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Thursday, July 16, 2015

ARC Review: My Obsession by Cassie Ryan


My Obsession is Brent and Sandra’s story. Sandra arrives at Brent’s dungeon in Arizona after she flees her life in New York where her last Dom took Sh!t way too far because of a screw loose issue. As in, dude has a few screws loose. Brent recognizes Sandra right away as his high school dream girl. Back in the high school years Brent was nerdy and scrawny. Sandra was an early developer and was very popular but she expressed no interest in Brent. For some reason, Brent doesn’t tell Sandra that he recognizes her from high school and instead spends the majority of the book agonizing over what he thinks her reaction to him not telling her might be. I dunno, I really didn’t get that whole thing at all. Sandra instantly has a connection with “Master Brent” and he becomes her Dom.

There are several really good sex scenes in this book with some BDSM elements for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing. I’m all about the steam so when things are as smoky as they were in this book, I can generally ignore other issues. But, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend I’m a normal reader and I actually care about the story. If that were the case, there would be some issues. The very first issue is the amount of description of the rules surrounding the Dom/sub relationship and the set up of the club in the book. There were just way too many pages of logistical information including everything from the use of safe words, to specific devices even down to describing “aftercare.” In the book Brent is supposed to be educating Sandra on the way the whole D/s thing really works but in the process, we get the run down on the manual too and it was just too much for me. If you are really curious about the D/s inner workings it might be cool for you but I just wanted them to stop talking about it and friggin do it.

The other thing in this book that really troubled me is that I know nothing about Brent or why he wanted Sandra- NOTHING. I get that she was the girl he adored from afar in high school but I didn’t get why he wanted her in the present beyond the fact that she was pretty and he was sexually attracted to her. Similarly, I don’t know what, beyond physical attraction, Sandra saw in Brent. Honestly, I just have no idea who Brent was. There is information in the book about Sandra’s background and it was mildly interesting but I didn’t understand why Brent would have found it compelling. When Brent meets Sandra she doesn’t have a job or much of a life at all, she’s pretty much starting over. So beyond living out some teen dream, I never comprehended their reasons for being together and that made me distinctly unhappy.

Perhaps because we don’t get a good picture of why this couple is together, I didn’t really feel the chemistry between them. That’s a weird thing considering how much sex there was in this book and how hot the descriptions are. We get all that fire but no smoke, if that makes sense. So the sex was enough to keep me entertained and turning the pages but at the end of the day I didn’t really care about Sandra, Brent or their relationship. This is not a bad book, the writing is good, it mostly moves at a good pace and there are some interesting parts. I’m not telling you to pass on this one, I’m just going to limit my recommendation to readers who like all the kinky stuff and don’t care as much about the romance aspect of the book.

**ARC copy provided by Publisher**

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