Review: Nothing Ventured by Salome Verdad

Nothing Ventured: A twisted tale of high tech and high heels. Well, I got the twisted bit, and the high heels (boots actually, which aren't quite the same thing), but I missed out on the high tech and the ventured reference was also a bit lost. How to describe this book better than the title does is actually quite difficult - the sheer amount of WTF is almost overwhelming.

The story starts with Amanda drugging and date raping Ed - she insists on him licking her boots, threatens him that she will make sure the venture capital company she works for doesn't fund his tech start up (I think that's the ref in the title, but since it's really beside the point of the story, I was never clear what the significance of it was) and then has sex with him all night (literally). He is enamored of her and tries to contact her - she ignores him. Then she calls him and meets him to a lesbian bar - to keep her options open. She tells him that she drugged him with GHB. She also gave him viagra, though she doesn't tell him this at the time. And after a token protest he forgives her, takes her back to his place and lets her tie him up. This is all by chapter 2.

Really. It's normally heroines that I critisize for being TSTL, but what a dumb ass he is. Amanda has shown herself to be totally untrustworthy, is a self confessed psychopath and has just humiliated him by flirting with other women when she came to meet him. Also SHE DRUGGED HIM. So, I have two essential problems with this set up. 1) Her drugging him is totally unacceptable. 2) The way that she thinks she needs to train him to like being submissive by drugging him suggests that a man wouldn't 'normally' be receptive to it. This is just utter balderdash and only serves to make submissive men feel that they are wrong/not normal/blah. Grrrrrr.

So, one of the other big problems for me was the portrayal of lesbians in this story. Or dykes as Verdad so charmingly (and derogatorily) puts it. They're portrayed as unpleasant, perverted and evil. Amanda has a whole back-story about how she was put upon by the lesbian girls at public boarding school and this is why she's wants bad kinky sex now. The subtext is that if those girls had just had some boys to give them cock, they wouldn't have become lesbians, wouldn't have started with all that bad kinky stuff and wouldn't have driven Amanda to do utterly stupid things like drug men because she wants to be a top, but can't with her lesbian girlfriend. Using marginalized groups (gays, transvestites, kinky, etc.) is a really offensive way of creating villains imo.

So Amanda regularly thinks about her ex when having sex with Ed. When topping, she's thinking about wanting to bottom. I'm confused about why she's so hung up on her ex girlfriend. She also says that she only enjoys things when the man is unwilling, being forced. But.... how does she know if she's so inexperienced? She goes on and on about having succeeded as a top (now that she has Ed), and proven her lesbian ex wrong, and put to rest her demons. At the same time, she's supposed to have had four boyfriends who passed her licking her boots test, and numerous other men who she drugged and who didn't pass. And apparently she's gorgeous, so you wouldn't think she'd lack play mates if she wanted them. So frankly, I'm confused as to how she's such an inexperienced top. It just didn't hang together.

The biggest problem with the writing (as opposed to the plot) was that it was all tell not show. We're told that Ed makes Amanda laugh. We never see it. He doesn't make one witty comment in the whole novella. We're told that Amanda flirts with other women, but we never are shown what she does or how Ed notices and what it makes them feel. We're told that they have a great time together, but we never see them do anything but have negotiations about what sex to have. Because of this, as a reader it's difficult to believe in any of it and still harder to care. Just saying 'and then they had great sex' does not make it sexy experience for the reader.

The switching between first and third person voice wound me up as well. There was frequently "she thought" and then several sentences of first person (not italicized) which made me slightly pov sick (like sea sick, you know?).

Now, I know I was going to go cold turkey on spoilers, but I think that this merits them. Apologies. Look away now if you don't want to know.

***Spoilers***
Near the end of the story one of Amanda's lesbian ex dommes, along with a whole load of lesbian friends, kidnap Amanda to make a snuff porn film of her and Ed. An academic researcher (also a lesbian, in tweed and glasses) steps over the barrier from researching snuff porn to wanting to make it and her lesbian friends agree to help and be in the film. (Really? Really?) Also, why would you film yourself killing someone then put it on the internet? Wouldn't that make you rather easy to identify? Perhaps the implication is that lesbians are like - yay prison!

Amanda is kidnapped on camera (sort of - skype anyhow) while Ed watches from Vegas (don't ask). Shona also steals the key to his chastity device, says that she'll give it back to him if he comes to see her and that she will hurt Amanda if he doesn't agree. So instead of going and buying some bolt cutters, taking off his chastity device (that he is supposedly so annoyed about), and going to the police, what do you think Ed does? Oh yes, he decides that without any plan, any backup or any ability to look after himself, he's going to go and rescue Amanda. (Face palm.) I think it's that he turns up still in the chastity device that really gets me. FFS, a chastity device is about trust, it's not actually that difficult to get out of if you don't care about breaking the lock. This whole situation isn't helped by the fact that while Ed is away, he is suddenly fantasizing about dominating women - any women, not just Amanda, though her too. And obviously we've heard earlier that Amanda isn't a twue domme, because she still wants to bottom, thinks topping is too hard work and is thinking about Shona constantly.

Anyhow, Ed goes and is asked if he will hurt and rape Amanda for this film (he isn't told it's a snuff film at this point). Despite him having fantasized about topping and fucking Amanda, he virtuously refuses. (I wish these characters would decide what the hell they want.) So the evil lesbians overpower him and torture him with a cattle prod. The fluffy kitten lesbian hears about the snuff porn plan and helps Ed and Amanda escape. Before doing so, they somehow conveniently have gasoline and stuff to set the place on fire. Because that's not a dangerous thing to do when you still might get trapped/lost in the building. And arson with people in the building is totally okay if you've been told by a lesbian kitten that they were planning to kill you.

Amanda's old MG is conveniently outside, when they miraculously find their way easily out of the burning building. And Ed somehow knows how to hotwire a car, while Amanda has dissolved into incompetence and tears (she is a woman after all). Ed drives them away and then there is a car and motorbike chase scene, where Ed runs over one of the lesbian bikers - he even considers reversing back over her to make sure she's dead. Give that man an ethical award for remembering that when you're running away, the key is to run away, not stop and try and kill the people who want to kill you (and also film you). Amanda and the fluffy lesbian kitten are away crying and being pathetic somewhere. So Ed saves the day by running over the lesbians, and the book closes with Ed telling Amanda that they can continue to have a relationship, so long as they only have vanilla sex ever again.

So there you go. They're finished with the evil lesbians and promise never to have bad sex ever again. Great message. I found all of this so cartoonish as was totally unbelievable. Bat-shit crazy, and not in a good way.

***End Spoilers***

I'm at a loss to explain how silly I found most of this book. And it wasn't even sexy - all the sexual bits were rather perfunctory. Tab A, slot B. This toy, then that toy, then another toy (literally, Amanda even says "another toy" at one point). And you know, twisted is about it. This novella isn't femdom positive, it isn't female (agency) positive and neither is it kink positive. Given that I don't care for the portrayal of any of the things I love in this book, I can't possibly give it a good grade.

If you like your femdom crazy flavor, then you might enjoy this. Personally, I think there are better mad-cap novellas out there and this one had me blinking in bemusement and rolling my eyes in irritation. Call me old fashioned, but I really do prefer safe sane and consensual. D.


Amazon | Amazon UK

Review: Vampire Meltdown by Storm Savage

You know those heroines who manifest their feisty independence and strength by refusing all reasonable offers of help, running away from safety into dangerous situations, unnecessarily endangering herself and others and chafing against the possessive men she desperately wants to submit to? Yep. Zoe is one of those. Combine this with an incoherent, inconsistent, undeveloped but somehow very convoluted plot and Zoe's possessive Biker Club 'mates' and I'm sure it won't surprise you that I didn't enjoy this much.

We meet Zoe when she's lost her memory and is stripping for a living. She doesn't know her name, have an address, or any money, and she's been on the run for a couple of weeks, but minor issues like that apparently don't matter to strip clubs. (Really? they'd get closed down pretty quickly were that the case. But then, it's about to get more crazy, so I shouldn't be complaining.) She doesn't know what is going on, is having hallucinations, and the reader doesn't know much more than she does. The hallucinations happen is snippets while she's grinding away to the music and everyone is absolutely crazy about her. She's a vampire Mary Sue.

Anyhow, Zoe has two biker club stalkers who are after her mates who are so worried about her, they're hanging around on their bikes, not looking for her in obvious places like her old stomping grounds, which is co-incidentally, where she is. Zoe discovers a mobile phone in her pocket (after like, two weeks?) and calls someone, who alerts Brooker and Rider. She leads them on a bit of dance around different locations, whilst leaving corpses of couple of 'evil' men who look at her wrong for them to clean up so she doesn't get arrested. Zoe acquires a puppy so that we know that she's a nice person.

I didn't notice that this book is Book 7 in a series, and I'm guessing that if you like this sort of thing and have read books 1-6 then the plot would be much more comprehensible. As it was, I never understood what happened to Zoe that caused her to lose her memory. When her memory does begin to come back, it's in awkward 'bits', interspersed with her asking convenient questions to fill in the reader about the other characters (very late in the story). We learn that Rider is a soul healer and Brooker is psychic. And they go about magically healing Zoe.

The problem for me as ever is that the description of this book sounded like it was going to be Zoe kicking ass in the free world, proud and happy as a vampire that kicks patriarchal butt. Actually, although she is 'queen' (small q) of the vampire biker club clan, she's nothing more than a scared figure head. She magically bestows gifts with her special blood, but doesn't actively do anything. Consequently, she's a wet blanket. Why the twin (oh yes, they're twins, forgot to say that) are so keen to get back 'their woman' (I lost count how many times Zoe was 'our woman' or some variant), I just don't know.

Between being completely lost with what was going on with the plot, all the soul healing stuff, the purple prose, the perfect(ly) silly heroine and the absolute good/evil dicotamy, for me, this was a D. That said, clearly for lots of other people the whole biker club vampire thing is like cat nip. This just was much more light and fluffy and Harlequin Presents crossed with bikers and vampires than I was expecting. I was looking for gritty and female power, and I got a girl kitten mewing helplessly and being picked up by a guy with a motorbike.

Review: Cruel to be Kind by Stephanie Vaughan

Cruel to be Kind is a small town America romance novel, in every sense of the concept. If you like books by Susan Elizabeth Philips and other classic 'going back to hometown from the big city' type stories, then this might be for you. If you like your men to drink beer and your women to realize the error of their ways in wanting to live in a city. If you like your men to men and women to be women, and want a hint of F/m, but not anything scary. If that's you, then this review might offend you.

Small town America. Where men are REAL MEN and women are real women. Where gender stereotypes are still alive and well. Being a REAL MAN, for those not initiated into small town America stories, means that you drink beer, drive a truck, act like a dick and though you would happily fuck a woman in the ass, no-one could possibly put anything near your sacred hole, because that would mean that you're not a REAL MAN. Being a real woman means that you are an over-emotional martyr to the idiotic behavior of your man, you make pie and have children, own your own cupcake company (or something equally saccharine) and will happily humiliate and prostrate yourself to the hero in the name of twue love. If you get the impression that this is not my favorite concept, you're absolutely right. This misguided trope is one of the reasons (IMHO) that wonderful submissive men feel inadequate and undervalued and dominant women feel that they aren't going to have their own HEA. I am profoundly offended by it and I wasn't expecting it from this story. I was blindsided by bigoted opinions in Cruel to be Kind, and I'm not happy about it.

Anyhow, the plot. Megan is running her sister's business while the sister is busy have babies, so Megan dropped her whole life and came running. Megan is eying up a good bit of beefcake in a bar while she does the accounts for the business, when Steve (said beefcake) notices and comes over to hassle her ask her out to dinner. There's a pretty hot scene where she orders him to stroke himself through his pockets in the bar. But then, she walks out, ordering him to meet her tomorrow, and it begins to become an oddly paced / spaced series of 'dates' between them, that don't hang together well for me.

One of the issues is that this novella is full of cliches.  Take this exchange: they're in Steve's house. The last thing that was said was Megan saying about liking all sorts of food, then asking Steve if he had help decorating (he did, though nothing is every made of this).

"You mocking my he-man club house?"
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"Good. You'd better not be playing with me. A man doesn't appreciate having his big-screen mocked."
Megan's eyelashes made a slow sweep downward before eyes like bittersweet chocolate flicked him with a sidelong glance. "Oh, I'll play with you, alright..."

Is that seriously what passes for witty banter these days? I'll play with you, alright. It sounds dull and inane to me. I should mention too, that I've added paragraphs when different people are talking to the quote above. No such courtesy was done for me. There are random paragraph splits, often mid sentence. Each time a new person speaks, it is convention to start a new line. This is one cliche not adhered to in this story. Whole conversations are run together in a confusing mess.

Not only is this story packed full of cliches, it's also full of the same phrases. God is mentioned 21 times (usually as an expletive), Jesus 5 times. Fuck - also usually as an expletive, is used 46 times. "So good." or some variant (like "So fucking good!") appears 9 times. It's like the characters can't think of anything to say. 

The story is also full of plot holes. When Steve first meets Megan, she's eating shepherds pie. But then, when he orders food for them, he orders fettuccine, in case she's a vegetarian. Right, Steve. Megan made such an impression on you, that you didn't notice that she was eating shepherds pie - that well known meat-free dish. Or anchovies in the pizza that you ordered the night before. This is either lack of continuity, or Steve is stupidly unobservant.

As another instance of a plot hole, the first night they get frisky together, Megan gives Steve photocopies of her driving license, medical summary and work information. She says that he won't get any of the goods until she sees the same from him. This doesn't make much sense to me, as the most D/s thing she does that night is make Steve hold his hands behind the back of a chair. But okay, she's super conservative about playing by the book and being a responsible dominant. Which is fine, but then this little regulation is promptly forgotten and two weeks later she's letting him have sex with her without a condom (WTF!!). And of course, Steve has a disappointed look in his eye that she's on the pill - he wants to have a baby with a woman he only just met. Of course.

Because this is a small town story, it is full of extraneous detail. The sister makes an unessary cameo. As does an older woman who mentored and dommed Megan (apparently you have to train as a submissive before you can be a dominant - it sounds a bit like graduation).  We are told about Megan cutting up vegetables five times in this novella. Five times - doesn't she have something more interesting to do?! We might as well have been told about her taking out the bins...

***Spoilers***

Anyhow, back to the plot. So everything is going pretty well for Steve and Megan. There is a minor hickup when Megan wants to try some anal play, and Steve vetos it strongly, verbally and physically. Megan backs off, berating herself for taking it too quickly. This is despite him having confessed to fantasizing about poking her back entrance. (Clearly, anal is okay for women, but REAL MEN don't take it up the ass.) Then at work, one of Steve's friends is telling the story of how he intruded on his girlfriend's privacy and looked at her porn films. They included titles such as "Bend Over, Boyfriend" and "Babes Ballin' Boys". The male audience laugh at their friend and the story teller lashes out.

"If anyone's getting fucked up the ass, it ain't gonna be me."
Winking at Rick behind Robert's back, Steve couldn't resist getting in on the ragging. "Well, I don't know there, Robert. Maybe you'd like it. I hear that after you get used to it, it feels pretty good. You know. 'It's only weird the first time'."
"Yeah, I guess if anyone would know it would be you, Steve-o."
"What the fuck's that supposed to mean, Robert?" He wasn't pissed. But his arms unfolded from their formerly relaxed position across his chest. He was just flexing his fingers, that was all. He wasn't going to hit the little cocksucker.
"Nothin' man. Just, if it's got hair like a chick, and tit jewelry like a chick..." The little shit was enjoying himself way too much. The smirk on his face made Steve itch to put his hands around ol' Bobby's greasy little neck and squeeze. "No shame in being a catcher in a world full of pitchers, man."
Rick's face was suddenly in Steve's and his brother was holding him back. ...... [Steve's brother drags him away and Rick says to him: ]
....."Hey, I'm sorry if your bother doesn't like looking in the mirror. I'm just surprised it took him and Manly Megan this long to hook up."

I'm not sure I have the energy to go into the multitude of ways that this whole scene offends me. I will let you puzzle over it yourself. (Feel free to comment.)

The next time he is due to see her, Steve stands Megan up, then blanks and brushes her off when she sees him at the bar. Presumably, Steve is scared that if he hangs out with Manly Megan he won't be a REAL MAN.  But we don't know, because although we are 'in' Steve's head a lot, all he does is lust after and be possessive and jealous over Megan. We don't see why he decides to blank her. We don't see why he changes his mind a week later. He is just a ginger boy with muscles and lust. He has zero personality. Certainly no feelings. (I think having emotions violates a REAL MAN rule anyhow.) 

As Steve tries to rid himself of these unwanted thoughts of Megan, he recalls previous women he'd been intimate with. (How sweet, how coy...). Including the foreign exchange student and older woman who'd helped him lose his virginity in his fourteenth year.. This really horrified me. That's statutory rape. Consensual or not, people (of both sexes) are put in prison for having sex with minors. That's the law. It's not a variable question of morality, it's against the law. The careless way that the author mentions this makes me very angry. I also feel because of the context, that this is supposed to explain why he is submissive. Countless studies have shown that there is no connection between sexual abuse (which is arguably what happened to Steve) and D/s. This insidious connection between statutory rape and D/s is wrong. It devalues the consensual nature of the D/s that the majority practice. I think that it is additionally supposed to imply that Steve is a total REAL MAN because he lost his virginity young. Again, I think this is a damaging and irresponsible thing to suggest. Mentioning casually an illegal activity in the middle of an erotic story is like dropping a nuclear bomb right in the plot and wreaks the same damage.

Steve eventually comes to his senses and is immediately forgiven by Megan. They go off into the sunset, but not before Steve has dommed her. It's tame, but there is an unmistakable shift of power. There's no emotional reason for it that I could see. But then, there's very little reason to any of this story. To be honest, by this point I didn't give a toss about either of the characters, or the story.

***End Spoilers***

I don't even know why this story is called Cruel to be Kind. Megan isn't cruel to Steve. She is distinctly tepid and overtly respectful of his arbitrary boundaries (actually, all she does is give him lots of orgasms). He is emotionally cruel to her, but I don't think that is cruel to be kind either.

TL,DR: Cliched in story, characterization and phrasing, this tepid story of small town America had me rolling my eyes and wishing, like bad sex, that it would be over quickly.

I'm sorry. I didn't like this much. There might have been some hot scenes in this book somewhere, but I was so busy thinking WTF, I couldn't enjoy them. I don't like the gender roles that this story upholds and I think that the only personality characteristic that the hero has is that he is an bigoted asshole. Megan is the least dominant/feisty, dominant woman I have ever read about. The plot is full of inconsistencies, the phrasing is repetitive and the lack of formatting drove me crazy.

I'm going to be genuinely cruel (to the book) to be kind (to potential readers) and give this a D. Maybe even an E. I don't care really. Whichever you like.

Review: Lessons on the Edge by William Gaius

I don't think that I'm the target audience for this book. It's a first person 'memoire style' in the past tense, from the point of view of a submissive man/boy. It's set in the early 1980s and features an 18 year old boy discovering his sexuality with his 37 year old family friend, his 'Aunt'. So if you're a submissive/switch man, in either your early 20s or 50s, who kinks on older women family figures, then maybe you'd like this.

I seem to have ended up with the wrong idea about this book before I read it. I thought that it was going to be about a loving relationship, but although there is insta-love, there's no HFN and it isn't romantic. I thought it was going to be realistic, but the characterisation is inconsistent and some of the things that went on were had me scratching my head. I understood that it was straight femdom, but actually it's a switch story. These expectations have inevitably colored my opinion of the story.

The protagonist, Barry, is college age and is in love/lust/crush with his Mom's friend, his 'Aunt'. When he goes to college, he moves in with RoseAnn and they begin a sexual relationship, with increasingly heavy bdsm and domestic service. Meanwhile, at college, he meets Gloria, a wealthy young woman who is interested in him and is dominant.

The main theme of the book is Barry's sexual awakening, at the hands of an older woman. Essentially, this is one sexy time followed by another in quick succession. RoseAnn demands cunnilingus, denies Barry and manipulates him into doing the domestic chores (naked, of course).

There are several sources of conflict in the book: the age gap between RoseAnn and Barry; Barry's potential relationship with Gloria; RoseAnn's previous relationship with her ex-husband, (who sexually and physically (and perhaps emotionally) abused her); and RoseAnn's position regarding screwing her friend's son. Plenty of emotional conflict then. Some of this is conflict was explored, some not, but none of it rang true to me. 

The emotional story here is confused at best. Barry is immediately in love with RoseAnn and declares as much. She eventually also declares her love, simultaneously tells him that it's impossible because of their age difference, pushes him towards Gloria and tells him that he's just her f-ck toy. It's impossible to get a handle on what any characters' emotions are. Barry is essentially already in love with RoseAnn at the beginning of the book and repeatedly giving her oral sex confirms this. I'm not sure why RoseAnn falls in love with Barry. What Gloria sees in Barry, I have no idea. Apparently he's attractive, but otherwise he seems like a bit of a dork. The relationship with Gloria is set up, but never taken anywhere and consequently, I feel that she's a bit of a non-character.

There's a lack of realism in many of the scenes of this book - primarily due to inconsistencies in characterization. The portrayal of the women veers wildly between quite recognizable and completely alien to me. For instance, Barry is exploring his room in his new flat share with RoseAnn:

My lust got the better of me. I felt like a burglar as I opened a dresser drawer and found some underwear, somewhat the worse for wear. Clearly, this was her old stuff, stored in this spare room.

I don't keep my old underwear, especially not the 'worse for wear' stuff. I don't keep old underwear in the spare room. And I definitely don't keep old underwear in my spare room that's being sub-let by my potential boy-toy. That said, just after reading this passage and wondering WTF, I read this post by DumbDomme, where she's putting old underwear into her spare dresser. Clearly storing old underwear in the spare room is something women do. But seriously, worse for wear? I can't find anything sexy in that.

Another moment left me not just confused, but actually concerned. RoseAnn takes Barry to a sex shop, blushes when she asks for a whip and the shop assistant blushes as well! (Really!???!) But more to the point, Miss Mary at the shop gives RoseAnn a free ball gag with her whip, with this comment to Barry:

“That? It’s a ball gag. It muffles your screams so the neighbors won’t call the police. We recommend that beginners use it until they find the level of pain that’s right for them.” She smiled wickedly at me. “Some free advice for you—a good slave tries his best not to scream. If he truly loves his mistress, he’ll want to challenge her to whip harder and test his limits.”

Me, I think that sounds tantamount to emotional blackmail and dangerous advice for a sex shop to be dishing out. I have a problem with technical errors or misleading statements in fiction, because although I appreciate that it's fiction, I know for myself that I take inspiration from what I read, so I really dislike anything that I feel might have led me to believe that something was safe, which wasn't.

On the other hand, some of the behaviour of RoseAnn as a grown up woman and domme and the confusion of Barry, a young man as ignorant as most young men are, is just inspired. When RoseAnn makes Barry promise not to masturbate and begins the process of tease, denial and domestic servitude, the portrayal of the discussion which leads to Barry becoming RoseAnn's domestic boy was pretty amusing. It really captures something of the assumptions and knowledge differences inherent in an older woman, young man, relationship.

"...I suppose you expect me to do your laundry, too?"
"You’re not?" I made it a joke, although I hadn’t even thought about how my laundry would get done. My folks worked long hours, and we had a housekeeper for the everyday chores.
"No, in fact, I expect you to do mine."

It's fun to see RoseAnn's demands of service and experience against Barry's naive hopes and expectations. RoseAnn's introduction of denial and domestic chores, including washing RoseAnn's "brassiers" and other underwear is unequivocally because she kinks on it. And he finds that he kinks on it too, describing his day for his reader in detail.

“I see that you behaved yourself today.”
“I finished my work and I didn’t masturbate, if that’s what you mean.”
“I know. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be on your knees without being told, doing what you’re doing now. You spent the whole day thinking about me, didn’t you? Thinking about what we might do when I got home?” She touched my cock with her foot, and giggled at my sudden gasp.

*** Spoilers ***
But in many other ways the characterisation of RoseAnn is totally confusing. She repeatedly mentions her ex husband who hit her and forced her to give him blow jobs. Consequently, she hates the taste of semen and tells Barry that she won't let him come in her mouth. She's strongly dominant in the first part of the book, so the WTF when she asks Barry to dominate and rape her is very high. He dominates her again when she comes home in a bad mood and demands sex. He whips her, forces her to suck him off and swallow and she loves it - says that it was just what she needed. I don't understand why Barry does this, because he says that his fantasies are submissive. And when she comes home dominant, how does he know that she needs to be submissive? I don't really get that spontaneous telepathy. Neither is RoseAnn's state of mind any clearer, as the story is first person from Barry's point of view, the reader has no way in to RoseAnn's emotions or thoughts when this switch occurs. It's apropos of nothing.

RoseAnn is an odd combination of extremely confident and clever, and rather, well, weird. The style of RoseAnn's flattery of Barry (saying that he could have any woman he wanted, asking if he'd performed oral sex before because he was so good at it) and the slightly self belittling style of these comments (saying that a woman of her age doesn't get to see a young man naked very often, chastising Barry for not taking the initiative and kissing her when she hints that she wants sexual relations) doesn't sit very well with me. She's disgusted when Barry eats her out when she's on her period:

"Whatever comes from your body is sacred to me."
"Well, that’s generous, but it just about makes me sick to think about it."

The inconsistency of RoseAnn's behaviour continues when she agrees at the end of the book to get together with her boss Steve, who appears mid-story to be an asshole creep who Barry has to help her get rid of. She doesn't like Steve, and says earlier in the book that she's in demand and doesn't need this job. So... I'm confused about the her motivation here. RoseAnn loves Barry remember - but she encourages him to get involved with Gloria, mainly because she's rich I think. The reason RoseAnn gives for this is the age gap - 19 years - between them makes a relationship unfeasible. But she didn't seem to have any qualms about that age gap when she set out to seduce him in chapter one. She also had no worries about the idea of keeping him as her boy-toy for a couple of years earlier in the story. Never mind too that she is friends with Barry's mother - surely that's an unforgivable betrayal of trust? To seduce your friend's son?

Other characters are no more realistic. Barry lets slip to his parents that he's going away for the weekend with their friend and his landlady, RoseAnn. His mother's immediate assumption is that they're sleeping together and immediately checks that they're using protection (they're not). I find both the immediate assumption of a non platonic relationship and her only comment being about protection, totally crazy. Most people that I know would assume that they're just going away together. As friends - you know - like people do in real life rather than erotica. And EVERY mother I know who found out that their friend was sleeping with their son, would go mental. Probably homicidal.

*** End Spoilers ***

I found some of the phrasing a little crude and occasionally rather hackneyed. For example, Barry is in a bar and a man he doesn't know says to him in reference to Gloria:

"You smell of cunt, and I happen to know that she likes nothing better than having her twat licked."

Other class phrases include: "Oh Barry, this is the best ever." , liquid brown eyes, the most beautiful God ever made and the dense black bush between her legs.

Ultimately, the biggest problem for me was that I discovered that I squick terribly on any sort of familial style relationship being mixed up with sex. I'm totally squicked by even faux incest. I thought that since it wasn't a close or blood relation or man, I would be okay with it. Not so much. RoseAnn is 37, but by some of the things that are said in this book, you'd think that she was 50. I know that the taboo is part of the attraction, but when RoseAnn is mistaken for being his mother, it freaked me out a lot. 

TL,DR. This wasn't what I expected and the whole 'Aunt' thing was the antithesis of sexy for me. There are some moments of hotness and there are some nicely observed younger man/older women moments. But ultimately, this book just didn't work for me at all.

Perhaps I could have forgiven the faults if my expectations had been different and it hadn't triggered all my 'yuk' buttons. Or maybe I just needed to be the target audience. For me though, it was a C-.

Review: F-ck my Pussy or Else by Kathy Love

I know, right? The title should have given it away. Blogger won't even let me put in the real title in the post title. Amazon (from which I downloaded, in a moment of madness, this story from) doesn't even sell it anymore, presumably because of the ridiculous title. Or possibly because the story inside is no better.

At 48 kindle locations or about 1k words long, I'm not even sure if this qualifies as a short story. It's going to take me substantially more time to write this review than it took me to read it. I picked it up because, hey, it was free and it looked like it was femdom. And because I quite like the demanding female boss dynamic, and this sounded like it was going to be that. Actually, it's not. It's crap and derogatory, as well as derogatory crap. 

The male protagonist (I don't think he has a name, sorry) is in financial difficulties despite having a very successful accounting job. He is in debt from fucking expensive women and thus doesn't have the money to pay for his mother's breast cancer medical bills. Presumably this otherwise irrelevant information is so that we can see that actually, he has a heart of gold and is good boy, even though he acts like a wanker all the way through the story. Kim, his recently divorced boss, offers to help him out if he becomes her lover. He refuses and instead siphons off money from her bank account. He uses the money to pay off the bills he racked up from the exotic holidays and to pay for his mother's treatment. Kim finds out and screams, threatens to call the police and then reiterates her offer. This time, he accepts. Then comes the most unsexy prelude to a sex scene I think I've ever read:

After dinner, which was prepared by her chef, we went to her bedroom and got undressed. I was going to give it to her hard. I was going to make her cry. Kim took out my cock (the cock that she had wanted for several months and started sucking it. [sic]*

Does she really want the cock of her accountant? The man who has already said no, and who has robbed her blind? TSTL. Who cares if she has a chef? And who cares that they got undressed in the bedroom? If it's going to be sexy, surely the reader wants to know how they got undressed, what they did, how he felt. Not only that, if they'd just gotten undressed, what did she take his cock out of? Does he have a little pouch for it or something?

And seriously, what a twat. She's going to pay all his bills and all he can think is that he's going to make her cry? He should be desperately, humbly, submissively grateful and begging her to make him do anything she wants. He should feel the draw of a strong woman who knows what she wants and is happy to manipulate and pay for a man to be in her thrall. Sucking his cock - sure - that's a position of power in itself - all that tender manly flesh at her mercy to give pleasure or pain as she wishes.... Mmmm...

I digress. Anyhow, there's a similarly perfunctory sex scene where tab A is put into slot B and then that's the end. I could give you more quotes of how stark and un-erotic and unromantic and dull this almost-story is, but I'd be wasting your time and mine.

I am beginning to notice a trend though. If any of the main characters in a story doesn't have a name, it's gunna be really bad.  And seriously, I'm never reading anything with a swear word in the title again.

F

*For the punctuation pedants amongst you people who have a basic respect for punctuation, no, the brackets are never closed.

Review: Serving my Mistress and Her Friends by Denise Smith

There are some books that I don't finish, but there are a lot more that I don't even start, (if you're into acronyms, it would be DNS, to complement DNF).  I decided early on not to post reviews of DNS books on the blog, because I think it would be tedious for all concerned. There are lots of reasons that I don't get past the synopsis or the sample of a book, the two most common being that either the heroine begins to fantasize about being submissive, or the writing is so bad I can't bear it.

For Serving my Mistress, the sample was okay, but really very short, which generally suggests that the whole book is short, so it went into a sort of, meh, maybe of the price came down category, for me. When it was offered free for a short time, I thought 'why not?'.

So it isn't a DNS. And because it was very short, just an estimated 7 pages / 107 kindle locations, it isn't a DNF. It is femdom. And I think that readers would benefit from a review of it. I should review it. The problem is that I don't take pleasure in ripping apart someones hard work. I appreciate the effort that goes into writing and publishing and I don't want to disrespect that. On the other hand, readers put their hard earned money, time and emotional investment into books, and deserve pay off. So if you're likely to be offended by this review, please look away now.

This vignette is written in malesub first person pov and it really suffers from that. Everything is described and there is no dialogue which uses quotes. This makes it really hard work to follow who is saying what, because there is so much, I was told...... This has the secondary consequence of lots of very long paragraphs, which again, are difficult to read. I'm not going to continue listing the grammatical errors of this vignette, because the list would be longer than the piece itself.

Anyhow, the story. The protagonist (he doesn't seem to have a name) is sub to Mistress Laura and is ordered to his Mistress' house to show her friends what an obedient submissive he is. There follows a sort of 'domme off', where the Mistresses seek to outdo each other in front of a male audience. Then the male 'audience' take over and anally and orally rape him. This scene finishes with the other domme admitting that Mistress Laura has more control over her slave - presumably because she allowed the men in the room to take over. (Side note - is that really the sign of a great domme? That her malesub will accept other men taking over from his domme and raping him? WTF?!)

The last third of the vignette describes a separate scene, where the protagonist is again fucked in the ass, this time by and in front of several other male and female doms.

There were some amusing moments - the protagonist almost sneezing come out of his nose made me smile. But basically this was a ten minute stream-of-consciousness describing the protagonist receiving abuse from cardboard cut-out characters. There is no character development at all, no emotion and no relationship between any of the characters, meaningful or otherwise. To be honest, I didn't even find it hot because it was all rather: 'and then he did this, and then I did that'. For me to enjoy a description of degrading acts, I want to know not only what is done, but how the characters feel about it. Not just that it hurts, but how it hurts and how and why that feels good. Suffice to say, I didn't get any of that here.

If the writing had been better, I think I could have dealt with the lack of plot. If the plot and emotion had been stronger, I might have forgiven the awkward writing. If it was longer, I might forgive its current price on Amazon (just over half a dollar a page). I always aim for a balanced review, so I guess I'd better say something that I like about this 'book'. I like the woman on the cover. I also like the fact that Smith is a prolific femdom writer, because let's face it, there aren't very many of those. Unfortunately, though, this story is an F.

Review: His Deep Submission by Kim Acton

If you want a marriage counselor's case study guide to revamping your relationship with femdom, this is for you. If, like me, you want something fun, sexy and well written, this may not be it.

The concept is appealing: Vicki finds out about Mike's femdom porn stash when trying to resurrect their failing marriage, calls him on it and decides to take control. Unfortunately, the author's voice is so loud I can't hear the characters and the whole thing is so... weird. Totally emotionless. I'm not sure I can finish reading it. Each chapter begins with a synopsis - it's like instructions.

1. Get advice from your counselor friend about getting a divorce
2. Explore his porn stash
3. Make him admit he wants to be disciplined
...and on..

(Actually it's 1. Advice from a friend 2. Vicki looks at Mike's Porn 3. Mike admits he wants to be disciplined... etc. all the way to 11. The Envy of friends.)

Even the first sentence sounds like a counseling session:

"It's not unusual for a couple to feel like their marriage has become stale after five or six years."

The story starts with Vicki talking to her friend Carole who patiently draws Vicki out. She says things like:

"Look, it's always a two way street with these things."
"Sit down and talk about what is missing for both of you and what you can do about it."
"Do you know what you want out of your marriage?"

There is also a huge bunch of gender cliches. Vicki's reply to what she wants from her marriage is:

"I want what every woman wants. I want a happy, supportive, stable relationship". 

Ohhhh, so that's what every woman wants. Darn. I guess I didn't get that memo.

Vicki thinks that all Mike wants is more sex and Carole, source of all wisdom, replies, "Guys always say that. They never want less, that's for sure." Vicki is "not always interested" in sex. Porn is Mike's outlet when Vicki isn't receptive and Vicki feels guilty about that. I gave up counting the unfair gender based cliches quite quickly.
Carole advises Vicki to look at Mike's porn - not ask him about it first mind, just to look at it without his permission. (Hello, betrayal of TRUST?) Carole adds:

"If I'm wrong you'll still have the nuclear option of divorce." They laughed.

I'm really not clear how that is funny. Actually, I always understood that divorce is usually messy, upsetting and generally not funny at all. Especially if you're still in love, as Vicki professes to be. Anyhow, we then get some background about Vicki and Mike's socio-economic situation:

"Vicki and Mike lived in a semi-rural area outside the city limits. The homes weren't huge but most of them were on an acre or two of land. It was quiet and there was more privacy than being in a planned neighborhood. With no kids yet - they had both just turned thirty - and two decent incomes they had a comfortable life compared to many people that they knew. Yet with all that, they both felt a lack of fulfillment in their lives."

You know, it's quite impressive to be dull, patronizing and preachy all in one go. Then we get into some sex scenes, featuring phrases such as:

"Her free hand ran up the outside of his shirt and found his left nipple."
"Her orgasm exploded through her and she pulled and twisted Mike's head to sustain the duration."
"Mike screamed out, made a final deep thrust into her and had a long and hard orgasm." 

It's all very, perfunctory.  Then afterwards, they talk about it. For ages. It's very analytical and not at all sexy. A text book question and answer session; it's all tell, not show. The characters say they think this, or that but I can't see any evidence of it. I can't find anything sexy, romantic or emotional in this book. I don't believe in the characters or care about them at all.  To me, this reads like a user manual and is about as entertaining.

DNF