw as characters is their shyness and awkwardness around each other, which is something we all can relate to at some point or another. They want so badly to become more than just friends, but they tiptoe around the issue so much that it seems impossible. You know what else makes them three-dimensional? They’re good people any reader would want to hang around with. They have funny banter, deep conversations, and they actually know not to exceed each other’s limits when it comes to their adult fun time. Which leads me to my next point about the graphic novel…

The BDSM is portrayed as a healthy relationship dynamic rather than as toxicity masquerading as romance. The author of the Fifty Shades trilogy desperately needs to take notes from this book. Lisa has a safe word (where the Sunstone title comes from), she establishes boundaries (which are respected by Ally), and after the adult fun time is over, they have something called “after care”, which is basically lovey-dovey cuddling to bring the emotional rollercoaster to a halt. Either the author is a BDSM nerd himself or he’s a fantastic researcher. Regardless, he knows exactly what he’s doing when it comes to his craft. I don’t get that sense when I read Fifty Shades of Grey. If you can’t write what you know, then at least put the time in and do your research so that you don’t sound like a doofus when you put words to paper. Yes, I realize I’m a massive hypocrite for saying that considering I’ve been called out for poor research techniques myself, but it’s all part of the learning process. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way. But it appears as though Stjepan Sejic is an expert in what he’s talking about, so I trust him to put together a cohesive story, three-dimensional characters and all.

And of course, if an author is going to write an erotica story, it better be hotter than Hawaiian weather. Thus, we have another thing that the author nails perfectly. It isn’t just that the MC’s are lesbians or that they love BDSM. It’s that despite their awkwardness, they manage to have a good time with each other, to the point where they keep seeing each other despite their shy tendencies. I won’t go into detail how these sex scenes play out for obvious reasons, but rest assured that you won’t forget what you see, and I don’t mean that in a traumatic way. On the contrary, these scenes are very much welcome in the human brain and can stay there for as long as they’d like. It doesn’t come off like a raunchy video you’d find on the darkest parts of the internet. It feels legitimate, which is another indicator that Sejic knows exactly what he’s doing. I like authors who know what they’re doing. It’s so refreshing. Again, take notes, E.L. James!

While characters can be as flawed as the authors want them to be, I couldn’t find a single flaw in the story itself. There was nothing overly offensive or grammatically inept in this book at all. Maybe the only people who would find this offensive are pearl-clutching puritans, but that’s not the target audience and I wouldn’t want to read a story where they are. Everything is healthy, everything is sane, and I walked away from this story in a much better place than before I went into it. This graphic novel gets a perfect five stars out of five. It definitely makes me want to read the rest of the Sunstone series, however many volumes there are.