THE VISITOR BY N.T. MORLEY

PUB. INFO: Fanny Press, 2009
FORMAT: Print and Ebook
GENRE: Erotica/BDSM
SETTING: England, not sure when
HEROINE: Cecilia Roswell
GRADE: C

From publisher: Virginal 18-year-old ingénue Cecilia Roswell is the illegitimate child of disgraced noblewoman Mary Drew, who has since been married off to the much older Lord Arthur Drew. Cecilia is shocked one afternoon to see her mother, disgraced noblewoman Mary Drew, misbehaving quite shamefully with a mysterious visitor, Mr. Beckwith. Cecilia is even more shocked when her stepfather, Lord Arthur Drew, invites Mr. Beckwith to stay at the estate for a few days. Before long, it becomes clear that Cecilia herself is the target of Mr. Beckwith’s interests, and that he intends to train her as a sexual servant through a scandalous regime of spanking, exposure, and steadily increasing erotic humiliation. As Cecilia slowly discovers her craving for these very treatments, she realizes that the life planned for her is not that of the hidden child of a noble family, for whom she is a mere inconvenience—but that of the submissive slave of a scoundrel who will stop at nothing to inveigle her into his web of sexual indulgence.

MY THOUGHTS: This is a short story, 155 pages, about a girl’s violent sexual awakening by ‘the visitor’, aka Mr. Beckwith. It was very heavy on beatings and the sex was very explicit. I’d have prefered the violence to be a little less severe. I wish Cecilia’s mother had been left out of the story. I was slightly creeped out by her participation. All that went down couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened without the mother’s help.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

CARRIE'S STORY by Molly Weatherfield

PUBLISHER: Cleis Press, 2002
GENRE: Contemporary BD/SM
NARRATION: First Person
GRADE: B

From Publisher: “I had been Jonathan’s slave for about a year when he told me he wanted to sell me at an auction. I wasn’t in any condition to respond when he told me this…”

So begins Carrie’s tale of uncompromising sexual adventure. Imagine the Story of O starring a Berkeley PhD in comparative lit (who moonlights as a bike messenger) with a penchant for irony, self-analysis, and anal sex. Set in San Francisco and the Napa Valley, Carrie’s Story takes the reader on a sexually explicit journey into a netherworld of slave auctions, training regimes, and human “ponies” preening for dressage competitions.

MY THOUGHTS: This was a disturbing story, to say the least. It wasn’t quite as sexually graphic as I’d expected and it certainly wasn’t erotic. I won’t even pretend to understand the whole ‘pony farm’ scenario or why someone would allow themselves to be abused in that way. It’s real sad and disturbing.

I never learned anything about Carrie’s childhood or how she came to be interested, then involved in, a BD/SM (bondage/discipline, domination/submission) relationship. I can’t understand why the author never let us in on it.

This book has a sequal called Safe Word. The author also writes historical romances under the name Pam Rosenthal.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.