Reviewed by Amber
TITLE: Submission
SERIES: Submit for Redemption #1
AUTHOR: Kathryn Sparrow & Robert Cage
PUBLISHER: Storm Moon Press
LENGTH: 292 pages
BLURB:
When Army Ranger Captain Everett Palmer enters gay BDSM club Cuffed Links, he is seeking brutal punishment for what he perceives to be an unforgivable failure: allowing an entire squad of men under his command to die while he worked to defuse a bomb at his base. Everett initially wants only pure pain, which professional interrogator and jaded British aristocrat Colonel Phineas Bainbridge is more than prepared to give. Their meeting, however, is not at all by chance.
Phineas has been contracted to coerce a false confession from Everett, implicating the captain in planting the bomb. Phineas has tortured many men in the past, but there is something different about Everett Palmer, a man whose sheer purity of soul causes the colonel to question his every selfish, devious act and legion of war crimes.
In Submit for Redemption: Book One – Submission, erotic romance and spiritual redemption come from the most unexpected places – from the seedy extremes of a smoke-laden, neon-drenched bondage den to the tropical, hedonistic pleasures of Phineas’ private Greek island.
On this unbidden psychosexual odyssey, Everett and Phineas find exactly what they don’t expect: a chance to redeem their troubled souls and fulfil their every romantic ideal. But the clock is ticking. The deeper Phineas falls in love with Everett, the harder it becomes to finish his assigned task. If he succeeds, the consequences may be far more explosive than he ever anticipated.
REVIEW:
First and foremost, I will be reading book 2 of this series, without a doubt. This book ends on probably the biggest cliffhanger imaginable and I have to know what will happen. There is no HEA or HFN in this book, there consider yourself warned. I don’t know, however, if I would read book 2 if this story did end with a HFN, hence my quandary.
With that being said I have to voice my immense frustration with this story. It started slow, then got pretty good, then slow, slow, boring, good, great, fantastic, then slow again, then great, and so on. This went on for the duration of the entire book. I felt like I was getting whiplash.
It needs to be said that these two authors can write. The attention to detail and vast descriptions of things, and settings really showed they did extensive research to make everything more realistic. The parts of this story that were amazing were really friggin good. But the parts that dragged were difficult to get through. To the point of me having to force myself to pick the book back up.
Another aspect that left me puzzled is the fact that the blurb leads you to believe this is going to be heavy BDSM, and not just a little bondage it’s clear that Everett likes and wants pain but I think there were maybe 2 BDSM scenes in the whole story.
To summarize, Everett Palmer is a US Army Ranger Captain. Recently he was in a situation where an IED that he was responsible for diffusing exploded killing several soldiers. He feels immense guilt and in order to deal with it he likes pain inflicted on him. To get that fix he goes to a BDSM club where he meets Master Dom Colonel Phineas Bainbridge, who also goes by “Finny” or “Reggie.” We know all this is a set up at this point considering Finny’s current assignment is Everett, but Finny wasn’t expecting to care for let alone fall in love with Everett, which he does. After the initial meeting it’s a whirlwind romance. Finny is disgustingly rich and a Duke to boot. He sweeps Everett off his feet, takes him to a tropical paradise, introduces him to other couples in the lifestyle, tries to win him over, he also expresses to Everett his desire to enter in a D/s relationship with him. Everett believing himself to be straight hesitates for a bit when it comes to the sexual aspect of their encounter but Finny again wins him over. The sex between these two is hot, there chemistry is undeniable.
During all of this however there are several machinations going on. From Finny’s compound in Afghanistan to the workings of underground black ops groups, it all gets a bit confusing towards the end. There’s just so much going on at all times you get a little lost.
The end was an “OH MY GOD!!!” jaw dropping scenario hence my need to know what happens in book 2. Overall this was just ok for me but like I said I’m very interested in continuing the series.
RATING: 
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