Farm Boy Press, $2.99, ISBN 978-1-941641-46-0
Contemporary Erotica, 2019

San Francisco Longing is the first entry in an actual trilogy—yes, the story continues throughout three installments—and it features a male Dom and a female sub in grandma’s favorite BDSM club, the White Orchid. I know, I know, fifty shades of oh my god, how come that horse isn’t dead yet. Still, people have to be buying for the authors to keep writing, and my personal reason for helping to keep that trend going is that I haven’t read anything by the author in a while and I thought maybe it’s time I see what she is doing these days.

“I’m not…”

“Here to play,” he finished for her.

That wasn’t what she’d been about to say. She’d been about to confess. I’m not a member, I’m not a submissive. I’ve just read some erotica and have a healthy fantasy life.

Her name is Christiana. I don’t recall reading her full name, but maybe the author is saving that for a later story, perhaps for a reveal that will shock us, such as maybe the heroine’s real name is actually something mundane like Christiana Smith. On a normal day, Chris is an engineer working for the city council, and when the story opens, she is inspecting an old warehouse that may need to be demolished if its age had made the building unsound. Lo and behold, she discovers that there is an actual, secret BDSM club in there.

Naturally, she does what every sane woman would do in her shoes: she puts on a sexy slip of a lingerie, gets assumed to be a sub by other subs because clearly, this place is so top secret that even its security measures and its ability to keep track of its staff and members are near undetectable. That’s how she meets James Nolen. He has a penis, which automatically means that he is important enough to have his full name shared with the reader—we all need a full name to call out when we have vivid dreams of being the heroine, after all, lifting our rear end for the hero to masterfully insert the butt plug. Oh James Nolen, conqueror of every woman’s no-man’s-land!

If you can overlook that admittedly hard-to-believe premise, what happens next is Christiana allowing herself to enjoy living out her secret fantasies, perhaps just this once with a handsome and wealthy bloke. You know what they say: sexy money gets the heroine’s honey, anytime.

San Francisco Longing is something I don’t come across often: the Dom here has a sense of humor and can crack a smile in the heroine’s presence. Most of these BDSM romances have the heroes be so dour and whinge-heavy that they often come off more like that annoying Sunday school teacher that wields the rod a bit too freely for everyone’s own good. James, on the other hand, comes off like a pretty normal guy—well, pretty normal for a loaded SOB, that is—that just happens to like his women accessorized with collars and butt plugs. The presence of relatable social dynamics between James and Christiana makes this story a refreshing kind of BDSM romp, because for once, I feel like I’m reading normal people doing that chains and collars thing. I like that.

I am deducting one oogie off this, though, because I actually feel disappointed a bit when I reach the cliffhanger ending. Oh, I have no issues with the ending being a cliffhanger, as this is, after all, part of a series in every sense of the word. Instead, I feel tad let down because the story could have easily ended on a high note with James and Christiana deciding to explore what they had a little bit more thoroughly in the future—no future installments needed. However, because the author wants to continue the story into a trilogy, I get our heroine basically going EEEEEE for some reason and rushing off into some clearly unwise situation, while our hero somehow develops some kind of Spider-sense and realizes that Christiana is somehow in danger. Maybe he has implanted something up her rectum that can transmit a bat signal to him, I don’t know.

At any rate, the story ends on a rather contrived cliffhanger that feels more like a means to prolong the series than an organic development. Who knows, maybe the next installment will make up for this, but for now, I can only hope that it won’t be as contrived as the last few pages of this one!