Incognito: Soren’s Surrender by Anna Leigh Keaton
Soren's Surrender is part of the Incognito series by Anna Leigh Keaton, an het BDSM series till now, and since it's more than a year than I didn't read an het romance and BDSM is usually not my main choice, you can say that I bought this book purely out of curiosity, to see how a pretty good ebooks het author (given how many releases she had in the past years) would deal with an M/M romance. Well the answer is pretty good.
James is a 35 years old gay "virgin"... please pay attention to the gay word, since James is a divorced man (he married at 22 years old and his marriage lasted 10 years), and the reason of his divorce was that he finally realized that he was gay. All right maybe he was a little late, but he was raised by a very autoritive father and being a very good boy, he never questioned his father demands. Drop school before college: all right dad. Take on the family business: all right dad. Marry the daughter of a family friend: all right dad. Take car of you grandfather: all right dad. But when his parents suddenly die and his marriage fails, James finds himself with a store he didn't want and a grandfather he deeply loves but that dementia senile makes almost impossible to deal with. After some cautious online research he arrives to Incognito, a private BDSM club, believing that what he wants his a Master, someone who orders him around, since James seems unable to be alone. But probably James only needs someone who loves him, truly him, for the first time in his life.
Soren is out of a bad relationship with a pet who dumped him for a wealthier sugar daddy. Actually Soren is not a real Dom, according to me. He doesn't like his man to be too submissive and above all he doesn't like for them to be dependent. But when he notices James at the club, with his sad puppy eyes, he can't resist: Soren is not a heartless man, and he can't use the man and then dump him like all the other, James needs a gentle touch and a loving man... but Soren is not sure to be ready to be that man. Even more when he discovers that James is inexperience, not only on the Master and pet's relationship, but on all what happens between two men.
I like the story: James is a very well plotted character, with a background and a story behind him. Also the supporting characters around him are interesting, some more developed, like his grandfather, and some a little less, but still gave him an all around definition. Soren too is interesting, even if maybe a little less developed: there are some interesting points, his family, his work... that I would like to be more deepened, but all in all I like him. Soren is not a real Dom and James is not a real submissive, so they are good together: no one of them needs to change what they really are to match the other desires.
http://www.cobblestone-press.com/catalog/books/soren.htm
Amazon Kindle: Soren's Surrender (Incognito 10)
Publisher: Cobblestone Press, LLC (February 19, 2011)
Waiting Reading List:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=waiting reading list&view=elisa.rolle