Review: Intense, Emotional, & Striking!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 28, 2011
Rated: 4.5/5 on blog.Intense; The perfect word to describe this short story. His Elle is slightly different than anything I've read before, primarily for the ending. Debut  author Jemima Valentino, will take you on a journey of complete physical and emotional submission of one sub to her Dom who found ardent love in the acts of relinquishing and taking control.This short read can primarily be broken down into three important sections: The meeting, the intense, emotion filled, insightful scene, and the conclusion. As each part unfolds, you gain a little more insight into the two characters, but it is the purposefully pre-arranged scene that dominates the short number of pages and does the most talking.Elle and her Master (the reader is never given his name) meet in an urgent care clinic in Detroit due to some unfortunate circumstance. A circumstance that opens the cautious door to finding power and healing in her submission. After an emotionally scarring attack, her new found Master is left with the responsibility to help her regain all that she had lost that night.Against every instinct and legal and moral decision, her doctor is instantly attracted to his patient, and from there they both embark on a journey of self-realization through a TPE Master/slave relationship, over the course of a couple of years. The reader is not privy to the relationship development during the two year span, but when you are jumped to 'present day', you quickly get the sense that feelings are deep... and nothing short of extremely intense!His Elle is not a romanticized depiction of a Master/slave relationship. Elle's Master is authoritative and dominant, but yet still shows deep emotion, care,  devotion, and love for his slave -- albeit in a way that is conducive to their type of relationship. In one breathe he calls her his 'princess' and in the next, his [...].  He lovingly kisses her; He lovingly touches her. But the gist is that she is his.Elle was clearly broken -- or at least that's my take on her from inferring from events and dialogue. She's English and smart, having been offered a journalist position for an online magazine that brought her to Detroit. But, I was left to conclude that her total submission was a way for her to regain what was taken from her -- her strength and confidence. And so it is left to the hands of her Master to give her those missing aspects of her, back.This story has a lot of the classic BDSM elements in it and then some: Crops, toys, punishment and discipline, and even a little light knife play. It's about trust -- the whole story is about it! He craves it, needs it, and will not settle for anything less. And Elle wants to give it to her Master. It's something that needs to be done not just for them together as Master and slave, but also to relinquish the pain from her past. And it was fabulously written!The ending was nothing like I thought it would be. It evoked a myriad of emotions from me -- some good and some bad (I'm still not sure how I feel about it) -- and I know that it will do the same to others.  I think this was the primary aspect of the book that was hard for me to truly understand and get past. But, regardless of what made me gasp and think back on the story as a whole and shake my head at myself that I didn't see it coming, the ending is a power moment for Elle. You feel for her and recognize her strength and determination. It shows that no matter how submissive a person can be, they embody strength and power of their own.This story was fantastically wrote. When it was hot, it was hot -- in that intense "I said don't come yet" way -- and I adored the way that Jemima allowed me to 'feel' the emotions from both Elle and her Master. It was the careful reveal of them, that up until the end, you could really understand what they meant to one another -- albeit, in a way that represented them and their relationship dynamic.In conclusion, I must restate that this is a short story that demonstrates a TPE relationship that will come emotionally action packed with a more harsher reality of a Master/slave relationship. Be prepared to watch domination, submission, devotion, trust, and acceptance in its most rawest form. Love in an atypical depiction.My own personal comfort levels where pushed and stretched while reading His Elle. And like I have previously mentioned, the ending through me for a loop  in which I'm left feeling utterly indecisive over. Was there a win-win? That may be debatable, but regardless, it made me rethink my acceptance  and view of 'Master'. Yet the way that the author described the interactions and feelings between Master and slave was detailed with enough thoughtfulness to represent a private  -- and uncommonly represented -- BDSM relationship that the reader is privy to watch take place, I couldn't help but be acutely aware of the love between the two. I had to keep reading! And anyone who can push me to the edge of my personal moral and emotional limits and not make me want to jump off the ledge deserves the rating!Jemima Valentino is a great new voice to the BDSM world and I truly hope that we will continue to see more from her! She delivers an intense, raw, emotionally packed short story that ventures to the edge of comfort, but holds you in a paralyzing grip of awe at the amount of control that can be relinquished and coveted between one Master and his slave.