Losing Control is an LGBT novel starring Brianna Anderson, a young woman launching her political career at the expense of all else. She is in a bitter race for a city council seat in a tough, poverty ridden locale. Her rival, the incumbent, has already been tarnished with corruption and will stop at nothing to get dirt on Brianna, who she worries the voters find an attractive prospect. Brianna's love life is where things start to run into complications and they do get pretty complex. Her boyfriend, Frank, has not been faithful to her, and has been seeing a beautiful young woman who is part of Brianna's campaign staff, Yesenia. Brianna finds out he's been cheating on her, and is hurt and upset; even though she herself had been wanting to break things off with Frank. The beginnings of some complicated love triangles, or rectangles, or something!

When Brianna simmers down, she and Frank are able to resume their (platonic) friendship, which is how they had started things off and wanted to remain. Frank is saddened by their break up but realizes things are better this way. He also breaks things off with Yesenia, who was just a fling for him. Yesenia is enraged and vows revenge; a very precarious situation for the unsuspecting Brianna, on the brink of perhaps winning her first political office.

After their break up, both Frank and Brianna come to terms with their sexual inclinations; and each realizes that they desire and long for someone of their own gender. While this comes as a new and pretty shocking realization to Frank; for Brianna it is something she has been trying to supress for a long time. Each of them decides to pursue their natural feelings. For Brianna, this ends up in an affair with the married city treasurer, Pam. Pam, who has been married for years; has been supressing her own lesbian inclinations which has resulted in an unhappy marriage. This affair seems destined for disaster, especially since Yesenia has turned into a spy, albeit an inept one, for Brianna's opposition in the city council race.

Ultimately Pam ends up pregnant after years of infertility and feels compelled to stay with her husband, Eric. Eric becomes unhinged when he finds out about Pam's lesbian affair and for the first time becomes abusive to Pam. He finally accepts, mostly, that the baby is his and is determined to stay with Pam. Pam finally decides she can't handle the marriage any longer and files for divorce. Brianna, who in the meantime has won the election; has been heartbroken at break up with Pam and all the ensuing drama while Pam tried to work things out with her husband. Pam and Brianna decide to give things another try.

The story became interesting and while the writing was not outstanding, it was often good enough. At times, however, it became more disjointed and mediocre. The characters were never fully fleshed out and brought to life so that you could develop empathy for them. The story tended to jump around and some of the storylines which got a good start were seemingly deadended. The end of the novel was very disappointing. It was really just a summary or plotline, and ended up literally just listing what became of some of the key players; much like you'd see at the end of a movie with alot of characters, etc. It seemed like the author suddenly did not to want to write any more of the novel and simply raced to wrap things up, which completely killed the flow of the story and the book. ( )

Cheril N. Clarke, the lesbian novelist/playwright/producer has written a novel, “Losing Control” about human emotions interesting characters and their struggles. The eroticism is present, but takes a backseat to the emotional development of the characters and their relationships, deceptions, secrets, ambitions, heartbreaks, and triumphs.

The writing is clean and fulfilling in its flow from one scene to another while intertwining storylines and their effect on the political spin to Election Day for the main characters Brianna and Pamela. The story line kept my interest until the very last page!

This is my first time reading Ms. Clarke's work, and I will definitely make sure to check out her previous titles, “Intimate Chaos” also a stage play and “Tainted Destiny”. ( )