Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Cinnamon Roll
SERIES: Bold Brew Book #9
AUTHOR: Anna Zabo
PUBLISHER: self-published
LENGTH: 330 pages
RELEASE DATE: April 20, 2021
BLURB:
This cinnamon roll has plenty of bite!
Maxime Demers has had an eye on Tom Cedric for a while, watching him flit from one awful man to another. So when Tom pins an ad to the community cork board at Bold Brew, Max can’t resist reading it. Tom’s looking for a play partner—someone who’s not a jerk—and Max knows he could give Tom what he needs. But first he’ll have to get the man to talk to him.
Tom Cedric thinks Max is way out of his league. He’s handsome, intelligent, speaks a billion languages, and can make a person kneel with a single look—too damn good for someone like Tom. But he can’t resist the temptation to talk to the man he’s had a crush on since the moment he laid eyes on him.
The connection between them is immediate, hot, and tempting, and when Max needs a replacement helper for an impact demo he’s giving, Tom jumps at the chance. A demo should be safe, right? A few hours. Clothing on. No stakes. Neither man is prepared when that spark ignites, and Tom is absolutely unprepared to discover the sweet man behind those dominating looks.
Cinnamon Roll is a stand-alone novel in the Bold Brew shared universe, centered around an inclusive coffee shop in a fictional small city. Each steaming hot coffee shop romance can be enjoyed alone, but collect all ten for the most fun!
This twist on a second-chance romance is a 90,000-word cup of steaming hot scenes, a dusting of angst, plenty of fluff, and a guaranteed happy ending!
REVIEW:
Anna Zabo’s Cinnamon Roll is the penultimate book in the ten book multi-author Bold Brew series. This one dovetails nicely with the prior book, Extra Whip (you can see my thoughts on that book here). However, you do not need to have read Extra Whip or any of the other books in the series to enjoy Cinnamon Roll.
This book focuses on two men who we’ve had glimpses of throughout the Bold Brew series: Maxime “Max” Demers and Tom Cedric. Max is a college professor, French baker and experienced Dom. Tom is a lawyer, law partner of Aaron (from Extra Whip), sub with a high tolerance and need for pain, but with terrible taste in men. Max and Tom have been running in the same circles for years. They’ve seen each other at kink demonstrations and parties. They’ve seen each other “performing” in those settings with other partners.
Probably from the moment they first laid eyes on each other, they felt the pull towards each other. Tom has been crushing on Max since day one and Max admits that Tom is totally his type, in more ways than one. Yet they’ve stayed well outside each other’s reach. If Tom wasn’t attached to some “overcompensating Dom”, he was single and avoiding Max.
Mx. Zabo does an excellent job of demonstrating how Tom and Max are like Yin and Yang. Each of them are complementary halves of a whole, but trying to seek balance together. It seems everyone around them sees how perfectly they fit. Max sees it too. He knows he can show Tom what a Dom should be and give Tom the respect he deserves. Convincing Tom of that is not so easy.
Tom thinks he knows what he needs: the type of pain that makes you afraid to lose control. But to get it, he needs men who don’t care about him or causing him that amount of pain. But they also don’t care about his boundaries. So they give Tom what he wants, but they take what they want too even if it’s in ways Tom doesn’t want.
Consent has become elusive for Tom. He’s compromised himself so many times, he no longer believes that he deserves respect. He doesn’t think that his consent is important or even required. It’s something he negotiates away to have his needs met. Tom doesn’t think that what he wants matters. He’s conditioned himself to believe that he isn’t worthy of having it all: having his needs met while still being respected, cared for and even loved.
Tom repeatedly describes Max as a “cinnamon roll of a man, too good, too pure for Tom’s world”. Max wants to give Tom everything. He wants to be in a monogamous, long-term relationship with Tom. Tom meets all of Max’s needs and then some, so much so that Max fears he’ll lose control and end up pushing Tom too far.
It’s a careful dance these two engage in. Max pushes Tom but doesn’t want to push too hard. Tom is always a heartbeat away from running because he doesn’t know how to be a friend or partner and also be the sub Max deserves.
The dynamic between Tom and Max is deceptively complicated and while it’s rooted in sex and kink, it’s not all about sex and kink. Yes, this book has a lot of kinky sex scenes with BDSM and pain play, much more than what we saw in Extra Whip. If that makes you uncomfortable, you may want to skip this one. Alternatively, you can try to navigate around those scenes. However, you may lose some of the import by doing so.
The sex scenes aren’t gratuitous. They serve a very important purpose and they make sense in context. It’s in these scenes where Max shows that not everything is dominance and submission. He doesn’t always have to be in charge. His needs don’t always have to be preeminent, and Tom’s consent, respect and care are just as important. It’s a power exchange between equals. Tom can’t truly understand how his kink needs can coexist with his need for love and respect unless Max shows him. The kink scenes are a crucial part of that awareness.
Mx. Zabo has written a beautiful story depicting a complex, rewarding romance between two endearing characters. Max and Tom are rich, multi-faceted characters trying to create a safe space where they can both have everything they want. The story isn’t light, although it is enjoyable and at times funny (particularly Tom’s scenes with Aaron). But there’s a serious thread running through it that is important to recognize. Mx. Zabo balances everything so the romance doesn’t get too heavy, while retaining the significance required to convey their point.
If you’ve read the whole Bold Brew series and you don’t mind the kink elements present here, you will definitely want to read Cinnamon Roll. It works well even as a standalone. Personally, I enjoyed it as part of the whole colorful, multi-author created Bold Brew world, created for us to enjoy however we wan … maybe even on a coffee break with our cinnamon rolls.
RATING: 
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