Reviewed by Kat
TITLE: Firm Hand
AUTHOR: Nora Phoenix
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 288 pages
RELEASE DATE: May 16, 2019
BLURB:
How can he want to call his best friend’s son Sir? Or even worse…Daddy?
Cornell is broken after losing his best friend Jonas and getting hurt himself. He’s too old, too imperfect to ever attract a Dom again.
Until Rhys.
When Rhys gives him commands, Cornell yearns to obey.
When Rhys takes care of him, Cornell wants to kneel for him.
When Rhys is everything he’s dreamed of, Cornell aches to call him Sir.
And when Rhys makes him fly, Cornell soars higher than ever before.
But there’s one problem. Rhys is twenty years his junior…and he’s Jonas’s son. How can you call your best friend’s son Sir…or Daddy?
Firm Hand is a standalone slow burn MM romance with daddy kink, an age gap, a very caring Daddy and a boy who needs it, hurt/comfort, mild D/s play, and all the feels.
REVIEW:
This is chocked full of littles bits of something different for a lot of different kinks.
Cornell is suffering greatly. Not only was he believing that his time might have passed for him and his best friend Jonas to find a Dom for them before they reached a age where either you have someone or yours basically out of luck. After yet another rather unsatisfying night at the club they decided to go back to Jonas’s for a cuddle. They had been best friends for decades and looked after one another on these kind of nights. Unfortunately luck wasn’t on their side on this cold, icy night. Now Cornell is lost. His best friend is dead and he’s severely injured. He is a successful estate lawyer but he can’t go home to his home with stairs…he can barely walk let alone take care of himself. And work is out of the question right now. When his godson Rhys, Jonas’ son and a newly graduated Physical Therapist, insists that he go home with him back to his dad’s ranch he wants to say no but knows it’s for the best. What he doesn’t know is that Rhys has pined for Cornell for years and he is now a mature, twenty-three year old man that just happens to be a dom and he is ready to seize his opportunity to finally get what/who he wants.
I have some very mixed feelings about this book. The younger man being the dominant to his older godfather really didn’t bother me. I felt that it was a nice twist to the predictable older dom/younger sub that most books have. And I liked the chemistry between both Rhys and Cornell. There were less intimate scenes that I would have expected with these two. Quite a bit of the book we were more in the two characters head’s than in their relationship. I did like seeing it from both points of view. What I didn’t care for was Rhys manipulation of Cornell in his fragile state both physically and mentally. I would have preferred that he had come forth with who/what he was. And, although I thought the “Daddy kink” worked for Rhys friends well I had a hard time believing that a submissive that was forty-five would suddenly discover that this was their true nature or calling. Cornell had been active in the club scene for years. You would have thought that he would have felt a spark many years beforehand if it was real. That part just didn’t work for me.
The writing is as superb as you expect with a Nora Phoenix book and I have learned to expect the unexpected and unconventional with her writing. This, unfortunately, wasn’t my cup of tea at the end but I enjoyed most of the book. The dynamics of the younger dom with his much older sub was a nice twist. I just wasn’t into the Daddy kink for their relationship but that’s on me.
RATING: 
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