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: Branded Sanctuary by Joey Hill

Chloe isn't sleeping well. She's been an emotional (and therefore physical) wreck since she was attacked. At the beginning of the book, there's an evocative scene where Chloe is too scared to get up and go to the loo (sounds silly, but it works well). On a whim, she calls Brandon, a guy who gave her his number at her boss' wedding. He patiently talks to her and she manages not only to get over her fear and make it to the bathroom, but to indulge in some friskiness over the phone with him.

Brandon turns up on her doorstep the next morning. Chloe doesn't know how to react. The attack has left her unstable, confused about who she is, scared and angry. And at various points in the story, all of these emotions spill out over Brandon. Her character arc is getting over these emotions.

Brendan is the perfect sub, living to serve a Mistress, or any Dom, with no concern for himself. His character arc is accepting that he is a person who wants things for himself.

So there's no complaint about lack of character arc. There's oodles of character arc. What I don't understand is why Brendan likes Chloe. He's a complete submissive, what does he see in vanilla Chloe? She's not naturally dominant, and when she tries to be, everyone tries to talk her out of it. I don't get it.  Neither do I really understand why Chloe likes Brendan. He's sweet and lovely and all that, but he's branded (literally) by another woman, insensitive to the point of idiocy when it comes to introducing her to bdsm and ultimately seems to want to have his Mistress cake and his relationship too.

What irritates me in this story is that everyone (possibly including Chloe) don't want Chloe to express her emotions - they want her to go back to being the sweet girl she used to be. More to the point, no-one wants Chloe to use bdsm to work out her issues. She's thrown in the deep end of bdsm at weekend play party, disapproved of when she attempts to get involved, then made to feel awkward when she cops out and is upset. I'm not keen on the portrayal of Chloe's induction to bdsm at all. It's like bdsm is an exclusive members only club that she's being introduced to but not allowed to actually join. At one point Chloe says:

"Oh right, I forgot - I can't understand this. I don't know the secret handshake."

And I know what she means. Mistress Marguerite is Brendan's real domme and it feels to me that there is no room for Chloe. A character put in for tension says that Brendan really only wants Marguerite. And you know what - I believe him. I don't think that Brendan is 'over' Marguerite, or vice versa, to be honest. I even wonder if Brendan has fixated on Chloe because she is sort of Marguerite's vanilla pet, her friend. Brendan even says that Marguerite would always be his Mistress, Chloe his Beloved. It feels like Chloe and Brendan are both Tyler and Marguerite's playthings, or younger siblings. They are both taken under the dominant couple's care. Perhaps it's a real bdsm dynamic, (I wouldn't know), but it doesn't do it for me at all. I want to shout at Brendan and Chloe to get out of there and be themselves, work out their relationship themselves without the manipulations of their big brother and sister (metaphorical not literal).

There's one more thing that annoyed me about this book. I have no idea how long it is between Brendan and Chloe first meeting, and Chloe phoning him in the middle of the night. At one point is seems like it's a realistic few months, then at another a unfeasible year and a half.

There's plenty of hotness, lots of interesting conflict and that's all great. There are touching, emotional scenes, where you can feel the connection between Chloe and Brendan, especially at the beginning and the end of the book. The problem is, I don't believe the relationship really. I'm not sure if they're just the proteges of the dominant characters or whether they really are together for themselves. Don't get me wrong, this is still a good read. But for me, it's not emotionally satisfying. I probably wouldn't have had such a problem with that if it wasn't so close to being emotionally satisfying.

B-

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