Ellora’s Cave, $5.99, ISBN 978-1419916298
Contemporary Erotica, 2008
Eight years ago, Tempest Montgomery picked father over her true love John Cress. Okay, that comes out wrong if you have a perverted mind, and I hope you don’t have one, because this is a genteel, classy website and we like to keep things decent here. Her father is bossy, domineering, tyrannical even, but she apparently loves daddy and will do anything for him… until daddy dearest wants her to marry this nice, supportive guy that, unfortunately, doesn’t make her want to put out to him at all. There is only one man she wants to put out to, so she rushes to John and tells him that she’s getting married. He’s like oh no, she’s mine, no other man is going to do that BDSM for Dummies thing on her but him, so he does that just.
Hence, she finally finds a stronger man that will do all the thinking and deciding for her. Content and happy, Tempest lays back happily ever after, concerned only about her next orgasm. Oh, and John assures her that one day, her daddy will accept that she is really his special daughter, and until then, she only has to spread her legs and pout with joy.
That’s Brynn Paulin’s Gentle Control in a nutshell. It ticks off so many items on the How to Pander to Readers checklist, from the heroine’s physical appearance to this sweet fantasy that a woman’s happiness means never having to have any agency over her life again. Now, I get the appeal of being treated like a princess and never having to worry about anything other than when the prince will come—ahem—but still, when the author presents the story in this manner, it’s not very interesting to me. In fact, the whole thing feels like a hastily put-together excuse for an author to sell a story to Ellora’s Cave. Of course, that is understandable, as back then this publisher was said to be a gold mine, so every author wanted to slap together something to be sold there. I get that. We all need money, and it’d be hypocritical to roll up my eyes at authors that do whatever they can to make the precious moolah.
On the other hand, the author could at least take time to develop some interesting emotional drama after inserting some half-baked premise as a flimsy way to deflect accusations of the story being porn without plot. In fact, I’d probably enjoy this one so much better if it had been something of that sort. Maybe Tempest is just a woman that wants one last itch to scratch with a fabulous ex that isn’t the marrying kind in her opinion, so she hops on a cab and then onto the ex. That would have been a far more believable premise, in my opinion. At the very least, I’d more fun with it than this one, which is just the story of a woman hopping from one male authoritative figure to another.
So, file this one as another addition to my growing pile of “Meh. Who cares?” stuff that are read, reviewed, and promptly forgotten.
