ARC provided by the publisher, IBPA, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 
 OK... so The Red is definitely for a niche audience. I really didn't know what I was about to get into when I started reading this. I thought it was going to be normal smutty romance set against the backdrop of the art world. Instead, I got just erotica, no romance, and a strange paranormal element that didn't really make sense. I'm not 100% sure what this story was trying to be. Was it a contemporary romance? Was it a paranormal romance? Was it just plain old smut? After reading this, my best summation of the genre I could discern was "fantasy erotica." 
 The Red is actually the story of a woman becoming a prostitute... albeit a classy one. Mona is a broke 25 year old art gallery owner. It was her mother's dying wish that she keep the gallery open. However, she's dead broke and there just isn't any way for her to keep the gallery. Enter Malcolm, a handsome stranger who offers to help her out of her predicament by giving her rare art in exchange for one night a month. During said night he basically has carte blanche with her body. What follows is a series of sexual encounters based on famous paintings. There is always a dream like element to the scenarios and the events that occur could not happen in real life. This is where the paranormal elements comes in full of deals with the devil and elaborate fantasy sequences. 
 I'll just put this plainly: The Red was incredibly filthy. Like... I did not expect there to be the level of smut that existed here. I don't want to give away any spoilers but I also think there should be some fair warning involved before people dive into this. So if you want to know some of the filthiest bits, check out the: (view spoiler)[. So in the first sex scene Malcom fucks Mona with a glass water bottle. Things only get progressively dirtier from there; there are also orgies, fisting, breast feeding, and a threesome with questionable participants. In the threesome, Malcolm and his grandson, Spencer, both fuck Mona simultaneously. I mean technically they weren't fucking each other but still... their balls must have been touching. It just felt pretty weird for me. (hide spoiler)] A non-spoilery way to describe the smut in The Red is to say that Mona is penetrated by a multitude of people and objects. 
 Overall, I was a bit put off by the smut in The Red. Personally, I felt like it was over the top filthy. As I was reading most of the dialogue I could swear I could hear a twangy porn track playing in the backdrop. I guess I could say this was the fanciest porno I've ever read. Perhaps this just isn't the book for me.