B+
Genre: Erotica/Erotic Romance, Romance
We’ve spoken before at the Bitchery about how reading is often a form of comfort for us. Right now, the world is – as I like to call it – a dumpster fire. Turning on the news makes me incredibly upset, with more terrifying and awful stories every morning and afternoon. So I need a good book. I’m in the middle of a couple, but it’s a struggle to maintain my interest for whatever reason. Could be them. Could be me. Regardless, I wanted something new instead of beating myself up over why I couldn’t seem to get into the current books I was reading.
Finding Master Right is a BDSM erotic romance that I had previously mentioned on an edition of Hide Your Wallet. I’m always looking for new erotica, especially when it isn’t written in first person. Those are tough for me to get into and I tend to stay away from them for the most part.
But I knew I was going to enjoy this book the moment I read the dedication: To Jason Momoa’s eyebrows.
After being introduced to the kink/BDM community by her best friend and her best friend’s husband, Kate finds herself curious about the whole thing. However, she is uncertain on where to start. To help her, Kate’s friend decides to try and play matchmaker with some of the Doms she knows during a Halloween party. The man she originally chooses for Kate winds up being a jackass, and our hero, Banner, steps in to show the guy the door. Banner and Kate get to talking and he agrees to help her with her search. He knows more about the community than Kate’s friends and he knows more Doms, especially ones he can vouch for.
While the two of them have chemistry, they realize they’re looking for two different things. Kate is hoping to explore and engage in some D/s play, while Banner is looking for more of a slave arrangement. Kate gets her hackles up about the term “slave” and it’s clear that their wants/needs don’t match up in the regard. But Banner extends to offer to help her learn some basics of BDSM while they search for “Master Right.”
And of course, we all know how this goes. Pants feelings get involved. Attachments grow.
What I truly loved about this book is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. I’ve read a lot of Cherise Sinclair’s Club Shadowlands series and those tend to be…well, serious. There’s a lot of abuse or domestic violence as a backstory and all the Doms/Dommes are brooding or stoic and very protective. Kate and Banner are friendly and they have fun. They feel more like real people and less like caricatures.They hang out with friends or spend time with family, like ordinary people do. There’s no machismo, really, or chest thumping from Banner, which I very much appreciated.
While Kate was a likeable heroine, I had some issues with her, mainly the use of the word feminism. I’m a feminist. Point blank. Full stop. I fully support what women choose to do as careers, inside the bedroom, etc, if that’s what they choose in order to be happy. However, Kate has issues reconciling identifying as a feminist and wanting to be submissive or subservient to a man in the bedroom. She thinks that by being a submissive makes her a bad feminist. And she even throws around the label “slut” as a negative connotation for wanting sex or sleeping with a guy she has amazing chemistry with, though they’ve only known each other a short time. It definitely bothered me and it rankles me to see that argument, but I recognize that it’s something real people can struggle with in a real scenario. I will also say that there is some growth from Kate on accepting her sexual needs and being a feminist.
I liked Banner much better. He’s a rich dude (aren’t they all?), but he seemed approachable and even nerdy at times. There’s a scene where he’s hanging out with one of his good friends and he keeps checking his phone, hoping to get a text from Kate. He’s not in Dom mode 24/7 and though I hesitate to label him as a Beta (can they be a Beta and still be a Dom? Food for thought), he’s caring and attentive. Though he comes to care for Kate, he knows she doesn’t want to be a “slave” and he refuses to push the issue, even when he could try and convince her. He fully recognizes that Kate is a grown woman and knows her own mind. There’s no, “I secretly knows she wants it.” And with questionable BDSM romances floating out there in the ether, Finding Master Right is a great, healthy depiction, especially with a character who is new to the kink.
The main source of conflict is internal, which I happen to prefer. It’s all about how the hero and heroine overcome their own relationship issues to make things work. Admittedly, the main issue between the two became a little repetitive and, of course, could have been solved by a thorough conversation — though it wouldn’t be a romance without some dramatic separation to draw them back together.
Aside from the plot, I loved the secondary characters: all the family and friends of Kate and Banner. They had personalities and were intergral to the plot. Banner’s two best friends are also the heroes in the next two books. However, I’m going to issue a trigger warning for an event in the book regarding Banner’s younger brother, Rook, who happens to be gay.
Banner’s brother, Rook, is a gay teen and is struggling with coming out to his family (i.e. his mom and sister, since Banner already knows). He has a boyfriend who is also in the closet, so to speak. Some kids at school threaten to expose their relationship to their families and Rook takes a lot of pills. He does survive, but I know suicide is a very sensitive subject for a lot of people, myself included.
There’s also a sweet conversation where Rook hopes to be able to marry someday and I smiled knowing that now, he could marry someone if he chose to do so. This book was obviously written before the Supreme Court’s recent ruling and knowing the future, or in this case, the present, was lovely.
Overall though, it was a great way to spend a few hours and I read the thing in one night. I know BDSM romance isn’t everyone’s bag, but the levity of the characters and their exchanges gave me all sorts of warm fuzzies that had little to do with their bedroom activities.
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Amanda, I’m not one for BDSM romances, but your review had me adding Finding Master Right on my wish list. I recently read Without Restraint by Angela Knight where the hero is also a caring and attentive Dom. He and the heroine get really kinky and end up having regular sex in a bed! Beyond the chemistry between the hero and heroine, there is a suspense element. I ended up staying up way too late one night to finish the book.
@LauraL: I actually have mixed feelings about Without Restraint. The actual romance was fine, but I didn’t like the portrayal of mental health from the part of the hero’s mother. And the whole suspense plot with gun violence and the villain hoping to create racial divisions to throw off the investigation bothered me given current news headlines.
Can SBTB host a massive rant post called “OMG-That’s-Not-Feminism”? I was reading a book about a woman naturalist who traveled the world and referred to sex as “light exercise” once a page. Every woman was a Christan prude who the heroine decided couldn’t possibly be happy. I stopped reading when I realized that either the love of a “true man” would make sex so good she’d renounce her ways or I’d have to sit through her insinuating that women who don’t have sex or only want it with their husbands are somehow deficient. It sounds more like this gal worked through it, which is nice. I do like when prejudices are knowledge in the main characters and then they grow from there.
@Nemo: I feel like feminism is an internal argument that happens a lot in BDSM romance where the heroine is the submissive. I get why that struggle happens as feminism is often misinterpreted as women being better than men, and being “independent.” But it’s wrong. And I know that’s a strong statement. Being the sub, whether you’re a man or a woman, doesn’t make you lesser.
Hah, at first I thought this was going to be a review of L A Witt’s Finding Master Right – a bdsm mm that I love and is one of my comfort re-reads. But this one sounds good too.
Have you read any Delphine Dryden? I really liked When in Rio – fun bdsm with non-angst ridden grown ups.
@Cleo: I haven’t, but I know Sarah has read some of Dryden’s stuff and liked it!
Speaking of Ms Dryden, yes, Betas can be Doms. Check out her The Theory of Attraction.
Ivan is a professor who probably places on the high-functioning side of the Autism Spectrum. He needs things spelled out because nuances are beyond him. He also very much needs to be in control. Camilla is his slightly stalkerish neighbor (she likes him and watches him) and when he asks for her help regarding a college function, they discover they have chemistry together.
ToA is book one of the Science of Temptation series. The other two books were ok, but the first was great. Though, of course, ymmv.
I actually have yet to read Rio, so thanks for that rec.
Ok, just came back from Amazon and am reeling from stickersock. When In Rio is ppbk only and starts at $106.21. Excuse me? I won’t even pay those prices for HC 1st editions, so yeah, gonna give this one a pass. I’ll add it to my wishlist and maybe one day they’ll digitize it.
Amanda’s right – I really liked the Science of Temptation series a lot, especially the way that characters were sexually dominant, submissive, or switch, but it wasn’t a constant state in their personal and professional lives as well. They were nuanced and I appreciated that part of their characters a great deal because the “alpha in the bedroom, alpha everywhere else, dominate dominate dominate” monotony gets to me.
Hmm…Ok, I’m going to say something I know is often perceived as unacceptable: I do have problems with the intersection of my understanding of feminism, and
BDSMBDSM romance literature. For me feminism is not about women being superior to men (although we totally are!), but about equality and parity with men, and having the right to choose – education, jobs (lawyer, cop, doctor, waitress, homemaker, soldier, librarian – whatever), partners (heroes, losers, and every shade in between). If the heterosexual BDSM genre was roughly 50-50 between men and women being the submissive, then I would be only mildly squicked out by the whole “submissive” side of things. But it’s not. Based on an entirely scientific (not) eyeball of the genre, around 90% of the books in this genre are male D and female s. Quite a few of these, as far as I can tell, have a billionaire hero and a secretary/student/dependent-on-the-hero-for-her-job heroine. So along with D/s sexual power dynamics, we have the normal gender, as well as economic and status power dynamics. That’s too much for me – there seems to me to be nowhere for the heroine to be equal to the hero in these stories, and as a modern woman I just can’t wrap my head around it. Why are we writing ourselves down in so many of our own stories?I read this book and liked it quite a lot. The feminist musings didn’t bother me because they fit into the heroine’s inner journey realistically. She was just discovering that she was a submissive, and part of her process was absorbing that fact into her identity as an independent woman and a feminist. Plus the next book is about a woman who is comfortable in her submission and a hero who hides his wealth after the heroine tells him she dislikes wealthy people, so I suspect that the series as a whole won’t stick to the young ingenue who doesn’t know she’s submissive/older man in charge dynamic.
The only part I didn’t like is that a lot of the tension seemed to stem from the use of the word “slave”, which the hero never really bothered to define for the heroine. If someone you have the hots for tells you he wants a slave and you’re new to BDSM, isn’t your next question, “What do you mean by that?”
@kitkat9000 – What!?! Ouch. I bought When in Rio as an ebook a few years ago for a normal ebook price, but that was before Ellora’s Cave self-imploded. I hope she can get the rights back and self-pub it, because I really enjoyed it.
I liked the dude but this book….agh, how many times can you say this is what a sub does this is what a dom does? And yes, he needed to take her out on a date. The sexual tension was there. That part was great but the repeated mentions annoyed me.
@Diana: That didn’t bother me so much as the hero is technically supposed to be teaching the heroine about how this whole thing works.
@RonaeleSha: I think it boils down to personal beliefs and practices. I don’t believe that submitting sexually to a partner is in any way diminishing, nor do I believe it undermines one’s independence. Yes, I am a feminist and no, this would not weaken it.
The whole point of feminism is to give us the freedom to choose our lives, and every aspect within them, not just to provide parity with men.
But most importantly, it allows us to choose without having our choices thrown back at us or ridiculed. Not by men and especially not by other women.
Feminism allows us to choose: Want to work? Go ahead! In what field? A traditionally male-dominated one? Go for it! A traditionally female field instead? Kudos! Want an education? Get that degree! Or not! Get married? Mazel tov! Not marry? Brava! Stay home and have kids? Whatever makes you happy! Stay home and not have kids? Or do whatever and not have kids? Enjoy your child-free lives and homes!
This also includes being our happiest sexual selves and if submitting to a partner brings greater satisfaction and release or just makes you happy, guess what? Submit to your heart’s content. Or if domination would make you happier, be the best Mistress you can be. But above all else, CHOOSE what makes YOU happy.
My only objection with any of it is when the relationships are dysfunctional and/or dangerous and yet they’re still considered sexy or ideal. These stories hurt us because they normalize abuse, presenting it in a romantic fashion when there is absolutely nothing romantic about it at all.
That said, I believe there is also some push-back as a result of the years of exhortations for equality and a fair amount of fantasizing what it would be like to just let go and let someone else be in charge.
Still, it’s fiction and therefore not dogma but I believe that authors owe it to their readers to portray unhealthy relationships as such and to show their characters striving for and attaining healthy ones.
I recently read a book by Joey W. Hill and though I liked the story overall, had problems with the contempt displayed by the doms towards the subs. This makes no sense to me because, hello! with no one willing to be submissive just what exactly would you be dominant of? In reality, the power lies with the sub- they have the right to stop play by using a safeword.
However, as with all things, ymmv.