Review: Telling Tales by Charlotte Stein

Not surprisingly, this is another excellent book by Charlotte Stein. Although it is really just a very slightly different take on a familiar Stein characters, it was thoroughly enjoyable.

Four old friends spend a month doing up a house - a spurious excuse to get them together for sexy times. Allie (first person narrator) has had a crush on Wade (compulsory dickhead) ever since College. Her friend Kitty is a good time girl, up for anything. Then there is Cameron, gorgeous repressed, submissive Cam, who has been in love with Allie for as long as Allie has been with Wade.

The revealing of all these secrets is through the telling and reading of deliciously filthy stories. Allie quickly realises that Wade is not for her and that Cameron is willing, eager, to do absolutely everything that Allie wants. It's total wish fulfilment. And utterly hot.

Obviously with four characters stuck in a big empty house, there is plenty of combinations. But the story sticks closely to Allie and Cameron, and the other two (especially Kitty, who isn't really much of a character in and of herself) are just there as a foil to Allie and Cameron. To be the other characters in their stories (sort of meta - stories in stories).

I love that Allie revels in her new found power. The things that Cameron wants - a sort of cuckolding, for him to be the slave, to be her and Kitty's toything, for her to take control,  - they turn her on. And frankly, most of it turns me on too. It skirts near M/f crappiness, but somehow it all seems like part of the relationship between Cam and Allie.

Anyhow, I sincerely enjoyed this. I give it a B+.

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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.


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Review: Red Grow the Roses by Janine Ashbless

I think I promised this review back in January. Sorry about the delay. Bad reviewer. Very bad reviewer. <Guilt /> One of the reasons for both the delay and the description of this book as "epic" is the impressive list of kink that it caters to. It think I counted: femdom; fighting; vampire biting; multi-partner M/M/f,  M/f/f/f/f/f, M/M/m/f; a cougar (sort of); humiliation (f); anal (m and f); forced seduction; bondage; rape (or possibly dubious consent); slavery (f); blood; corporeal punishment; torture of the not all that sexual type; torture of the sexual type. And a dual theme of power and roses. That might be it. But I can't guarantee that I haven't forgotten something that might squick you. (Though presumably you don't squick on roses....)

I'm always a bit wary of things that try to do too much (in both life and books) and thus other things have risen in the TBR pile, which to be honest, hasn't been well attended to anyhow (hence the lack of reviews recently.)

The way that Red Grow the Roses deals with the plethora of subject matters is by dealing with each chapter as almost a short story in its own right. Each chapter has a different first person narrator (and I don't think, given the heavy hint about the vampire and blood theme, that it's too much of a spoiler to say that several people, including some first person narrators, end up snuffing it). There are also several (six, one for each vampire I think) extended descriptions from the omnipresent author/god telling the reader about the vampires and where we might encounter them. A sort of intermittent field guide to vampires. If all this sounds a little disjointed, then that's about right. Though I think it is intentional and the threads of the story become intermingled and gradually it becomes (more) clear how everything is connected.

Perhaps you understood this from the long list I began this post with, but this doesn't actually feature a lot of femdom. There are really only two chapters you could tenuously describe as F/m. One ends on a bit of downer by saying that the Domme doesn't really identify with being female anymore. The other is first person from a female character who likes to be in control, but the scenario strips her of any power or agency. (I'm trying not to put in spoilers. I'm really trying.) So as far as femdom goes, this is a total fail. For the femdom aspect, I'd give it a C. It's okay, but it didn't really show femdom in a positive light. I suppose that really it suggested that all power is transient, but the F/m part of this didn't really do it for me. The rest of the book is mainly a combination of male/vampire dominance and women who like being bitten and fucked. Fine, though not my thing. There's some plot, later on in the book, which justifies some of the gore. Some bits are quite sweet: when the alpha vampire submits to having a blow job from his secretary (it's rather more lovely than it sounds). All the humiliation (of a woman) stuff wasn't for me. The male vampires dominating other men for whatever reason was pretty hot, even when it was quite violent. Other parts will turn sensitive stomachs, though its no worse than a standard-ish horror, which mixes up violence, sex, pleasure and pain until you're not sure what is what anymore.

TL;DR: Male vampire perpetrated biting and sex, in all orifices, with varying numbers of partners and degrees of consent. Not femdom. Not really worth getting through all the other stuff for the femdomish bits, unless you like the other stuff.

I don't know if a grade is very meaningful to this. It held my attention and squicked me, but didn't actually stop me reading, which is a testament to the good writing. I was engaged with some of the characters (though sadly not the dominant women, as there's almost nothing about them). It felt like one of those horror films that captures you and you can't look away. I was reluctantly intrigued and aroused. It didn't fill me with fury, like some books have (Ds, Es and Fs, I'm looking at you). So I guess that it's a C-, with a whole stackload of provisos.

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Review: In Her Service by various

Collections of short stories are always a bit hit and miss. In Her Service is no different. Another femdom labelled offering from Mischief books, I picked this up eagerly.

Predictably, Charlotte Stein's story is wonderfully awesome. A pegging story, with romance and anticipation and all the good things that a sexy story should have.

The next story is a switch girl to switch girl story, with feathers and serious stuff like that. I found it rather dull. And yet again, why are the women always switches?

The Perfect Mistress by Monica Belle is an amusing reflection of gender assumptions, those that are prevalent even (? - especially?) in BDSM type communities. David thinks his domme should lose a little weight, be a bit more beautiful and feminine and closer to his fantasy Domme. She is justified in being totally furious and enlists help to teach him the error of his ways. A little predictable, but no worse for that.

A Gift by Willow Sears is not predictable and surprisingly quite good in the same kind of way a horror film is. It does involve brother/sister and non-consent sex, which I squick badly on. But it's well written and funny and the narrator is such an over the top total bitch I found that I enjoyed it despite myself. It does however have that 'domme getting dommed' thing which I feel pretty uncomfortable with.

Chameleon by Lara Lancey is quite interesting, as it has a bit of a twist about who the heroine is. I won't spoil it, but I would say - you wouldn't see many stories where a Dom was like that. Oh no. Men can be normal and dominant, it's only women who have to be nut jobs if they're dominant.

The next story passed in a bit of a blur of nothing specialness, narrated by a forgettable female submissive characters.

The Houseboy by Aishling Morgan is a 'school for naughty boys' type fantasy. Not my thing.

Teasing Timmy by Primula Bond is apparently what happens when two women go and decorate a small cottage in Cornwall. Eye raising but entertaining.

Another 'domme getting what she deserves' type story finishes off the book. I find these really difficult.

So. Overall. I loved Charlotte Stien's story, but the rest was a bit meh. C.


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Review: Still by Ann Mayburn

Concept: A military macho-guy has PTSD has a major crush on the untouchable military Doctor that he worked with in Afghanistan. When they meet again, she tells him that she's into the being the D bit of a D/s and BDSM relationship, but he's not sure. When he hits a particular low, including alcohol and a knife, and being arrested, he gets in touch. A gritty set up, no doubt. Michelle makes it clear that it's her way or nothing and Wyatt agrees. As a premise, this 'strong guy needs to submit to a strong woman' thing actually is one of my favorites (I always think of this pic). Perhaps my excitement and high expectations were a problem in this case, but I couldn't help feeling that this wasn't quite what I signed up for.

An ex-marine, Wyatt's PTSD has escalated back in Texas into alcohol abuse, suicidal tendencies and a lack of doing anything productive in his life. He winds up agreeing to stay with Michelle for a month and to obey her, to see how it turns out. The reader is filled in quite early on about how the two met when in service and generally I'm pretty okay with this book up until the point that they're at Michelle's house and I feel like the big issue of Wyatt's PTSD and possible alcoholism is forgotten in favor of Michelle's poor rich girl 'bad things happened in the past and so she can't trust or love or have sex in the present' story line. This I guess I could deal with, but there were other big problems that I just couldn't ignore in this book.

The first issue for me was that I didn't feel that there was any consistency in the characterization of either of the main characters. I feel like the book starts off with a woman who says that her first and main interest sexually is being a Domme, and a man who has never been involved with BDSM, but who slightly against what he thought was his usual inclinations is turned on by it and likes her enough to give it a go. But it's almost as if there are another set of characters, Jekyll and Hyde style, who keep seeping through. And you can probably guess what they are, right? Yep. It's the TSTL heroine who really wants a man to spank, protect, belittle and tell her what to do. And the alphahole who must take/fuck/possess/own/spank/blah his woman so that he can feel like a real man TM. For instance, the constant refrain in Wyatt's head (much of the book is in his third person pov) is that he wants to fuck her, he wants to spank her, he wants to come. Whenever she's in charge, he's plotting to subvert her. The rest of the time, she lets him take charge. I wouldn't mind this if there was some self reflection on this paradox, but there isn't. I think that the challenge of submitting, for a man who is used to being in charge, is a really interesting problem. But there's no feeling of that tension here, there's just 'I want to fuck her into the ground' and 'oh, when she talks about doing things to me, I get hard'.

Michelle's character is no less malleable. Part of that is that it's too much tell and not enough show. We're told that Michelle has only cried like, three times in the last ten years, but since we see all three of those crying incidents, the show (rather than the tell) of the book has her crying all the time. Now, I know that she needs to be vulnerable (because I'm beginning to understand that vulnerable=feminine and relate-able to many readers, though not me), but I think we could have seen Michelle being strong because she realizes that Wyatt needs her to be strong, and not fall apart over something that happened ten years ago when he needs her. There's more of the same though. Michelle's nickname in the military was the "Ice Queen" and yet, Wyatt describes her as "humble, kind" when she was in the forces. Those are not the sort of qualities that gain a woman the nickname "Ice Queen". This gave me the uneasy feeling of not knowing the characters very well, which makes it difficult. I think that part of the fun of a book is thinking, 'oh, she's going to be pissed when she finds out about that... ' or similar. When a character doesn't react in character, or is inconsistent with their description of themselves, it's disconcerting.

Related to the characterization problem was a stack load of gender crap. Particularly, gender generalizations which are at best annoying and at worst insulting to both genders. Gems like:

One thing she’d learned about men, submissive, Dominant, or just plain vanilla, they liked to be needed. It was hard coded in their DNA to protect and defend.

Can't wait until we find the gene for the need to protect and defend. Do you think they'll find it in dogs too?

"You give a man one good, toe-curling, I-rocked-your-fucking-world blow job and he’ll never leave you."

Damn, all this time I thought that couples stayed together because of mutual love and respect. If only I'd known that all it took was a proper blow job.

"Do you really think any man will truly understand any woman?"

I'm so bored by that discussion. As if same gender couples understand each other any better. Now, just one more eye rolling moment for:

He kept checking the clock, bemused at how he was the one waiting for his woman to come home from work, and not the other way around.

Right, because women who stay at home are just waiting around for their partners to come home. Not cleaning/child care/educating/life maintenance/cooking, or anything like that. It doesn't help that Suki and James, Michelle's BDSM friends, are the cook/housekeeper and the groundsman respectively. They're F/m, in fact, rather more convincingly that Wyatt and Michelle are, but why do they have such gender stereotyped jobs?

The wtfery didn't stop there though. I'm not going to go though it all, but there are all sorts of 'huh?' moments. Scents everywhere, dog and horse sub-plots for no discernible reason, disappearing/reappearing pants, gold allergy questions (seriously, no-one is allergic to gold. It's basically inert.) - I could go on, but I'll spare you all but one rant. Wyatt bites through her pants.

Using his free hand, he held up the soaked crotch of her pants and bit a small hole into the cloth.

What has he got, like razor teeth? We're told that she wears white cotton panties, so I guess it means those, but even so, no-one can bite through cotton. Unless he's a dog or something. Even then, I don't think it's possible. Unless he has razor-vampire teeth. But the next moment he's biting her clit, which given that his teeth are capable of going through fabric, sounds mighty painful to me. She seems to enjoy it, so I guess she's a masochist. Wouldn't she need stitches though?

Talking of which, there's a big deal made out of the Dommes not being sadists in this book.

Michelle giggled, allowing Yuki to draw her away from her dark thoughts. “You are such a sadist.”
“Much to James’ relief, my tastes don’t run in that direction.”

I don't understand this, because I really think that men make such perfect masochists - a big strong man taking pain for/from a woman is so incredibly hot. Men are big and strong and it's a matter of macho pride to take whatever is dished out in a fight/sport etc., why not in bed? And you can't have a masochist without a sadist - they go together. Why is masochism okay, but sadism not? Especially for women, that always seems to be the case. A dominant man who likes to whip his sub is just a dom. A dominant woman who likes to inflict pain is a "man hating, ball crushing".... blah, etc. Similarly, there is a double standard that is alive and well in this book about BDSM training. I've almost never seen a book where a male dom has done submissive training. But as usual, Michelle bottomed as 'training' and refers to the Dom who trained her when she 'messes up' by forgetting to give Wyatt a safe word (he hasn't needed one, doesn't in the whole book actually) and says that her trainer would have whipped her for that. Needless to say, she doesn't whip Wyatt for any of his many transgressions. Wyatt does make an effort to reflect that he was wrong in his initial thoughts, but really...:

His earlier ignorant views about all Dominatrices being man hating, ball crushing, sadistic bitches couldn’t be further from the truth if Michelle and Yuki were any example of what a Mistress was truly like. Everything she did to him, with him, was for their mutual pleasure and never once had he felt abused. If anything he felt cherished in a weird way.

Why is it weird? REALLY?! And lots of subs like a bit of consensual 'abuse.' But then Wyatt has an attitude towards BDSM that I'm not keen on full stop. He calls it "fucked up" or berates himself for being turned on by it. If the (change of) sentiment was part of his character development, I think perhaps a more nuanced exploration of his head might have been helpful - beyond 'that's so kinky - no, yes, next thing'. This is partly I think a consequence of the setting (small town America / Texas), so I think it's a given that the opinions of the characters are a bit closed. It's just not my thing.

Having said all that, in between there are some good bits. Sexy oral sex bits. A nice spanking. Nothing too kinky to be honest. When Michelle is getting her dom on, it's fun. And the initial set up of Michelle and Wyatt was great - I could see how they worked together and why they needed each other. The characters wibbled from about the point that they got to Michelle's ranch, but until then I was enjoying it a lot.

***Small spoilers***
But as the book progressed, I just began to feel constantly uncomfortable - either because I wasn't sure what version of their personalities the characters were going to be or because of the gender and BDSM stereotypes and braindumps. Most of all though, I was deeply troubled that Wyatt's (suspected) alcoholism and PTSD was not being addressed. Especially the alcohol. When the alcohol issue was addressed, I didn't feel that there was much sensitivity about how alcoholism is an illness. Michelle's reactions to Wyatt were very emotive, but then she was portrayed as over-reacting and that she should have trusted Wyatt. I know that a sit-down rational conversation is highly frowned upon in romancelandia, but this really did warrant one. Similarly, I really felt that it takes more than a stroke on the back and a guard dog to deal with PTSD. Clearly the series is going to explore Wyatt's problems more (or I hope it is) and I hope that part (not the whole of course) of that will be how submission can help him, kind of integrate the plots together a bit. Dogs too of course.

At the beginning of the book, Michelle took on the role of Wyatt's carer, but ended up being a bit pathetic and indulging in her own woes. Wyatt signed up to be her submissive but only ever seemed to want to dominate her (and she's not averse to the idea).
***End spoilers***

TL;DR
A brilliant premise, executed in a cookie cutter M/f gender stereotyped way.  Really, a book that takes on so much (PTSD, femdom, BDSM, small-town America) and struggles to tie together the different elements.

It's really admirable that this book is pushing at the boundaries of what is considered erotica/femdom/BDSM. Moving beyond 'femdom is bitches in leather' and towards 'femdom can be just what a strong female character and an alpha male character need' is good. It's progress. But this is part of a vanguard of these sorts of books and so there are inevitable tensions and problems. I think we'll see more like this, hopefully from this author and others, which will get better every time.

C+

Review: For Her Pleasure by Kyoko Church

There is a lot to love about this book. It's difficult to find well done humiliation fantasy and Church makes bold decisions in this book and makes them work. Despite the title though, this is more 'humiliation is a hot game for her amusement' than 'surrender is a gift for her pleasure'.

Colin sees Mistress at a sexual harassment in the workplace meeting (irony applied with a spade, yes?) and she has that psychic knowledge that some Dominant women (in fantasy) have and knows that he's a horny little submissive. Joan wastes no time in having him confess to his most mortifying secret: he's a premature ejaculator. Deliciously embarrassing scene after scene follows. This book doesn't skimp on the humiliation. Joan heaps it on. Knickers, denial (no chastity device though <sad face>), teasing, public revealing acts. All of that, and it's a lot of horny submissive fun. It's written first person from Colin (Sub Peter)'s perspective, which gives the embarrassment quite a nice immediate feeling.

But.... Ah, you knew there was a but coming right? (Puns aside...)  There are a couple of things that didn't work for me, which are the kind of thing that I think some people will find difficult. As ever though, these are spoilers.

***Spoilers***
Colin has a wife, Anne, whom he loves. And although his relationship with Joan doesn't involve penetrative sex, Anne is realistically furious and hurt when she finds out. So... I'm not keen on cheating as a scenario, but plus points for not belittling it and having Anne immediately join in like some sort of Femdom fantasy automaton. The way the story develops from here is interesting, but again doesn't shy away from controversy. Anne teams up with Joan - they both care for Colin and Anne seems genuinely interested in saving their marriage. But when Colin walks in on Joan and Anne, he thinks that they're ganging up against him rather than teaming up for him, so runs off and calls Joan's best friend. He goes over to her place and comes over all 'rah and manly', beginning to fuck her over the sofa. He begins to cry (I suppose that this is supposed to indicate that he really is submissive <rolls eyes>).

Joan is understandably upset, but somehow, Colin seems to be such a wonderful person and submissive, she gives him another chance. So we skip to the epilogue, and Anne and Joan have been successfully team dominating Colin and he's a happy submissive puppy. If only it ended there. For me, this next bit was a WTF moment. All the way through, there have been bits in italics from a female perspective. First it seems as if they are Joan, then Anne. They don't really add much to the story, so I didn't pay much attention to them. In the epilogue, they come to fruition. It's Joan's best friend who is obsessed with Colin and thinks that Joan and Anne are forcing him to be submissive. So she turns up at Joan's with a gun - as you do - to 'free' him. Anyhow, it turns out okay, except that Anne didn't know that Colin had (attempted to have) sex with her, and is pretty pissed. So the book finishes with Joan assuring Colin that Anne will come round. So there's no HFN and I'm not sure he deserves one.
***End spoilers***

So in summary: The plot is eye rollingly silly and not for those who are looking for any integrity in their male submissive. Neither of those things are unique to this story, so I know I sound like a broken record. Apologies. The sexy humiliation is uber fun. So, yeh, overall there's a lot to like in this book. I think it's a B-. That grade that says, there's really good bits. But depending on what presses your 'Oh for fuck sake' buttons, there might also be things that you're not going to like.

Review: Double Take by Rynna Cress

This is the perfect jerk off material for submissive men who fantasise about their lovely neighbour. I don't quite fulfil the criteria to really love this story, but in general, I did enjoy it.

Gabe is in love with Ashley, his neighbor. So when she phones and asks him to pick up her sister from the airport for her, after he stops his heart palpitations, he readily obeys. What she doesn't tell him is that he is picking up her evil twin. Gabe is supposed to be innocent of BDSM, but he takes to Jenna (Ashley's twin) ordering him around rather easily. Gabe's awkward flirting quickly turns into Jenna telling him what to do. The first thing that Jenna does is grab Gabe the balls, and squeeze. As it turns out, Gabe likes this. Though of course, as this is mainly from Gabe's point of view (the story is in third person, but we mainly hang out in Gabe's head), he has to posture about how much it hurts. Jenna proceeds to take all sorts of liberties with Gabe's body.

Gabe is mortified that he is betraying Ashley, as although nothing has happened yet with her, it's Ashley that Gabe really likes - loves maybe. So he is terrified that Ashley will walk into her apartment and find him with Jenna. So it's rather a co-incidence that when Jenna goes to "get changed", Ashley walks in to find Gabe naked, plugged and shooting off all over her floor.

Ashley though gets straight into the spirit of the situation that has been left by her sister

Since this is a novella, only about 30 pages, with plenty of sex and kink, there is obviously not much chance for little things like realism, safewords, or character development. And that's okay. The thing that rather didn't work for me is, as ever, a spoiler.

*** Spoilers ***

In the epilogue, Ashley walks into her kitchen, to find that Jenna has put the dildo into the dishwasher. They joke that they can have him in shifts. The twist is of course, that they really are twins. They joke about sharing and stringing him along, that they are the same. I guess it's a fun sort of ending, imagining poor Gabe being ordered around by these twins. But I'm not keen for several reasons. I'm not a big one for sharing - I like my boy all for myself. Then, I'm not keen on any sort of familial relationship mixed up with sex - it squicks me out. Deception rather ruins the HFN, as although Gabe probably wouldn't give more than a token resistance to the idea, it doesn't feel quite right. Also, I'm not sure that two doms and one sub is a fantastic combination. Too much potential for jealousy and, really - is one sub enough for two women?! It doesn't seem to me to be woman's fantasy, to share a sub with her sister (it certainly isn't mine). It's a man's fantasy, and that's just fine if you're a man.

*** End Spoilers ***

This story has Cress' trademark humor and high sexuality. It's brief and fun, and features moments like this that I like:

“Ass up in the air, darling, and spread those knees…”
Gabe obeyed, his eyes growing wide as his cheek landed against the carpet once more. He felt her hand on the small of his back, pushing it downwards and stretching his backside into a position of maximum vulnerability.
My ass, he realized… she’s going to fuck my ass.

Who can resist such a delightfully obtuse submissive? I can't.

I should add another squick warning. This story includes a sort of golden shower moment, when Jenna forces Gabe to drink her urine straight from the source. This didn't work for me. I couldn't really understand why it was there - Jenna was already pushing his boundaries pretty comprehensively, so I didn't feel it was needed. Was it a punishment? Or a reward? I wasn't really sure what purpose it had. And personally, I think that unsolicited pissing in your sister's living room is a hard limit when it comes to politeness, never mind kink.

Apart from that, it's all rather tongue in cheek and sexy at the same time. So yes, I enjoyed this on balance. It's not the emotional connection between a mistress and her submissive that I really crave, but it was entertaining. For being fun, but not really for me, it's a C+.

Review: Control by Charlotte Stein

I put off buying Control because I was unsure who, if either of the men we meet in the sample, was going to be the HEA hero. The book more or less opens with the heroine being fucked by a potential employee, Andy, over the kitchen table. Gabriel walks in on them and is subsequently employed in Madison's erotic book store. I was concerned that Madison was going to get her HEA as the submissive. There wasn't anything particularly to suggest this - it's just depressingly common in stories that female switches, or even dominants, have to be submissive. My worry was unjustified. I don't think it gives too much away to reveal that quite quickly Madison realizes that tentative submissive virgin Gabriel is the man for her. Andy is a foil to their kinks, to their relationship and to Madison's fear of commitment. He drives the emotional plot and the sex forward and therefore it doesn't feel unnatural for him to be in the story and I don't feel that he poses a risk to the HEA. A nice compromise all in all.

So anyhow, the plot. Madison owns and runs a book store selling erotica, and needs an assistant. The kind of assistance offered by Andy, her first interviewee, is not exactly what she had in mind, but she's enjoying it all the same. Her second applicant walks in on them. Despite herself, Madison thinks about him:

...his too thick glasses and his tweediness and those hunched shoulders...

Well! We've not met a hero like that before and I LIKE IT! It's never quite clear how Madison then employs Gabe, but she does and all sorts of teasing ensues. Andy reappears to fuck Madison, but she gets off much more on teasing Gabe, the thought of him knowing or watching her fuck Andy and the image of him, awkward and turned on by her deliberately provocative actions. At one point, Andy is fucking her and she is thinking:

Gabe bent over me, fucking me the way Andy is while I tell him - I don't beg him - to do it harder. Do it harder, babe, yes. Give it to me I want you. I want you. Just you. 

Though Madison is a switch and somewhat of an exhibitionist and is submissive to Andy, she actually uses him to work out her feelings for Gabe. At one point, Madison and Andy are fucking in the kitchen (again) and Andy says to her:

'Make up your mind, hon. I'm going to come pretty soon and then you'll kick my arse out of here.'

So although when they're having sex she's Andy's submissive, in many other ways, Madison is in control. Which makes it somewhat surprising that Madison doesn't spit it out when it appears that she wants to be dominant with Andy and Gabe together. Madison doesn't say anything. So you have moments like this:

'Maddie doesn't know what she wants. Isn't that right babe?'
I'm sure I do. I do, right?

It's moments like that that I think that this book could just as easily have been called Confused as Control. And:

I hate Andy. I don't know why I 'm not telling him to get out.

Madison, it's because you like the idea of having two men. Also, he's hot. And you seem to get off on being used. I don't however get off on being used, and I find it difficult to get out of your first person head-space and into Andy's, directing you and Gabe, in order to enjoy the scene.
And again:

Andy just grins - his expression saying dance, puppets, dance, very clearly. I've no idea how he took the reins so quickly, but I understand this much for sure: my own efforts seem weak and third rate, by comparison.

This is, I think, the crux of the issue. It's the old trope of the insecure, nervous heroine: the placeholder heroine. In this case, I think that Madison's unsureness about what she wants and her insecurity about being a dominant is supposed to reflect the reader's potential nervousness about switching from submissive to dominant. It is supposed to make us empathize with Madison, that she can't speak up, or stand up to Andy. Placeholder heroines who are wet blankets generally make me want to slap them. And Madison, when she continually doesn't say anything to Andy when he takes control, really needs to snap out of it.

***Spoilers***

And the miraculous thing is, that in this story, she pretty much does snap out of it. Not exactly the way I would have liked, but good enough to stop me, mid grump. There's a misunderstanding in their threesome while they're having sex. Gabe thinks that Andy is hurting her. Technically, he is, but Madison is enjoying it, but somehow cannot articulate this to Gabe. (A lot of the problems that need to be overcome in this book are to do with Madison being unable to spit out what she really means at the crucial moment.) After they establish that Madison was quite happy, Gabe asks Madison to domme Andy, and she does. The scene that follows is awesome. Though I have reservations about how she got to this point, I find something delicious in the role reversal of Madison protecting Gabe from Andy, and humiliating Andy. Gabe gets off on humiliation, but even so, it's surely the dominant's right /duty/pleasure to protect their submissive. Everyone's happy.

 In another amusing gender trope reversal, it is Gabe who runs away because he thinks that Madison doesn't love him (the classic Harlequin Presents scenario is that the heroine runs away because she believes that the hero doesn't love her). Gabe thinks that Madison loves Andy, who can switch and dom her, whereas he can only be submissive. Madison, thank god, comes to her senses, chases after him and they have their HEA. I'm not quite sure what causes Madison to suddenly decide that she doesn't need to be submissive anymore, when she was being submissive to Andy only the night before. But hey, let's not allow technicalities to get in the way. This is a pretty convincing switch to F/m HEA and that is sooooo good <happy sigh>.

***End Spoilers***

A comparison between this book and Power Play is unavoidable. The characters are very similar: an up-tight heroine who is discovering that she loves being in control; a hero who is discovering just how far his kinkiness goes; a third person that both brings the pair together and keeps them apart. The emotional plots are similar; the setting (work) is similar. Even the covers are the same - with an identical photo of the same couple and a pink color scheme. Both Power Play and Control are written in a visceral first-person narrative and have a great build up of the sex and the relationship and the decent into spine-tingling kinkiness. And they are both HOT HOT HOT.

For me, the plot is more cohesive in Control, and the threesome is much better integrated into the story and the relationship. Power Play blindsided me with unexpected submissive scenes that jarred with the relationship and left me with concerns about the future happiness of the protagonists. Not so in Control.

In terms of characters, the heroes are actually quite different. Gabe is a geeky virgin, whereas Ben (in Power Play) is cooler and more knowledgeable. I felt that Gabe cares much more about Madison than Ben did about Elenor. Comparing the two, I wonder if Ben is more interested in his kink than he is in Elenor, whereas the opposite is definitely true of Gabe.

Often, the review length is inversely proportional to how much I liked the book. Not so here. I've talked about some of the tensions in the story, but I haven't said how amazing the scenes are between Madison and Gabe. Where he licks her out, repeatedly, follows her orders, is teased, denied, directed, spanked and humiliated, it's wonderful. It's incandescently good. The multiple, almost continuous sex scenes are spectacularly erotic. Definitely NSFW and totally distracting.

TL;DR: I have some reservations about this story, but overall, it's a gem. If we're really lucky, perhaps one day Charlotte Stein will write a full femdom story, where the heroine is dominant all the time. Until then, Control is pretty damn good.

B+/A-

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: The Cruel Dr. Frost by SM Calor

Sam Gomez is a student in trouble. After being truculent and disrespectful all term in Dr. Julia Frost's English classes, Sam fails (under slightly suspicious circumstances) to hand in his term paper and he goes to her office to seek her compassion. He wants a drop-pass rather than a drop-fail for the class. Dr. Frost isn't amenable to this, so Sam begs. He'll do anything.

Dr. Frost has that sexy repressed teacher look thing going on, that Sam secretly finds very arousing. He also secretly likes her domineering and uncompromising attitude too. So when she demands that he proves that he will do anything and has him come around the desk to kneel. So begins Sam's semi-willing slavery.

The Cruel Dr. Frost is told in first person from the point of view of Sam and successfully walks the fine like between describing the WTF that would be natural to a naive student and the burgeoning excitement of submission. Most of the story focuses on domestic servitude. Sam cleans Dr. Frost's car, clears her garden and does her washing. But he also is engaged to lick his Mistress' pussy and ass and we hear Sam's internal monologue about how hot he finds her demands. There's also cock and ball torture, foot worship, humiliation and ownership. Quite a lot of kink in a short story.

Dr. Frost is unrepentantly dominant, mean, cruel and rather sadistic. Slightly shocked though Sam is by this, he responds to it. Or his cock responds to it rather. He finds that he wants to serve Dr. Frost. There's a more sensitive side to Dr. Frost too - she rather likes her slave. That's not to say that she's kind to him, soft, or submits at all to him. That's one of the really nice thing about this story. Dr. Frost isn't soft in the conventional feminine sense, but she is sexy and she is pleased with her slave when he does well.

So, overall, I rather enjoyed this. My reservation is mainly that the point of view didn't really work for me as a female. I think that male readers will enjoy this much more than I did. I also don't kink hugely on domestic servitude, so it wasn't really my thing. If domestic servitude, enforced sexual servitude, naughty pupil - kinky teacher dynamic and male discovery of submission work for you, then this might be for you. From me, it's a B-. It was good - rather forgettable, but neither did have any major problems.

Review: Pleasure Bound by Kat Black

Adam has it all planned - he's going to whisk his girlfriend Sam off for a fabulous, romantic weekend and indulge his possessive side by asking her to marry him and giving her a huge rock as a sign of his ownership love. But an impulsive text saying that he will give her anything she wants, that is within his power to give her, is his downfall. Because Sam wants to scratch an itch that has been bothering her. Sam wants to be in control in bed.

Her image of the weekend:

Adam's big body spread-eagle beneath her, trembling and helpless under her touch while his blue eyes bored into hers, desperate, hot and pleading. 

His image of the weekend:

...the perfect chance to fulfill his deepest desire and at last get Sam just where he wanted her - bound to him, physically, emotionally and legally, for as long as they both shall live. 

Adam has always taken the dominant role in the relationship, so this sets up an exciting conflict: he wants to control her by tying her down in marriage; she has a more physical tying down in mind for him. This is hugely promising: a battle of wills between two strong characters. It's a frequent complaint that submissive men in books aren't alpha and manly, and here we have Adam:

Successful, powerful and wealthy, he didn't get where he was today without also being touch and ruthless and, frankly, bossy as hell. 

Dangerously close to being an alpha-hole, I would say. Sam loves him, but wants to even things up a bit by having him submit to her for a change. So far, so good.

The problem with this novella is not what is in it, so much as what isn't in it.  The gaps in the emotional plot are, for me, large and annoying. There's a really brilliant, complex negotiation of two people's needs and desires set up and then we don't see how it is resolved, we're just told that it is.

I vacillated all the way through reading this novella. One moment I'm disappointed, the next I'm on edge, with a big grin. Let me give you an example:

When they meet up, the first thing that happens is that Adam comes over all dominant and makes a protesting Sam come in the back of his car on the way to the airport. So Sam submits to Adam and Adam is all rich and manly. <Sigh> Then, on the plane, Sam comes straight out and says that she wants to dominate him and tie him up. <Yay!> Adam just blank says no, and they begin to argue <Okay, this is interesting.> Then instead of a continuation of the argument, we get this:

He continued to argue, of course, accusing her of seeking to objectify him, of cheapening their relationship for the sake of titillation, but Sam persevered, making sure he understood that this was about deeper thing like trust and equality, and letting her have her own way for once, damn it!

Seeking to objectify him, of cheapening their relationship for the sake of titillation. This is the man, who, the previous chapter, was wondering if he could interest her in a bit of mile-high fellatio on the plane, who internally refers to his marriage proposal as the most exciting acquisition he'd ever contemplated, gropes Sam in the back of the car while his driver could watch, and who, when she thanks him for arranging a weekend away, says:

 "You're welcome. But be warned. Once I've got you all alone and at my mercy, I'm going to tie you down and make you thank me again. Properly."

To recap - she wants to tie him down and she's objectifying him and cheapening their relationship. He wants to tie her down and that's normal. So he's being a hypocritical idiot. That would possibly be okay if it was part of a conversation where we saw that Adam was grasping as straws because he's scared to let go of control (as we discover later). But, instead Sam doesn't call him on his hypocrisy and we have a throw-away half a paragraph on a potentially interesting and key conflict. That theme of terse half paragraphs which summarize conversations where really you want to see the whole conversation recurs in this novella, and it's very unsatisfying.

***Spoilers***

Adam sulks for the rest of the journey. When they arrive at the most amazing, luxurious place ever, they discuss Sam being dominant again and Adam goes off into another sulk when Sam says that it's important to her. They arrive at their room and Sam leaves Adam with the cuffs, rope and blindfold she has brought while she goes to the bathroom. When Sam emerges, she finds Adam in the cuffs, with an erection. Welcome as this scene is in so many ways, I couldn't help feeling that I really couldn't understand his sudden change of heart, as we see all of this from Sam's point of view.

The scene that follows, where Sam ties up and then teases Adam while Adam struggles to allow her and tries to regain control, is beautifully written, arousing and sensuous. It's great. I'm even okay with it when after Sam unties him, Adam snaps and pounds into her roughly, claiming back his dominance. It seems totally in character, and not in an hypocritical alpha-male way, but in a scared of his own feelings way which I can sympathize with.

But the next morning, Adam makes unnecessary conflict. He's soooo guilty about how brutal and mean and out of control he was. He must have hurt her unforgivably. Sam protests that she's fine and he totally ignores her, won't touch her and sulks with her for the rest of the day. A rational response to this sort of silliness would be to want to beat Adam around the head with a tree trunk, but again, Sam is so patient. He's being really unreasonable and uncommunicative, so she gives him a blow job to smooth things over. But even after that, and some cunnilingus, Adam continues to be grumpy through their romantic dinner under the stars. Afterwards, they finally get around to talking about it and we get this breakthrough:

"The submitting, the bondage, the helplessness-" He paused to give an uncomfortable shrug. "It excited me, Sam. Against everything I'd thought and said, I found myself liking it. And that realization made me so angry, so fucking furious with myself I couldn't see straight. How could I? How could someone like me enjoy the act of surrender, of leaving myself weak and powerless?"

<Yay!> He asks if she can still love him, she reassures him, he proposes and there's still enough of the book left to have another scene where she takes advantage of her new found knowledge. Great, yeh?

So next we get a scene where Adam pours champagne over Sam's clit and generally teases her. It's disappointing. In the post orgasm pillow talk, there's a bit to hold up the cliches about male submissives:

"Adam, even if you turn out to be the most pitiful wimp of a submissive ever, I'll still love you."
As happy as he was to hear that, Adam snorted. "Like that's ever going to happen." In a flash he had her on her back.

And then the next day, he ties her up. Of course.  <Yawn>

In the epilogue, after their wedding, there's a nice bit about how Adam has discovered that surrender can make you stronger. It's mentioned in passing that they've experimented. I wanted so much to see that emotional and erotic journey, rather than be told about it in the epilogue.

The end is a short, sweet moment of surrender for Adam. It was a good and appropriate ending and I was happy that it ended on a high.

***End Spoilers***

All in all, it's a very mixed story. In some places, elegantly and wonderfully executed. In other places, reminiscent of a Harlequin Presents, with its silly, uncommunicative hero and unrealistically understanding heroine. I didn't realize when I saw that this was a Ellora's Cave Moderne title that it was going to be like a Mills and Boon Modern. It should have had a title like Tying down the Billionaire Tycoon, and I would have realized what I was getting myself in to. The Adam that is worried that Sam won't love him because he likes being dominated and who loves and lusts after Sam to distraction, I can like. The cardboard cutout of a Alpha-Male Greek Billionaire Tycoon that he hides behind has no attraction to me at all. Actually, it repulses me.

TL,DR: Quite good in the middle when the blurb's premise is realized, otherwise prone to gender cliches and skipping over the interesting conflict in favor of alpha male 3-year-old posturing. 

For all my snark and annoyance about a lot of this novella, the middle bit where Sam gets her domme on was great. The tension was palpable, the conflict was brilliant and the whole scenario was really very hot, even Adam's trying to wrest back control. The concept is inspired. Sam and Adam are good characters when they're being human. The rest of it. Meh.

C+

Femdom Fifty Shades of Grey?

I've noticed a steady stream recently of searches for "fifty shades of grey femdom" or some variant, landing on this site. In case you have been hiding under a rock and not heard about this phenomenon, the Fifty Shades of Grey series is a trilogy which follows the developing relationship between an overbearing man who self identifies as a dominant, and a younger woman who is too inexperienced to self identify as anything (so by default she is vanilla (?) ). He pursues her and introduces her to sex and bdsm (with a full time slave contract - no shades of grey there then...).

I'm sure that searchers for "50 shades of grey femdom" have so far left this site unsatisfied, as the post I mention the series in is a moan about not being able to find femdom books. I ignored these searches for as long as I could, but it's gotten to me eventually and I think I can do better.

The question is though, what are people searching for femdom and fifty shades of grey really looking for? I don't know for sure, but here are some of my ideas:


Is there a book like Fifty shades of Grey, but the other way around - with a female dominant rather than a male dominant?

This is the most obvious interpretation, but also the most difficult. What did you like about it? If you simply want an erotic book with explicit bdsm femdom, then Natural Law by Joey Hill is for you. Both characters indentify as Mistress and submissive from the beginning and it's wonderfully erotic, well written, with enough kink to satisfy as well as a strong romantic relationship.

If you liked the concept of an older, authoritative dom introducing a younger vanilla protégée to bdsm, maybe you would like Rebecca's Way by Rynna Cress, where an experienced Mistress introduces a wayward man to being submissive.

Did you like the student and authority figure dynamic? Maybe The Cruel Dr Fox by SM Calor would be your thing. That features a college professor who takes her student in hand in a servant submissive relationship.


My wife/girlfriend read Fifty Shades and liked it. I want to introduce femdom to her. Maybe I could find an equivalent fifty shades book with femdom and she would like that too?

There are lots of good options here, depending on what her normal reading matter is. If she likes historical books, then A Lady Awakened is the one. A subtle femdom book, the heroine is very controlling and controlled and likes sex only on her terms.

If she normally likes other modern/contemporary novels, then try This is What I Want, or Taking Care of Business, both by Megan Hart. Taking Care of Business is a dual story line book, with a femdom relationship which sizzles and a maledom relationship which isn't so good. This is What I Want is less explicitly femdom and more about a woman sharing her fantasies, both ones where she is in and not in control (though mainly the former).

For a book where a woman discovers her dominant side after being submissive, then Power Play by Charlotte Stein is the hottest example of this. Switch, again by Megan Hart, is a tamer example with only subtle bdsm undertones.

For a woman discovering her dominant side from being vanilla, Taking Her Boss by Alegra Verde is worth a look. Giving by Charlotte Stein features a woman introduced to femdom bdsm by her boyfriend's confessed fantasies.

If she likes the purple prose and hyperbole of Fifty Shades, then she might like Evangeline Anderson erotic sci-fi books. There's a lot of male service elements in these books, which are otherwise mainly maledom.


Does Fifty Shades of Grey feature any femdom?

I haven't read the books, but nothing that I've read about them gives me any hope, no.  


Is there a 'mainstream' femdom book, similar to Fifty Shades of Grey, that I can buy at the store? With a tasteful grey cover perhaps?

Not really, no. Natural Law is the only straight femdom book I know of at the moment that really justifies general consumption. But then, it's not really about a book being good, is it? It's a right place, right time thing and we're not there yet for femdom. And no femdom book can have a tasteful cover. Ever. 


So that's it. If you reached this page through a search, let me know in the comments if I answered your question. If I didn't, do ask.

Review: Rebecca's Way by Rynna Cress

Rebecca is an assistant to a movie agent, dealing with the bratty authors managed by her boss. Her day is spoiled by Mackenzie Bell, a man-child who, when she turns up at his apartment to demand his manuscript, is with a woman who he can't remember the name of. Mackenzie has wanted Rebecca and her cold poise forever, and when she gives him a tiny opening, he follows her home, drunk and drink driving. He tells he would do anything to have her. Taking him at his word, Rebecca wakes Mackenzie tied up on the sofa with restraints and a ball gag.

So follows a day of debauchery where Rebecca pegs, whips, humiliates and keeps Mackenzie in chastity. She even sends Mackenzie food shopping with a remote controlled electric ball in his butt (I was slightly concerned about that - if it's just a ball, how do they get it out?) Mackenzie submits to all this willingly and finds that he likes Rebecca's way of life. He certainly takes to BDSM remarkably quickly.

All this is achieved in just 13k words. With all that hotness, necessarily there isn't as much characterization as I would like. I think Mackenzie's drink driving and following Rebecca home is supposed to juxtaposition against his confession that he doesn't really like the person that he has become and his subsequent complete submission. Still, I find that drink driving is a hard limit for me. I strongly dislike facetious portrayals of drink driving; Mackenzie says that it's okay, because he drank first and then drove. I guess that's to show what an arrogant, heartlessness, inconsiderate bastard he is in his 'before' persona, and it works, because that's exactly what I think. I'm not keen on his following her home either. Rather pushy/stalker ish. Then overnight (literally) Mackenzie becomes a willing and obedient toy, which is rather a quick turn around. That being said, I did have a fair sense of Rebecca as a strong willed, controlling character and I was pretty disappointed when the story came to an abrupt halt. The set up takes about a third of the story, followed by wall to wall action of the good sexy type, then the story just ends.

***Spoilers***

At the end of their day together Rebecca sends him home with his chastity device in place to cool off for a week. I eagerly turned the page to see how they get on, and found an epilogue. They are in a cafe, a year later, and Mackenzie gives Rebecca a short story about, yes, you guessed it: their story, that you just read. I irrationally loathe this device. It's difficult to explain why I dislike it so much (thoughts on this welcomed below). I think for me it's a combination of the fact that I feel like it's a cop out of an ending, like 'and then she woke up'. Also, being reminded of the author in a story jerks me right out of the story - I like to get wrapped up in the characters and the story and I don't want to be reminded that a real person wrote it. (Sorry. I said that my dislike was irrational.)

I was also a bit irritated by the another aspect of the ending. Rebecca suddenly has had a promotion and is now a successful agent and has been "fast tracked for glamorous promotion" and has a "substantial pay rise". Not only that:

She had taken to the position almost immediately, quickly amassing an impressive list of clients and showing a keen eye for emerging young talent. Her deceptively assertive business demeanor caught many off guard, and gave her a distinct edge during high-stakes negotiations. With a natural affinity for the business and with much hard work, she had, in just under a year on the job, established herself as a true asset to the firm.

I feel like I'm being hit around the head with it. She's [hit] really [thwack] successful [bam] and [pow] happy [bosh] and [punch] talented. Okayokayokay. I get it.

Rebecca and Mackenzie also have a HFN, but it all feels very quick and too neat. Mackenzie has gone straight from being a feckless drunk, to being a perfect slave. Yes, alright we get a line about how there were tears and tantrums in the epilogue, but it's tell, not show and thus lacking the emotion that would make it feel real. From that point of view, this story, though not really a very romantic romance, falls into the classic romance trap of tying everything up in a perfect bow at the end.

***End Spoilers***

Rebecca's Way is written in the third person, but switches between being in the hero and heroine's head, giving a disconcerting feeling that you're never quite sure whose eyes you are looking through. The whole story is a bit heavy handed at times - the writing is a little prone to cliche and hyperbole, the characters are a bit 'too much' to be believable. Mackenzie's character arc (a sort of bad boy come good) is a nice idea, but it isn't fleshed out enough to really work. But then, it's a short story so there isn't a lot of time for subtlety. Ultimately, the concept is really good and the hot bits are hot, so I will definitely be keeping an eye out for more femdom from Cress. It probably helps that I was sooooo happy to see chastity and pegging and this is a fun and sexy portrayal of both.

TL,DR: a hot, short read featuring pegging and chastity, which I'd've liked to be a bit longer, with a rather abrupt ending and lots of fun in the middle. Flawed, but completely readable.

If Rebecca's Way was longer and therefore more developed, I think it could be B or B+ territory. As it is, it's a B- from me.

Review: The Wicked Sex by Lance Porter

Wicked is a bit of an understatement. The women in this book of short stories are mean and without compassion. They are wicked in the real sense of the word: evil, or intended hurt someone.

There are six 30 odd page stories in this book. Some are quite contemporary / realistic, others are fantasy / magical. 

I'm not sure what to think about the fact that one or two of these stories have stayed with me, even though I didn't like them very much. I read this book a while ago and The Land of Giant Supermodels and Mistress of the Hunt I remembered, though the others I had to remind myself of to write this review. That is testament really to how well Porter writes, that I found myself compelled despite myself.

Bound by a Woman
Bee, a mail order bride, turns out to be rather less biddable than her purchaser Gunther expected. She ties him up and steals his money. The scenario is designed for me to feel sympathy for Bee because Gunther has unpleasant expectations of her. But she's such a bitch I don't feel a lot of empathy for Bee, so I feel rather sorry for Gunther.

Teen Tease
 A spoilt, bratty teenage girl teases all the older men in the vicinity. Including her Stepdaddy. And her Mother is complicit. This sort of thing squicks me a lot, especially written in the first person as this is.

The Land of Giant Supermodels
Gullible men end up magically shrunk and slaves to normal sized supermodels. The women use them up like disposable tissues.

Heartless
Detective Angel falls in with women who tease and torture men while investigating a murder from a hotel. Well, sort of. This story again is rather twisted.


Mistress of the Hunt 
An idealistic young man joins a riding stable run by gorgeous posh women who have their stable hands lick their boots clean. But there's a surreal fantastical twist.

Imperatrix
Two dommes in competition - which one can make the most men come from strap-on sex? Fun, and even more fun when they get distracted by each other. I enjoyed this.

I think the problem that I have with these stories is the total disrespect shown for the men. The women are domineering but awful and I don't empathize much with them. The frequency of death of the men in the stories is also an issue. They are powerful stories, but I found them quite unpleasant.

C-

No such thing as a free read - or why I write this blog

Free stuff - it's great, but it can be difficult to find stories that are really good (or in some cases, even striving towards adequate). So if you've read a good femdom story on literotica, bdsmlibrary, or similar, please share it in the comments. Yep, I mean you. Just keep scrolling to the comments at the bottom of the page. Don't hang around here. There's nothing to see in the rest of the post except a load of pontificating.



That was a bit blunt wasn't it? Sorry about that. This post has been through numerous incarnations - I was finding it difficult to get down what I wanted to say. That first paragraph was what I really meant, without ifs and buts and ands.

I tend to read ebooks from major retailers, but I've been wondering about that recently. Essentially there are two categories of online reading: There are various sites which allow users to share stories that they've written, from literotica to fanfic sites, and they're almost always free. Then there are 'books', often procured through that well known online retailer and almost always paid for. There is also obviously some crossover: ebook retailers often have some books available free for a short period of time to gain exposure and reviews; the extensively discussed 50 Shades of Grey started off as free online fan fiction and is now a paid book bestseller. So there's a sort of continuum between paid/not paid.

When I started reading books online, I never paid for them - ever. Several things changed that.  My financial situation eased, I began to get fed up of searching through dross to find something good to read and my tastes in fiction became more specific and so 'free' became an untenable criteria. But I appreciate that many people will still be in the situation I used to be in, especially that first one. So, given that reviews should help people find good stuff to read, should I review freebies?

I tend to think no. If someone has been kind and brave enough to put their work up for free, I think they deserve to not have it picked over by fussy people like me. If you're looking for money for it, I think that's different, because an exchange of money has an implied contract about the quality of the goods. I think that also goes for books which are briefly free but normally paid, from ebook retailers, because the intention is for the freebies to generate paid sales.

So I'm not willing to review free reads but I still I want to know what the good free reads are. Why? Because it isn't just money that you invest in books or stories. There's the time that you spend reading synopses, samples, the first few paragraphs. Then there's the emotional investment that you input when you're engaged with a character's welfare or the outcome of the story, the anticipation that you think you've found a new author that you'll like. And if you're like me, you'll analyse a book extensively afterwards.

So there are different costs involved with free books. When you read the first few paragraphs of a sample of a paid book, you get return: you know whether you like the author's style or writing and whether you're likely to enjoy the book. From the investment of a few paragraphs, you might well get a return of 200k words of enjoyable reading. The short stories available free online by comparison, usually need the same amount of time reading to establish the same facts, but are often only 1-2k long. That is to say, for the same investment of time, you get a much poorer return of enjoyment for free reads.

So how do people discover new stuff to read? If you're representative of book readers in general, mainly it is through word of mouth. But that's frequently not an option. (I can just imagine me asking my vanilla friends if they can recommend a good book where the heroine pegs the hero and he loves it. That'd be an awkward silence.... ) So with real life recommendations not an option, that leaves online reviews and recommendations - from retailers, blogs etc. On ebook retailer sites, I find reviews to be inconsistent in their veracity. Sometimes, the reviews are as a fictional as the novel. Ditto with starred recommendation systems like goodreads - they're easily manipulated. The reviews of femdom books I found on blogs tended to be sincere but from M/f bdsm reviewers, who obviously have their own take on femdom which doesn't really work for me.

Ultimately, I couldn't find a reliable source of reviews or recommendations for femdom books or free stories and that's why I set up this blog. I hoped that people who wanted similar things out of their fiction would stumble across this blog and let me know what they've read that they liked.

So I'm asking. Please. Tell me what you read - free, paid, whatever. If it was good, share it. To get started, here are some literotica stories that I've enjoyed:

The Third Way by AAkasha  A Mistress pup-naps her submissive and non (ish) consentually rapes him. Three ways. A delicious female first person pov piece.

The Shower by ExoticNeurotic  Quite a subtle short story of a shy submissive. Written as the domme speaking directly to her nervous new sub.

The Executive by Bootfrau  A violent but nicely written non-consent kidnap story.


All the above comes down to this. I don't think that it's appropriate or worthwhile to review free short stories, but I do think it would be useful to create a list of recommendations. If you would help me with that last, I would be very grateful.

Review: Power Play by Charlotte Stein

Reasons this book is exciting:

• It's only just published - March this year.
• It's by an author I've only just discovered, who has written other femdom books.
• It's part of a new erotica/erotic romance line - Mischief, which features more than one title labeled explicitly as femdom.
• It's very, very hot.

Power Play is a disingenuous title. Yes, there is definitely a theme of power games in this book, but not really play. Play implies light hearted and for me, this is quite a serious book featuring power games. In many ways, it is all the better for that. 

Elenor Harding (Ms Harding) is a editor in a publishing house and in the opening scene she is fucked up the ass by the boss, Mr Woods. Literally. In the next scene, she's fucked up the ass by Mr Woods metaphorically. Woods has left suddenly and Ms Harding has been promoted into his place and is left with a mess of a department since his alcoholism and D/s play has been higher on his priority list than doing his job. Despite her best efforts, Elenor soon finds herself following his example with D/s, (though thankfully not with the scotch) and engages in D/s games with Woods' PA (now her PA), Ben. As Ben and Elenor's relationship develops, it becomes clear that it wasn't just Elenor who was on the end of Woods' sexual power strings.

One of the delicious things about this book is that the build up is really good. Although it is packed full of very hot sex scenes, the beginning of the relationship between Ben and Elenor develops at a nice pace. Erotica can easily fall into the trap of being: meet, lock eyes, fuck, keep fucking, HFN. This isn't like that at all. They're work colleagues and there is a sense of that barrier and a natural progression from fantasy to reality.

I really liked the writing style and the fact that it's written in the first person from the dominant female character's point of view. This seems to be pretty rare, but it gives an awesome 'there in the moment' feelings. I never felt that I was shut out of the headspace of the submissive character, because he was written very much as a 'heart on his sleeve' kind've guy.

One little irritation was that the way that some of the sections/paragraphs were written, I wasn't sure how much time had elapsed since the previous scene, or sometimes even the previous sentence. Several times I ended up scanning back trying to figure out when things were happening.  It was only a minor thing, but it jerked me out of the book, giving me a 'huh, what's going on?' feeling.  

About mid-way through I had pretty much mentally written my glowing review, with my only reservation being what I felt was a token M/f anal sex scene at the beginning. This felt like it was tagged onto the beginning of the book so that there was a sex scene in the sample, but isn't really in keeping with the rest of the beginning of the book which is such a brilliant crescendo. Near the end though, a new question emerged, along the lines of WTF? This next bit contains lots of spoilers.

***** Spoilers *******
Everything has sort of come full circle and yet again, and Elenor is being fucked in the ass on the desk, rather like she was in the opening scene. Except this time, it's Ben, not Mr Woods, Elenor is in control and the whole thing feels much stronger emotionally - she feels out of control and about to bare her soul to him. Then Aidan, Elenor's second in command, walks in. Basically, he takes control of the situation. Oh, Elenor still has some agency but she has to fight for it and I don't really see that she wins. The thing that made me really uncomfortable was this:

'Enough,' I say, but this time he doesn't obey immediately. He waits - he actually waits - until Aidan suggests the same, which probably just makes matters worse. I'm very aware of how disastrous I look, how little power I now have, and I can't deny that those things contribute to the way I then behave.

 Elenor thinks of Aidan's look that,

It's too much like a challenge, which I unfortunately have to meet.

And goes on to order Ben to suck Aidan off, whilst clearly wanting Ben to say 'no'. So the scene effectively ends up being a kind of power struggle between Aidan and Elenor. Ben is suddenly side-lined to being Aidan's plaything and I feel really uncomfortable with that, though it's clearly consensual on his part. I think the issue for me is that I interpret the reason that this scene has Aidan (an otherwise wallpaper character) rather than say, Woods, in it is that it's supposed to be clear that he plays no emotional role. But all I can think is how on earth are they going to work together again?  Elenor allows her professional subordinate dominate her and her submissive, so I don't see how Elenor can continue to credibly be the boss professionally. This isn't resolved in the book, so as a reader I'm left with a big question mark about Ben and Elenor's HFN.

The other issue with this scene is that for a book that is otherwise quite strong on emotional sub-texts, this non-quite menage with a marginal character ends up quite incongruous. In a book full of scenes with just Ben and Elenor, the sudden appearance of this extra scene with another characters feels like it was an add on to fulfill the kinkiness quota. I understand that the point is that Elenor is trying to push Ben's limits to have an excuse to break off the relationship. But Ben doesn't say no, and I feel that it compromises Ben and Elenor's relationship in a way that is difficult to define.
*****end spoilers *****

Elenor is an interesting character. Since it is written in first person, it's actually difficult to really get a hold on what sort of person she is objectively. From inside her head, she's a bit giddy, almost panicky, that she suddenly has control and is constantly second guessing herself even as she's turned on by what she's doing to Ben. It's only really later in the story that we get little glimpses of how others see Elenor as an ice queen. There's also a late mention of a hard childhood. This feels like a justification, along the lines of 'the reason I'm a female who is into domination is because I had a tough childhood'. Yes, it's implied that this bad childhood is the reason for her ice queen-ness, but it's so briefly touched on it doesn't add any insight for me into Elenor's character. It's just there to 'explain' a personality characteristic which doesn't really need justifying or explaining. Elenor is in many ways portrayed as quite a vulnerable, perhaps even weak character. I'm sorry that she isn't portrayed as being a bit stronger and unapologetic for being dominant. Though to be fair I'm being pretty picky, she's an interesting, multi-faceted character, and that has to be a good thing.

Ben, by comparison, is the perfect beta male submissive. He's truly adorable: clumsy and impulsive like an eager puppy. He's not portrayed as stupid or weak, he just truly gets off on being submissive and humiliated. Yes, he tries to force Elenor's hand to get what he wants by deliberately doing his job badly, but I don't see him emotionally or professionally undermine her, so I can easily forgive that. If anything, he's a bit too perfect. But as a character, I love him for being so different to the composed, emotionally repressed dom male or the snivelling worm submissive. He's just a man and that's just wonderful.

I feel that there are unresolved power tensions at the end of this book. We have a nominal HFN for Ben and Elenor, and I believe in that. But are Woods and Aidan going to cause trouble for them? I don't know about that. It's not neatly tied up and in some ways that's quite a nice novelty, quite like real life. But I don't really read for real life, I have enough of that of my own!

All that said, this is great book. As straight up femdom erotica it is hotter and has a more cohesive plot than anything I've read for quite a while. I less read it than consumed it. If I have criticised it, it's because the characters are so engaging that I was disproportionately upset when I found things that I didn't like. Power Play is well written and incredibly visceral and arousing.

B

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