Cancelled by Jessie Ash (#genderswap #transformation)

Cancelled opens with an interesting premise - Danny is a struggling actor, auditioning for a new "vampire millennial drama," who is offered a role . . . but not quite the one he expected. The producers think he would be perfect for the lesbian love interest, and they just happen to have a temporary sex-change operation available to make it happen.

On the one hand, it seems like an extreme measure just to cast a TV show but, on the other hand, the simplicity of the operation makes it a reasonable solution. Jessie Ash incorporates some interesting details on how the surgery works, and there is a great scene of Danny getting a first look at his new self, but this is romance, not erotica, so the scenes of self-exploration some readers might expect are absent.

As much as I enjoyed the story, I do wish Jessie had taken the time to expand upon it and flesh it out. Too many scenes feel like snippets of a story, as if they were drawn from the outline of a much longer novel. Depending on your reading tastes, that may not be an issue - there is clearly an appetite for easily digestible shorts, which this delivers - but I would have liked to see more detail, some narrative bridges between scenes, and more character development.

While Cancelled is not her best, it is still a fun read from Jessie Ash. I was left with a few lingering questions, but the twist was an interesting one, and the way she followed up on it is quite clever and socially-conscious.

Jessie Ash is an avid fan of scifi romance/gender transformation fiction. Her passion is taking ordinary characters and thrusting them into a world of steamy seduction as well as chatting it up with her readers. She's also a sick and twisted soul—just saying.

@Ms_JessieAsh

Reviewed by Sally