Title: Wrapped Up in Chains
Author: Cindy Sutherland
Genre: BDSM
Length: Novel (250 pages)
ISBN: 978-1-62798-569-7
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (March 14th 2014)
Heat Level: Explicit
Heart Rating: ♥♥ 2 Hearts
Reviewer: Thommie
Blurb: Devon West is a professional Dom who runs his own club, doesn’t believe in romance, and has never been in a long-term relationship. All this changes when he rescues Chase Mackenzie.
Chase is a runaway who has been kept as a slave since he was sixteen. Now twenty-three, he’s still innocent and sweet despite being severely abused and left behind by his Dom.
When Devon finds out that the man who held Chase hostage is the same man who hurt him terribly when he started learning about the sub/Dom lifestyle, he knows he has to keep Chase safe.
Spoiled rich boy and sociopath James Kingston is obsessed with Devon. He’s convinced Devon would be his perfect sub and Devon only thinks he’s a Dom because he needs proper discipline. Losing Chase to Devon is like rubbing salt in the wound, and he’s determined to get them both under his thumb. This time, Chase may need to rescue Devon.
Purchase Link: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4767
Review: This book was one of those that while it started well for me, simply didn’t make it up my expectations. The story had the potential to be excellent but it wasn’t in the end.
To be more specific I think the entire way Chase’s profiling and action/reaction was written was a bit unrealistic. His abuse was overcome in a bit of a haste and without being detailed.
A lot of information was missing and while the author used his PoV at some point, when it was most required in order to literally grab our attention with his feelings/emotions we saw it mostly from Devon’s PoV.
Devon on the other hand was a mystery, period. He was supposed to be Kingston’s sub (while in training to become a Dom) before it went al to Hell and Kingston found Chase. So in the matter of 7 years he became the town’s most famous Dom, built Mystique that became the most prominent BDSM Club, became rich and managed to create a whole big family of friends… Yeah, something didn’t add and it showed. In addition, he kept going on and on about this time finally making Kingston pay, but in truth he had no real power to do anything.
What grated the most about the story is that there was serious abuse and criminal activity that was never dealt the proper way. Devon’s employee literally beats a client bloody – because at that point, Chase was a client in the club – and he is simply let go, fired, no mention of calling the police on that? What the Hell? The manager goes on stealing from the club and he is fired with an addition 5k so he can keep low..? No prosecuting a criminal that kept captive and enslaved a minor for 7 years…? Really? And I’m not even going about how overboard that “villain” went. Sometimes, something need to end before they become too much.
What I think was worse for me in this book though was the abuse of the word “adorable”. I think I’ll have serious issues reading/using that word again. It is too much when someone reads a certain word every other paragraph. It becomes sickening no matter how sweet the word might be. The fact that the entire read was either too shocking or either too sweet, jumping from absolute light to grimy darkness in the blink of an eye was also disorienting. No, didn’t make for intense, it rather grated, at least me.
Overall, this was merely an okay read. Having read similar stories that were exquisitely well thought and well written I cannot give this one a better rating.