I picked this book up for a ridiculous reason: a misreading of the title. I read Dom-Con – a convention of doms and I found that idea hilarious. That notion was quickly dispelled when I read the cover again followed shortly by the blurb. I’m thankful for that silly mistake of mine because I had a lot of fun.

Rae is a total newbie to the BDSM world when she rocks up to a BDSM club looking for a dom. She’s given the name of Sunny by the staff member who welcomes her. There she meets the General, an experienced dom who can’t tear his eyes away from Sunny. They play out a pretty mild scene but it rocks their world. Sunny freaks out a bit and runs away from the club. The General is frustrated that he can’t provide aftercare.

Come Monday morning, who is the new consultant at the matchmaking app that Rae works at? None other than Grant, aka the General. Yup! If you’re thinking that office supplies are about to be used creatively, you’d be right!

Grant’s whole thing is that he doesn’t do long term anything. Doesn’t live in a house for long, doesn’t do long term relationships, doesn’t even have a pet. None of it. He makes a deal with Sunny that he’ll be her dom for the three weeks he’s contracted to be a consultant.

You can have a great deal of kinky sex in three weeks. And there is a lot of sex in this book. What I appreciated, though, was that each sex scene pushed the characters closer together. More intimacy, more emotional development, more orgasms. Yes, orgasms and emotional development are directly proportional. So for me the sex scenes were exciting primarily because of how much those scenes led the characters to reveal more and more of themselves emotionally. Such vulnerability!

One of the ways in which Rae grows is learning to say no to people. This is something that Grant is adamant about as her dom. There is also some great fat rep: Rae is described as ‘plump’ but in the sex scenes, Grant will kiss her ‘soft belly’ and her curvy ‘dimpled’ bum. It was clear in each sex scene that this was sex with a fat woman and I loved it.

There is more plot than just two people growing closer through sex. Grant is actually employed as a security consultant because the CEO’s dirtbag of a son-in-law claims there’s been a data leak and that he should take over from his incompetent mother in law. So there’s that. There’s one particular plot thread that doesn’t make sense in all this. It’s not huge and maybe the fault is mine for reading too late at night, but suffice to say the plot of the attempted overthrow doesn’t make 100% sense.

The staff at the matchmaking app are deeply unconventional as is the CEO. This is not a profit-over-people workplace. I really enjoyed this part of the story because a functional happy workplace in which staff are happy and fulfilled and the work they do is good is very fun to read about.

Is there a third act break up?

So while I was frustrated by the third act and by the plot line that didn’t make sense, I was delighted by everything else. I really enjoyed reading Dom-Com and am very happy to recommend it to the Bitchery!