Review Tuesday: Heaven's Brides by Jessica Mandella -- #LGBTQ #spirituality #ReviewTuesday

Heaven’s Brides by Jessica Mandella

Excessica, 2017

When popular TV pastor Max Johnson discovers his wife Gloria has a female lover, he is simultaneously shocked, hurt and aroused. He can’t help following her to the club where she’s meeting her paramour Sylvia. Then someone slips him some bad drugs and he ends up dead—at least temporarily.

The epiphany he experiences on the other side of the veil changes him forever. Brought back to life, perhaps by his wife’s uncanny powers, he dumps his old sponsors who encouraged him to preach anti-sex, anti-gay, fire-and-brimstone lessons, hires a dyke motorcycle gang to provide security, dons a rainbow-colored suit, and gives his flock an eye-opening sermon claiming the Bible has been misinterpreted and mistranslated. According to the wisdom he received during his temporary stint in the afterlife, God does not condemn sex, including LGBTQ sex. Nor does the Bible prohibit plural marriage. All believers are free to become brides of heaven, loving one another (including in the most carnal ways imaginable) as long as they do so in a spirit of worship, respect and mutual pleasure.

Max, Gloria, their new wife Sylvia, the motorcycle gang members, and various parishioners then proceed to practice what he has preached.

Heaven’s Brides by Jessica Mandella is a wild, gender-bending, funny, touching, over-the-top book that is totally original in its mingling of extreme sex and sincere spirituality. The bewilderingly large cast of characters all have a role to play in revealing the Truth about humans, angels, demons and nature of reality. In Ms. Mandella’s universe, spiritual power is more than just a phrase. As Max, Gloria, Sylvia and their fellow “brides” develop and grow, their supernatural abilities (including telepathy, telekinesis and the ability to manipulate the flow of time) grow also.

For those of you looking for erotic content, this novel includes so many sex scenes you’ll be gasping for breath. Telepathic orgasms have an intensity that ordinary climaxes can’t match. There’s lots of lesbian activity, but plenty of hetero interactions as well. One message I took away was that the genitals really don’t matter. The best sex is a meeting of kindred spirits.

You can read Heaven’s Brides purely as erotica. What I enjoyed most, though, was the warmth and tolerance that glow on every page. If everyone lived like Max and his brides, the world would be a far better, happier and more humane place.