Title: The Subs Club
Series: The Subs Club, #1
Author: J.A. Rock
Genre: BDSM/Contemporary
Length: 297 pages
Publisher: Riptide Publishing (December 5th 2015)
Heat Level: Moderate
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ 5 Hearts
Blurb: A year ago, my best friend Hal died at the hands of an incompetent “dom.” So I started the Subs Club, a private blog where submissives can review Doms and call out the douche bags.
A perfect example of the kind of arrogant asshole I mean? The Disciplinarian. He has a pornstache. He loves meat, stoicism, America, and real discipline. And he thinks subs exist to serve him.
But . . . not everything about him is awful. His Davy Crockett act just seems like a cover for his fear of intimacy, and part of me wants to show him it’s okay to get close to people. And, I mean, sue me, but I have fantasized about real discipline. Not role-play, but like, Dave, you’re gonna be thirty in four years and you still work in a mall; get your ass in gear or I’ll spank it.
Not that I’d ever trust anyone with that kind of control.
I’m gonna redefine “battle of wills” for the Disciplinarian. Or I’m gonna bone him. It’s hard to say.
—Dave
ISBN: 978-1-62649-343-8
Product Link: http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/the-subs-club
Reviewer: Aerin
Review: Sooooo….I swore off BDSM books for a little while. And then this one happened. I have no clue what got me to request it, but I was lucky enough to receive it the very next day, so I started it.
The first two chapters were a mindfuck for me, because I had a hard time wrapping my head around all the characters, and whether they were male or female. I love unique names, but in this case, every time I was sure someone was a male, it ended up being a female and vice versa. Thankfully all my confusion cleared after chapter two, and then my enjoyment of this book finally began. Sort of….
Here’s the deal…I wasn’t sure I was going to like this entirely. I knew I was going to like Dave the sub and his friends, because I warmed up to them almost instantly. But I wasn’t sure this book was going to get an emotional reaction out of me.
Being in Dave’s head was a delight from the very beginning. He’s a mouthy, disrespectful, conniving, bratty sub, who loved nothing more than to push his Doms to get a reaction out of them. What came out of his mouth was rarely the same thing that was going through his head, and being in his head was just as delightful as it was emotionally draining. Yep, silly me thinking this book wasn’t going to get an emotional reaction out of me.
Dave and his friends are still struggling to accept the death of their deal friend Hal during a BDSM scene gone wrong, and their worry about other people finding the same faith gives birth to The Subs Club, an online Dom rating website, where subs from all over the world can tell-all about the Doms they played with.
Once Dave becomes fixated with a Dom called the Disciplinarian, his real emotional struggle begins, and that’s when my emotional involvement went from 0 to 100 in about three seconds.
The Disciplinarian is, “In his forties, probably. Big-boned, a little paunchy even. Fucking pornstache, which normally would have been a deal breaker, but his was combined with some additional rugged facial hair that mitigated the situation. And he was mountain man-ish enough that the ’stache seemed not only right, but also necessary. His face was wide, his jaw square, and he wore his light-brown hair in an uneven crew cut.
I was digging the long-sleeved polo, jeans, and loafers in a yeah, daddy kind of way. He caught me staring, and his pornstache twitched slightly. ”
Hilarious description, isn’t it? Yeah, David was a delightfully hilarious character, while also being extremely complex and multilayered; one minute you think you know him, and the next he only proves you wrong.
Thoughts like,
“Your facial hair is stupid, but I still want your penis inside me.”
“And then one day they’ll make our babies in a test tube and we can feed each other ice cream on the beach while our children play in the sand and then we can grow old together and fart in bed during reruns of Community.
But, like, I get it. You’re straight, and it’s cool.”
“Shut up, behave, and show him you can be good. No, wait, what the fuck, don’t change for him. Be who you are. Be a mouthy little cockwad. Give it to him. Challenge him. Make him sorry he signed on for six weeks of you.”
got a good laugh out of me, while others brought tears to my eyes and put lumps in my throat.
“I imagined doing that thing from movies and TV where I’d turn and Hal would be sitting next to me. He’d be a snarky ghost, commenting on my application fails; picking up random objects in my room and being like, Wow, you haven’t changed at all, have you? And I’d be all, What’s it like being dead? And he’d say something bittersweet and ghostly like, Well, Dave, you ain’t lived until you’ve died.
But when I turned he wasn’t there. I tried talking to a photo of him on my desk, but it just felt awkward. ”
“I think there’s a balance.”
“I know there is. I had it, before Hal. And now I’m so fucking paranoid.”
“You think something’s going to happen to you?”
“That’s the weird thing. It’s not even about me. I don’t, like, fear for my own life. I fear for theirs.”
“Whose?”
“My friends. I just think, ‘What if I lose them too?’”
“D hated me, Miles was out of the club, Gould was mad at me, and probably everyone in the community knew I was behind the review blog and wanted “me to die.
I couldn’t control how they felt.
I couldn’t control who lived or died or fell in love or got hurt . . . anything.
Give it up.
I found myself in Tranquility, staring at the bench where Hal had died. ”Fuck you,” I said to the bench. “Seriously, fuck you.”
I kicked it.
And then I kicked it again, because kicking it felt wonderful.”
Seriously, this dude broke my heart! And I loved it! I loved his character to pieces, especially his interactions and relationship with his friends Gould, Kamen and Miles; talk about amazing secondary characters! I couldn’t pick who my favorite was, but if I was forced I’d probably have to go with Kamen, because his songs freaking rocked, and made me laugh out loud! “He started playing a jaunty acoustic version of Pink’s “Try,” and sang:
“Where there is a David there is gonna be a cane
“Where there is a cane, someone’s bound to get hurt
“But just because it hurts doesn’t mean you’re gonna die
“You gotta bend over and—”
“Okay, Kamen, thank you.” Yes Kamen, thank you!!!!!
David’s relationship with D was refreshing and delightful, because it had development and progression, passion and feelings, and they weren’t perfect! I didn’t think it was going to work for me, but it SO DID! D was a Dom, but he was also a human, a person whose feelings came through loud and clear. And `i truly believe J.A did an amazing job writing him.
I can’t wait for the next book, because after seeing the title I believe it’s going to be Miles’s story, and he’s totally turned mysterious on us towards the end. I honestly can’t figure out how this book snuck up on me, but I went from enjoying it to loving it, and I can’t tell you when that happened.
* I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review through http://mmgoodbookreviews.wordpress.com *