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: Beyond Temptation by Lisette Ashton

The tag line is: there's only so much frustration a girl can take. I couldn't agree more.

I was attracted to Beyond Temptation as I'd had a good experience with femdom labelled books from the publisher, Mischief (aka Harper Collins). The period look of the cover suggested to me that it was set in 1930s, or similar. Actually it's mainly set in present day Scotland. Bit of a let down. Anyhow, the plot.

There are several plot lines that come (alright, cum) together at Manor. This means quite a lot of switching around of third person pov and it made it difficult to keep track of. There are also about six million characters and they have a lot of sex. With so many characters, it was difficult to get to the point of really feeling for any of them. Or understanding them.

The story also tried to pack in a fair amount of convoluted plot. It was a bit overwhelming. Half the interest in the plot (as opposed to the erotica) is driven by a ex-lover of Amelia and Yale, who is she who must not be named (SWMNBN) so that it can create suspense in the plot. It would work if it wasn't pretty obvious who SWMNBN was. The other bit of plot is Robyn and Harold, owners of an art magazine - Art (good name eh?!). Harold says that he's fed up with their open marriage and issues Robyn with an ultimatum - stop fucking other men, or he'll divorce her. Since Harold sounds like an prat, I'm never quite clear why she would actually want to stay married to him. Harold certainly doesn't - he actually wants to marry his secretary Sheridan, who is a rebellious but virginal pain in the ass.

Robyn goes to blah manor to get some space. She's followed by Yale and his devotees, who barge in and create erotic chaos. Robyn is trying to be faithful, but Yale won't back off. There's combinations of nearly all the characters in some sort of clinch, at some point. Some of the sex is good, some of it is so-so, other bits are bordering on rapetastic. There's certainly very dubious consent where Robyn/Dominic/Yale/Amelia are concerned.

The leading women in the book are actually quite interesting characters. Sheridan is totally immoral, using and manipulating men and women alike. She's smart, but makes stupid impulsive decisions, which are not really in character. Robyn is okay at first, teasing the men she wants and demanding what she likes. Amelia is good too, a sadistic Domme who takes out her pain on others.

However, they all are totally spineless when it comes to erotic artist Yale.  They worship at the mighty wang of Yale. They let him do whatever he wants and he's unreasonable and dictatorial. To complete strangers. This Alphahole behavior spoils the whole book for me. He's a complete asshole. I guess a lot of people love that arrogant artist trope, but it's really a turn off for me.

The other problem for me is that the motivations for the people in this novel are paper thin - they rely on most characters being really dumb and overly emotional. Pretty much irrational. Yale is supposed to love the Manor sooooo much. It's never clear why. He's in love with Angelica but still totally hung up about SWMNBN. Angelica was SWMNBN's submissive and is possibly still in love with her and is also in love with Yale. She's a dominant to the two submissives, but for Yale's mighty wang, she's submissive. The two submissives are just foils to show that Angelica isn't a 'real' domme, she's just mean and bossy (or something, they don't like to take orders from her) unlike Yale who is a real Dom TM.

I enjoyed the bits where Amelia was domming, but otherwise the pervasive mighty dickhead that was Yale and Yale worshiping was rather dull and frustrating. I wanted more Amelia. It's a short novel and there's not much space for character development, there's quite a lot of contrived plot sooo many characters.

In summary, there's lots going on. If you like complicated menage with super horny people all round, with convoluted plots and machinations then this might be for you. I found it very frustrating - I never understood enough about any of the characters to see what motivated them (beyond sex, obviously) and it skipped around between all the characters so much, I never really engaged with it. Except to shout at Yale. Arrogant rapey dickhead. I wanted Amelia to put him in his place, but she turned out as idiotic as the rest of them.

It sort of classes as femdom as Amelia is dominant most of the time and when the female characters aren't around Yale, they're pretty strong. But as a whole, there was much too much of Yale (did I mention that I didn't like him?) and male dominance with an undertone of rape for this to be particularly enjoyable.

C.

Review: Vampire Meltdown by Storm Savage

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Misdescriptions - why is female agency over emaphasized in blurbs?

I read a lot of samples. I read samples of books that look like they might be femdom. I read samples of books where the blurb suggests that they might have a really awesome strong heroine who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to ask for it. Much of the time (most?) I'm wrong. The book or novella might sound promising, but it usually becomes quickly obvious that it's not even subtle femdom.

The disjoint between the book description and the actual book is not unusual, I know. Romances are famous for having titles/covers/descriptions which bear no resemblance to the story inside, especially in the lines of Greek billionaires and virgins. But let's look at an example, because I think the disparity is more important here than the normal hair color and ethnicity mistakes that are typical in romance novels/descriptions. There are plenty of books which say they have strong heroines, but she's actually weak and TSTL. But this also happens in BDSM books - women are represented in the blurb as being more dominant than they are in the book. For instance, here is the description for The Breaker's Concubine by Ann Mayburn:

Prince Devnar of Jensia is goaded into raiding the wrong space ship, springing a trap that captures him for use as a Royal pleasure slave, a Concubine, on Kyrimia. He vows to do everything he can to escape and keep from forming a psychic bond with his captors that would render him absolutely and totally in love. This proves difficult to do when  the female Breaker assigned to turn him into a Concubine, Melania, is the epitome of his perfect woman.

Melania has been raised and trained to help reluctant and abused Novices to break through their personal blocks and attain the ultimate prize of becoming a Concubine. When she is given Devnar to train, she finds herself in danger of doing the forbidden and falling in love with her Novice. This angry, scarred, and utterly seductive male tests her self-control like no other.

Devnar and Melania find themselves at the heart of a galaxy wide political battle that will test a love that they must not acknowledge, and cannot live without, to its very limits.

Very early on the heroine thinks about how she likes to relax by being submissive and the book continues along these lines. But the cover, with the hero in a collar, cuffs and submissive pose does nothing to dispel the notion gathered from the blurb that this is essentially a book about a man submitting to a woman, rather than vice versa. I think that this is essentially the same issue as the strong heroine one - it's an over-representation of female agency (in this case dominance rather than strength and intelligence) in the description.  

This is a philosophical as well as a practical problem. In a practical sense, it's frustrating that books I think I will enjoy turn out not to be what they were represented as. But philosophically, I think there is a wider problem: blurbs represent women as being strong, in control and having agency, but the book itself frequently has a weak, silly TSTL girl. I think there are several potential reasons for this.

• Readers want strong women, but authors haven't gotten with the program yet, and so the publishers represent the heroine as being different from how she really is.
• Readers think that they want strong female characters, but actually like stupid and or submissive female characters. 
• The publisher and author genuinely believe that women behaving stupidly and or submissively is a strong heroine. 

The difference between the first reason and the second is how satisfied readers are with the book after they have read it. This is a difficult thing to judge. Instinctively, reviews seem like a good way to assess readers satisfaction. But, as I've already said, I read an lot of samples and decide that the book is not for me. I don't write reviews of these books, so my annoyance at the disjoint between book description and content isn't represented on review sites etc.

It's also possible that readers want their heroines to be idiots and 'strong' or 'feisty' is a shorthand for that, rather like 'virgin' is shorthand for 'nice'. Worse still is the idea that maybe people genuinely believe that in a woman, TSTL = strong. The really worrying thing to me is the idea that this disjoint could be propagating the idea that heroines who are TSTL are actually strong and independent.

I really hope that publishers and authors will realize that book descriptions really matter - and that books described as having strong heroines can actually have strong heroines.

What have been your experiences with book misdescriptions? Why do you think that female agency is over emphasized in book descriptions and under delivered in the book itself?

Review: The Sweetest Revenge by Dawn Halliday

We have all read wonderful stories about the handsome rakes and dashing scoundrels; the debauched dukes, the wicked earls, and the roguish viscounts. In these stories, the mad, bad aristocrats find the woman who ultimately tames them, who turns them into a monogamous man, a loving husband and father.
I have always wondered, though, what happened to all those women who came before that woman who tamed him? What happened to those poor souls he debauched and ruined? How did they survive the scandal? How did they go on after the rake left them behind?
This is the story of three women in that exact situation—three women who’ve been the victims of one rake who has compromised them all. These three women have decided that enough is enough, and while they can’t take on society, perhaps—just perhaps—they can change one man. This is the story of his reformation.

The author's prelude, along with a man tied up on the cover, made me pretty excited about this book. An original concept and so obvious. The whole thing of promiscuous men being glamourized, this one woman being 'different' and all the women of his past just melt away has always bothered me. And who could resist this?:

This book does not shirk away from the dark consequences of a dissolute rake’s behavior. It contains rough language and erotic situations. You’ve been warned.

The biggest strength of this book is the concept - original, it had me wondering how things were going to sort themselves out. Telling you about the plot though requires some spoilers.

Three wronged women from Lord Leothaid's past kidnap him: Isabelle, Anna and Susan. Isabelle was Leo's young love, but after he writes her an explicit letter which is intercepted she is ruined and exiled. He didn't come for her. Anna's ruin is more recent; Leo slept with her then ran away when he realized that she was a virgin. She was shunned by her family and ended up as prostitute. Susan was ruined in a different way; she was emotionally destroyed. A widow, Susan and Leo took up together and she began to fall for him. Leo squashed her hopes cruelly and consequently Susan doesn't believe in love or men. Susan is angry at Leo's treatment of all three women, as well as all the other women he's discarded.

So they kidnap him, to give him some uncomfortable treatment to go with the uncomfortable truths. Revenge, in other words. Susan orchestrates his physical discomfort - a cold cellar, bread and water, her beefy french lover to beat him up. Anna's revenge is humiliation. She brings him almost to orgasm then leaves him tied up with his pants around his ankles and frustratingly aroused. (Fun! Hot! Yay!) Isabelle's main role is to be the timid wet blanket. Okay, actually, I think the idea is that she provides emotional torment. But she does this completely passively - she touches his foot gently and he is inexplicably set afire and remembers his first love, now dead, who broke his heart so thoroughly that he became a complete bastard. Can you see what is going to happen? Oh yes.... Poor Leo. He thought that his 'Belle' was dead, but everyone lied and conspired to keep them apart. This is frankly improbable.

The main romance is Belle and Leo's convoluted route back together. Realizing that Leo knows who Belle is and is besotted, Susan plans the perfect revenge: Belle will seduce and desert Leo, breaking his heart like his has done to so many others. Without this inspiration, I'm not quite sure whether Susan's cold floors and progressive feminist reading and Anna's increasingly kind sexual torture would work. Well, not the way they were doing it. I think a lot more could have been made of Susan and Anna's revenge. Instead, the focus is on Leo's desperation to see Belle and the unravelling of the past relationships of the protagonists.

There are also some sub-plot romances for Anna and Susan. Poor old Susan has no character or plot development at all. She begins widowed, with a lover and a cynical attitude towards love and marriage and ends exactly the same. Susan is pretty sane although her advice to the other two women is rather questionable. Anna on the other hand seems remarkably unharmed by her traumatic year as a prostitute and falls immediately into the arms of Lord Archer, a rakish compatriot of Leo. Susan goes to all the trouble of giving Anna a new, respectable identity, only for Anna to throw it all away by becoming a mistress. Susan is annoyed and points out that Lord Archer is no better than Lord Leothaid. But Anna acts like an impetuous child, insisting that she is 'healed' and wants Lord Archer. The mind boggles.

The other sub-plot is the rivalry between Mr. Sutherland and Lord Leothaid. They compete over women, and that ends up including Isabelle. Mr. Sutherland is set up as the villan who led Leo astray and then tries to steal away his first love. Susan encourages Isabelle to become Mr. Sutherland's mistress (I'm not sure about the wisdom of this advice) and when Leo doesn't come for her, Isabelle gives in. Now is the time for even bigger spoilers than I have already told. Look away now if you don't want to know.

***Spoilers***
It's the end of the book, Susan and Anna consider Leo 'cured' of his misogynistic and unacceptable behavior. Leo has been searching for Isabelle and begs Susan and Anna to tell him where she is. Susan throws his own words back at him:

"Go find a whore, then. That'll satisfy. All women have the same basic parts, after all, don't they, my lord?"
Anger rose within him, an instinctual response. She mocked Belle, said she was no better than any common harlot.

That doesn't sound to me like a man who has gained any respect for the situation that women find themselves in when men take advantage of them. By throwing back his own words at him, Susan doesn't (imo) suggest that Isabelle is a 'common harlot', but that every woman deserves more respect than Leo previously gave them. It seems to me that far from having any change of opinion or sense of remorse over his treatment of women, Leo is still an idiot.

It doesn't get any better. Leo arrives at Mr. Sutherland's house, just in the nick of time to stop Isabelle and he consummating their relationship. And he's furious. They fight over her and she stands there wringing her hands like the object girl that she is.
***End Spoilers***

The problem for me is that this isn't truly a story of redemption or reformation, as Leo is still a dick. It isn't an effective story of revenge either. This book takes a revolutionary premise and then tries to execute it in a standard cookie-cutter romance novel way. It's a pity, because even without the amount of kinkiness that tying up a Lord in your basement invites, this is nearly inspired. The emphasis is just too much on the rather boring and sappy Isabelle. I think I would have liked to see her show some gumption and run off with Mr. Sutherland, but no such luck. She lurrrves Leo and so he gets much better ending than he deserves. Nobody really gets the revenge on Leo; not Mr. Sutherland, Isabelle, Susan or Anna. Everyone except Mr. Sutherland ends the book pretty happy and I think that is supposed to represent that they have forgiven him his misdeeds and moved on. Personally, I think the victims of rakes deserve rather more revenge, sweet or not, than these characters got. This book suggests at, but doesn't deliver, what a rake really deserves in terms of punishment and redemption.

C

Review: Three Stages of Love: Lust by TC Anthony

With an undeniable urge to dominate her new boss, her own lust-filled fantasies lead to a transformation that shakes her to her core. But when Alexander challenges Eva to satisfy her carnal urges, she is forced to choose between her career, her desires, and an unconventional and lustful relationship. Consumed by fear and forced to maintain control at all costs, Eva must decide if having it all is worth risking her career, her world, and possibly, love.

That's was what attracted me to this book. An undeniable urge to dominate her new boss. Sounds good - a conflict between bedroom and real life power, with all sorts of kinky and emotional tensions. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any evidence of the story that is described. I actually checked the synopsis several times, because I couldn't believe it was the same book. So there are two plots here - the one that is described and the one that I read. I'll describe the one I read. Presumably your milage may vary given that I clearly read a different book to the one in the synopsis.

Eva gets drunk in a bar with her friend Samantha, sees the sexiest man ever and drunkenly propositions him after falling over herself, literally. Her drunk friends desert her with a complete stranger. Sexy bloke chivalrously sends her home with his private driver (because he's loaded, obviously). 26% through the book all that had happened was that Eva had gotten drunk in bars with her PA, fell at the feet of and then been sent home chastely by a man clearly intended to be the hero, and talked a lot about how great she is. Over a quarter of the way through and I was still yet to see any evidence of Eva being dominant, no actual lust or sexy sex ('bad sex' with the token boyfriend isn't quite the same thing) or almost anything except Eva talking a lot. Mainly in bars while getting drunk. Getting drunk is not a good spectator sport, and even less fun when reading about it. She has an ill friend with cancer, who she visits and talks to a lot, presumably to show what a lovely, kind person she really is.

Eva also seems to be submissive. When eventually, Alexander gets around to appearing again, Eva spends her time thinking about how she wants him to spank her, fuck her against the wall, dominate her, etc. etc. (Yawn.) We hear about what a strong, dominant, spunky woman she is, but it's all tell, not show. I see no evidence of Eva being clever or dominant around Alexander. There's a phrase for this: she talks a good domination.

The tension is (or presumably would be if the plot ever actually moved on) that Eva doesn't believe in love. She was named after a poem about a woman who is totally obsessed by her tragic love, doesn't do anything but pine away in her life and then dies. Eva is determined to not be like this and thus avoids love. Unfortunately, Eva is also sooo desired by everyone and sooo amazing in bed that any man who has sex with her falls in love and spoils her 'sex only' rule. (It was surprising to hear that said, in all seriousness, in the first person.) Alexander on the other hand has never brought a woman back to his bachelor pad, has never licked out a woman - essentially there are a load of awkwardly contrived ways that Eva is "special".

The end for me was 56% of the way through; Eva is proving what a sexy, kinky minx she is, and she says this:

"Well, the salespeople at the adult store know me by name - I get a friends and family discount. I'm not offended by a little role-play and a light whipping on my behind, nor do I mind givinga [sic] whip or two. I like to be creative, you know...silk ties, showers, stone walls. And I can play the boss who happens to have a cup of ice on hand or the employee who knows exactly what to do with the boss's cup of ice."
"Ice." Alexander was intrigued. 

Wow. You kinky girl - silk ties and showers. The problem really is that although she says that she doesn't mind a bit of switching around, we have seen absolutely zero evidence of this in the first half of the book. I think that actually, this is closer to a permutation on the (dreaded) FSOG stalker billionaire man storyline, except with a sexually experienced woman. So instead of the stalker billionaire being the authority on everything, she is the more kinky, sexually experienced one (though not really kinky, because then she'd be bad). Admittedly, this is a different take to the standard Harlequin Modern nonsense. Eva isn't a virgin, which is good. But Alexander is still the dominant, even if Eva is rather topping from the bottom. As a remake of FSOG with the sexual experience (though not much else) reversed, this has its merits. As femdom, it doesn't work at all.

Maybe if I'd seen some latent dominance, or a dominant attitude towards Alexander (as opposed to the pathetic, inarticulate (and at first, literally speechless) pool of liquid lust that she turns into), I would be more convinced. Maybe if there was less tell and more show, I would be more convinced. Maybe if the plot moved at a pace faster than glacial timescales. Maybe if more happened in the story, that wasn't hanging out in bars passing notes like teenagers in class. Maybe if it was better written. Maybe if there was some of the advertised dominance and lust. Maybe then, I would have finished this book.

DNF.

Review: Cruel to be Kind by Stephanie Vaughan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***Spoilers***

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

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

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

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

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

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

***End Spoilers***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

F

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

Review: Sweetest Mistress by Skye Warren

This is a book of contrasts. The writing is interesting and engaging and it's written in the first person, from the point of view of the male submissive. On the other hand, while the characterisation of the main character is strong, the female lead is a cardboard cut out, the plot is promising but turns out very weak and chiched and I just can't really believe in the relationship at all. I could probably deal with that but as usual, there is a subtext of a sort of anti-femdom which spoils it for me.

The story starts out with a great premise: Wyle, a male submissive, going on a blind date. Wyle thinks that Melissa is out of his league but she takes him home and invites him to do whatever he wants to her. This is a fun scene where he expresses how he feels the pressure to do what she wants. Everything is going pretty well, he seems pretty into being dominant, then she stops him and says it doesn't feel right. She asks what he really wants and he confesses that he wants to be spanked. I enjoyed this and I was intrigued by the idea that maybe she already knew he was submissive. It set up the potential for a conflict that was something a bit different.

Their relationship progresses quickly, with several hot scenes and a phone sex session that was really nicely done. Then it all goes wrong for me.

***Spoilers***

He begins to get suspicious when she knows what he likes for breakfast and the friend who set them up lets slip that she asked about him a lot. He convinces himself that she is after his money and shuts her out. When he goes over to confront her, he loses his temper and beats and humilates her as 'punishment'. She takes it meekly and is turned on by it. Then he actually bothers to ask why she asked about him. She is his kid neighbour from back home and she's had a crush on him for years, blah de blah. He feels bad and asks her to punish him as retribution. She does so but by this time I don't know that she likes being dominant or that he likes being submissive. Frankly, it's a bit confusing.

Instead of Melissa being a strong woman who hears about a submissive who could be right for her, she is a tired trope of childhood love. She's not really a dom, she's doing it to please him. Similarly, Wyle defaults to being dominant and inflicting pain and Melissa has so little backbone that she takes it without complaint. She even says at one point,

"Okay Wyle. Whatever you want."

It seems that she lurrves him sooo much that she'll do whatever he wants - be a dom, be a sub, make him breakfast, forgive him. Perhaps some people would enjoy reading this but personally, a sex scene when the woman is just a vessel for playing out the male character's fantasies, whatever they might be, is not for me.

The implication is that actually they're going to 'default' to him being dominant and her being submissive, as that's the roles that they instinctively take on. I have no problem with the female character discovering that she likes being dominant or submissive or both but the suggestion that a woman in love is so pathetic that she will do whatever a man wants in order to obtain/keep him really irritates me.

It bothers me too, when we hear first hand that he is enjoying their first sexual encounter, that she somehow telepathically knows that actually he wants something different. I bought it when I thought she was a dom and already knew he was a submissive, as there was a reason for her to know that he was holding back. With Melissa having a childhood crush on Wyle, the device has no credibility - how on earth would she know? Her saying, "It doesn't feel right", is not enough to convince me when just lines before he is thinking how good it feels.

***End Spoilers***

All in all I'm really quite disappointed with this story. It was promising, really very good and hot in the middle, had a great voice but fell down totally flat for me at the end. It was well written and engaging, both of which are distinctly in its favor. But the characterization of Melissa was so weak and the subtext really quite irritating, so I much as I wanted to, I can't like this book much.

C