Review: Took me out of my comfort zone--and I LOVED it
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 17, 2012
Good lord, no one writes kink like Candace Blevins. Only someone who's BTDT can pull you in and push all your kink buttons so accurately. At the same time, readers should be warned this is not fuzzy handcuff BDSM. This is real, deep, hardcore emotional and physical power exchange.Let me begin by saying that I almost didn't read this past the first couple chapters. I could tell the kinks coming up were not "my" kinks, but I was drawn in to the emotional storyline so I continued on. Good lawd, I'm so glad I did.This books gets five stars because I got super sexy hot over scenes that weren't in my personal comfort zone of kink, and that's something. By "super sexy hot", I mean, I had to stop in the middle and place an order for sex toys. THAT kind of hot. When you're reading a scene that you KNOW isn't in your realm of preference, and you're still turned on beyond belief, that is...that is amazing, and that's what Ms. Blevins does here.With that said, the kinks aren't overly sick or anything. I just have a very narrow sweet spot for what turns me on. Some of the kinks in this book that were outside my comfort zone were electricity, heavy pain, close confinement, singletail whipping, and a short short section describing a flesh hook scene that is what almost made me put the book down. Luckily there wasn't anything else about that.On the plus side, ooh...anal. Lots of smoking hot anal. An ultra hot menage. Some EXTREMELY hot dominance scenes between Zach and Dana. His dom persona really did it for me. Surprisingly, Jacob the male submissive also did it for me. My GOD, if you had told me I'd fall for a male submissive I would have laughed my butt off but those scenes where Dana topped Jacob were beyond hot.Aside from the individual kinks, she did so many things right in this book. She made the sex scenes and psychological entanglements complex, and yet it worked without any confusion. In a way I think Candace is one of the few authors who could have done this because she does have an "on the nose" style of characterization. Her characters are rich, but they are almost unnaturally honest and forthcoming and they don't mess around with subtext. They say what they mean and mean what they say. Usually in books that would irritate me but here it's necessary because otherwise the emotional aspects of the four main characters and their various dynamics would have become too complicated. PLUS, this allows her to concentrate on the sexual side of the relationships...and there was so much sex. So much hot, hot, hot sex. Did I mention my toy collection grew in the reading of this book? Have some money set aside for that before you begin.I've talked a lot about the sex in this review but there was an almost painfully lovely emotional storyline too, about a widow overcoming her dependence on her old partner and finding the permission she needs to move forward with another man.Overall, this did what I wanted it to do--it turned me on. It also did MORE than I expected it to do, which was to challenge my limits of what I believed was hot. In a way, Ms. Blevins pushed my boundaries just like a good dom, giving me more than I thought I could take--and making me like it.Now for a cold shower.