Review: Money and Hide and Seek
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 2, 2013
The fascinating thing about authorship is the ability to maintain a prequel kind of narrative while still keeping characters in the present.  Giving a character a history makes him or her more real, answers questions from a first book or gives the author the opportunity to expand on a storyline.  In this case, all of those happen.Unfortunately the history that we get on Carmen is brutal and horrifying.  It was difficult to read and even to comprehend the blatant disregard for human decency.  I found myself dreading what I might read next.  It was not about the style, character development or clarity.  It was a feeling of terrible shock, dismay and alarm.  If these horrors exist on the pages of this book, where are they happening in real life?  I am naive enough to think that this does not happen.  I know that this is not fantasy.I am not prudish by nature.  I believe that two consenting adults can and do find pleasure in a multitude of ways.  The brutality of what Robert put Carmen through was worse than an animalistic terror a young, inexperienced woman could have imagined. But Carmen was able to take the experience and teach herself something from it.  She asked for books about Dom/sub relationships.  She taught herself to be obedient and learned how to take her situation and make it into a lesson.  It was as if she knew that if she studied and submitted, some day she would have the opportunity to change the brutality to some future pleasure.I found it stunning when there was a comparison to dom/sub to modern day judeo-christian religion.  "Willing slavery was a life of devotion, in a weird way it was not unlike a nun in the service of G-d"  My personal belief does not hold relating this kind of sexual brutality to religion but religion is an individual experience and if this belief was helpful to bring Carmen peace or resignation to her situation then I do admit an understanding.  Like an addict needs to justify behaviors, she was perhaps in a comparative situation.The point that does interest me is that even after her escape, on the run, making a new identity for herself she still falls naturally and comfortably into the roll of a submissive. It is as if all who might interact with her, she presents as one way'; as a maid or a roommate.  But as soon as she is with Kurt, she becomes a natural submissive. We learn that what was always her nature, the reason she went along with Robert for so long and her sexual behaviors in the present are because he sexual identity is tied to being in a submissive role.Kurt's impatience and lack of success in finding Carmen proves that money cannot buy everything.  Carmen is portrayed as resourceful and nimble.Continuing to write this review as a book report may be interesting but it is certainly not the point.  This is not a book label or an ad to pursue you to read.Be prepared for the angry brutality that Carmen survives.  Be prepared for the blatant descriptions of sexual depravity and then the change to independent and willing submission when Carmen meets Kurt.  The dichotomy between the abuse she is a victim to with Robert and the passionate submission she falls into when she is with Kurt is where the story takes the reader.This may be the first time a reader seriously understands that there is a difference between consensual Dom/sub relationships and abusive forced submission.  There is a lesson to be learned there and as long as the lesson is clear then the storyline is easier to accept.There is another storyline in this book.  Carmen's life with Robert and Robert's activities run through the story.  This story brings in Federal Agents who take on the role of bridging book two to book three.This is not like many of the other D/s books out there.  It talks about mental health, ability to survive and the strength that a woman can find even under the most dangerous and unfair circumstances.  This is a fast read but be prepared that you may find yourself feeling uneasy.  This may not not be your own lifestyle choice but that should not deter one from reading the book.  Through all the difficulty there is entertainment value because the reader becomes invested in Carmen and Kurt.