I Take You is the third book in the Bride Trilogy by Australian author, Nikki Gemmell. Notting Hill wife Constance has known wealthy banker Clifford Carven for nine years, and been married to him for four of those, playing The Good Wife and enjoying his wealth and prestige. Cliff is not a considerate lover, but Connie has never enjoyed a fulfilling sex life, even before Cliff. All that changes when Cliff is injured in a skiing accident, two years after their wedding. His paralysis precludes physical sex between them. To help their relationship, she reveals her deepest desires. And Cliff becomes a voyeur, master, owner, pimp, as emphasised by a certain jewel-encrusted padlock.

Mel Jones is a gardener taking care of the private communal garden attached to their exclusive residential row. Connie finds herself attracted and intrudes into his private space, where the inevitable happens. Will the spoiled wife leave her crippled husband and her indulgent life for her working-class lover? This contemporary Lady Chatterley’s Lover consists of sixty-five (mostly) short chapters, each introduced by quotes from Virginia Woolf. Readers should be prepared for certain concepts that are touched on in this novel like voyeurism and genital mutilation, as well as some fairly explicit descriptions of sex; this is erotica, after all

There is some lovely prose “Yet increasingly she’s finding there’s something … all-calming … about her Sunday morning experiences at the family-crammed church of St Peter’s in its high, shouting ochre on Notting’s hill. It’s an astonishing leak through a veneer of aspirant coolness and moneyed cynicism; a gentle drip, drip, through her restless, caged, unsettled life. Connie feels righted by these assignations, balmed, lit” and “She comes from a country of soft days, soft rain, soft light, where morning quietly clears its throat. Australia’s not like that - it’s a full roar into the day and how she loves the exuberance of that. Through wide windows the garden greenery tosses in the sea breeze like the heads of wild ponies and nature presses close, she can feel the great thumb of it”; however, not enough to redeem a rather ordinary effort.