Review: For Real, by Alexis Hall
Jan. 21st, 2021 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
militantlyromanticThis book is why I have my Kugel Rule. It's a contemporary, BDSM, with a significant age gap wherein one of the partners in nineteen. On paper, this should not be my thing even just slightly.
This is the single erotic romance I've ever read, and certainly the single published BDSM work I've ever encountered that made me think, "Oh, this author actually has met humans who have kinky sex. And possibly humans who have relationships with other humans who have kinky sex."
I should be open about the fact that it undoubtedly helps a lot that both protagonists are male. I sincerely doubt I could have read this if this had been a male/female pairing, regardless of dynamic.
The basic premise of this work is that Laurie, who is thirty-seven and finally getting over a truly traumatic break up with a partner he'd had since college until about six years earlier, has been going to the kink clubs with a couple of his friends mostly to find a pick-up play and satisfy basic bodily urges. When we meet him, his friends, Sam and Grace, have dragged him out to a club night. Laurie is Not Feeling It.
Couple of shout outs here: I love that this book recognizes that a club is always going to be zoned in a warehousing district. And is going to be a converted warehouse itself. And that you can't really just walk in off the street, there are certain memberships or rules enforced to somewhat police the community. Dungeon Monitors also come up, which is great. There's also an awareness that people actually do just sit around and shoot the shit at these clubs. Just, in general, this felt roughly one billion times more accurate than basically any other scene description I've ever read.
Anyhoodle. Enter Toby. Toby is nineteen, aware that he's what I call "vanilla incapable", aka, someone with zero ability to get anything out of vanilla sex, painfully aware that being dominant at that age is often laughed at due to a lack of life experience, and just wanting to see what he can see.
Laurie actually approaches Toby to tell him to get out, that he's too damn young to be there. And Toby gives him the most beautiful what for. He just stands his ground and makes it clear that he might not know what he's doing, but he knows what he wants. And Laurie is enchanted by how sincere Toby is. By the depth of his awareness that this is just what he is. So, for the first time since his ex left, instead of bottoming, which he has done plenty of, he submits.
It's not fancy. He's on his knees because that's where Toby wants him. There's not even really a lot of touching. It is incredibly spot-on about how D/s dynamics work when they do.
D/s and sex between these two might be fumbling and uncertain, given Toby's age and lack of experience, but the chemistry is just right. (And the sex never feels like just sex, which is an extremely hard thing to make happen as a writer.)
Everything else between them is complicated as all get out, and not in a manufactured way. As someone who knows how hard it is to find kink-compatible humans, I very much understood Laurie's hesitations about seeing the relationship as dating or real. In fact, the least realistic element of the book to me was how smoothly his friends supported the relationship. Since I enjoyed that, I forgave it, but the truth is, especially at nineteen and thirty-seven, people judge.
And Toby's not wrong about Laurie's commitment issues. Even Toby's inability to just talk about things the way he should at a certain point is understandable, because he might be a mature nineteen, but he's nineteen.
However, both of them are such fully-fleshed out people, with lives and concerns and needs of their own, that the emotional ups and downs feel entirely natural. At one point Laurie tells Toby that couples fight, it's in how you recover from it that matters, and it's so elementary and so unbelievably true.
Honestly, the only drawback to this book is that it's currently only available through the 'zon because of Riptide being Terrible People. Worth it. Totally, 100% worth it.
This is the single erotic romance I've ever read, and certainly the single published BDSM work I've ever encountered that made me think, "Oh, this author actually has met humans who have kinky sex. And possibly humans who have relationships with other humans who have kinky sex."
I should be open about the fact that it undoubtedly helps a lot that both protagonists are male. I sincerely doubt I could have read this if this had been a male/female pairing, regardless of dynamic.
The basic premise of this work is that Laurie, who is thirty-seven and finally getting over a truly traumatic break up with a partner he'd had since college until about six years earlier, has been going to the kink clubs with a couple of his friends mostly to find a pick-up play and satisfy basic bodily urges. When we meet him, his friends, Sam and Grace, have dragged him out to a club night. Laurie is Not Feeling It.
Couple of shout outs here: I love that this book recognizes that a club is always going to be zoned in a warehousing district. And is going to be a converted warehouse itself. And that you can't really just walk in off the street, there are certain memberships or rules enforced to somewhat police the community. Dungeon Monitors also come up, which is great. There's also an awareness that people actually do just sit around and shoot the shit at these clubs. Just, in general, this felt roughly one billion times more accurate than basically any other scene description I've ever read.
Anyhoodle. Enter Toby. Toby is nineteen, aware that he's what I call "vanilla incapable", aka, someone with zero ability to get anything out of vanilla sex, painfully aware that being dominant at that age is often laughed at due to a lack of life experience, and just wanting to see what he can see.
Laurie actually approaches Toby to tell him to get out, that he's too damn young to be there. And Toby gives him the most beautiful what for. He just stands his ground and makes it clear that he might not know what he's doing, but he knows what he wants. And Laurie is enchanted by how sincere Toby is. By the depth of his awareness that this is just what he is. So, for the first time since his ex left, instead of bottoming, which he has done plenty of, he submits.
It's not fancy. He's on his knees because that's where Toby wants him. There's not even really a lot of touching. It is incredibly spot-on about how D/s dynamics work when they do.
D/s and sex between these two might be fumbling and uncertain, given Toby's age and lack of experience, but the chemistry is just right. (And the sex never feels like just sex, which is an extremely hard thing to make happen as a writer.)
Everything else between them is complicated as all get out, and not in a manufactured way. As someone who knows how hard it is to find kink-compatible humans, I very much understood Laurie's hesitations about seeing the relationship as dating or real. In fact, the least realistic element of the book to me was how smoothly his friends supported the relationship. Since I enjoyed that, I forgave it, but the truth is, especially at nineteen and thirty-seven, people judge.
And Toby's not wrong about Laurie's commitment issues. Even Toby's inability to just talk about things the way he should at a certain point is understandable, because he might be a mature nineteen, but he's nineteen.
However, both of them are such fully-fleshed out people, with lives and concerns and needs of their own, that the emotional ups and downs feel entirely natural. At one point Laurie tells Toby that couples fight, it's in how you recover from it that matters, and it's so elementary and so unbelievably true.
Honestly, the only drawback to this book is that it's currently only available through the 'zon because of Riptide being Terrible People. Worth it. Totally, 100% worth it.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-25 01:16 am (UTC)Have you read any of the other stories in the series? Or is it a "series" in the loosest possible sense and thus irrelevant?
no subject
Date: 2021-01-25 01:57 am (UTC)