Despite this book focussing on Female submission, rather than Male submission I decided to give it a go anyway, and I'm glad I did. Marina Anderson's writing style is very readable and I really raced through this book. Sure it has no real depth, but it's a sex novel at the end of the day and there's plenty of that. Despite my own thoughts on the matter I'm not entirely sure that people who read books like this want an enormous amount of plot and character development, which makes me a little concerned about the ultimate fate of my own book (which is still firmly on the back-burner), since I think it has an inordinate amount of plot respective to the amount of actual 'action'. But I digress...
Don't get me wrong, Marina does imbue the characters with adequate texture and she does a fair job of keeping the uneasy relationship between the two main characters on the boil. But I do have one or two niggles...
'The Haven' of the title is a 'secret club' where people are invited to go to learn to be submissive. This includes men and women who are too aggressive in bed, like the heroine 'Natalie'. Of course she's somewhat reluctant to go, reluctant to learn and of course is ultimately broken by the hero 'Simon'...
There are a couple of scenes where guys are taught to endure denial and teasing, and I applaud the author for including those, but my one big beef is with the cop out that she uses when distinguishing between male and female learning techniques.
About half way through the book all the women at 'The Haven' are marched into a room and into a circle of chairs occupied by the male residents and 'forced' to engage in lesbian sex (which they are reluctant to do) under the pretence of educating the watching men about how to 'pleasure' a woman. All well and good I suppose, and I'm sure none of us chaps would be complaining about that.
So how do we think the women might learn about 'pleasuring' men? Might all the men be marched into the circle of women and forced to commit acts of felatio and Sodomy on each other? No. It's quietly brushed under the carpet and the women are said to have 'been shown video's educating them in the ways of male sexuality'.
I'm sorry but that's a cop out. I know the publisher probably would have baulked if she'd written a scene where all the guys wanked each other off, but you know.... what's sauce for the goose, etc, etc...
But aside from that I can't really think of too much to criticise. Of course it's all rather far fetched, and everyone has piercing eyes and toned physiques (yawn) but that aside it's an extremely enjoyable read. I will probably keep it too, it's a lot better than that other one I reviewed a while back (Lust Call) and certainly could be read again I think...
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