Review: Ahh, Safewords
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 11, 2013
I certainly needed a couple days before writing a review for Safeword: Davenport. I don't always need to put much thought into how I feel about a book, that has usually been figured out by the last page and I'm then ready to move on. This book, however, required me to read another book before coming back and revisiting my thoughts and feelings.Candace Blevins yanked me right out of my comfort zone with this story. This surprised me because my comfort zone, I thought, was a pretty large scale area. I believe this zone dysphoria was brought about in two parts: part one being content, and part two being equally cadence and voice. Part two had a huge influance as to how I was able to recieve and process part one, that's for sure.There were a few, just a few, scenes of sexual nature and taboo matter that made me a bit uncomfortable. I imagine that if someone had been reading my face while I had been reading those scenes I may have appeared to have been pained. Candace did however provide some context clues to allow us readers to get an idea of where things were headed before diving into those scenes. I appreciated that and read on. No, I did not skip over or even scan quickly through those uncomfortable bits. I read every word and I'm glad I did.As for cadence and voice, I found them a bit off kilter. The plot was good and I enjoyed the story as a whole. However, the over all voice lacked a certain finess that I, personally, find important in books of this nature. Perhaps I'm just being picky, but I kept waiting for some flurish to be thrown into the scenes that sadly just never came. And try as I did, I was unable to like two important main characters; they felt a bit cold and mechanicle to me. (view spoiler)All that being said, I did find myself interested enough to go ahead and read the next book, Safewords Davenport and Chiffon, with hopes that these characters will be more developed and that more sense will be made out of what I've already read.