REVIEWED BY CINDY
TITLE: Beautiful Boy
AUTHOR: Grace Duncan
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 313 Pages
Blurb:
Malcolm Tate hung up his flogger when his submissive sought out another Dom and landed in the hands of a serial killer. Convinced his lack of dominance sent his sub away, Mal has spent two years blaming himself for what happened. But when his best friend finally convinces him to go back to the local dungeon, Mal’s grateful. Especially when he wins beautiful, submissive, firmly closeted Kyle Bingham in a charity slave auction.
College grad Kyle hasn’t earned enough to move out of the loft his conservative, homophobic parents bought, much less to buy any of the other things still in their name. When he’s won at auction by the hot, amazing Mal, he’s shocked that anyone would want him. No one else seemed to—not his parents, his former Doms, or any of his disastrous dates.
But Mal does want him and Kyle lets his guard down, only to be outed to his parents. With his world crashing down, he must find a way to trust Mal—and their developing relationship—or risk losing everything.
Review:
Mal is a man who lives with guilt every single day. He believes his failure as a Dom is the reason someone died so he shuts off that vital part of himself and hides away.
Kyle is a man who’s conflicted. He want’s to belong to someone so badly, someone who wants him as much as he wants them, but he’s afraid to make any real changes to his life.
This story left me conflicted. I wanted to love it, I really did, but I had some issues.
Mal is a man who’s tormented by his former sub’s death and it’s completely understandable. He feels like it’s his fault that the sub went looking for the control he needed and walked right into the arms of his killer. So I get why he’s so angsty about it.
What I don’t get is how one 5 minute talk with a friend is all it takes to change his mind and send him back to the D/s lifestyle after two years of anguish. I was looking for a little more self-reflection from Mal and he just jumped back in with both feet.
I had a hard time connecting to Kyle at first. I get that he was afraid of losing his only family by admitting he was gay, but honestly, his family wasn’t really worth worrying about losing. They treated him like a child and tried to control everything he did. He has some good friends who seem to care about him far more than his family ever did, so I got a little hung up on that.
Kyle has a little more pain kink than I’m entirely comfortable with, but the author handles the D/s scenes between Mal and Kyle beautifully. They are well written and I enjoyed the interactions between the two men. I never felt that Mal was pushing Kyle too much, either in their scene or in their lives in general. He seems determined to give Kyle the time and space he needs to decide what’s best for him and it’s something I appreciated a lot.
The sex is smoking hot, with little unexpected bits of sweetness thrown in that contrasts perfectly with the heat rolling off the two men.
Like Mal I had a hard time trying to figure out why the other men in Kyle’s life didn’t want to keep him, but from the glimpse we get of the men he played with, they obviously lacked the experience that’s required to take Kyle in hand.
The various side characters in the story, including Mal’s best friend and his Domme, are nothing more than stereotypical plot advancers but they do keep the story moving.
All in all, I liked the story, but it didn’t sweep me up as I was hoping it would do. It’s a decent story and I liked it, but I probably won’t be adding it to my “to be read again” pile.
Rating: 
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