Indie Chicklit Book Tour!

Welcome my first book review for the Indie Chick Lit website! I am so excited to be a part of this endeavor.

Cerise Norrel, Type A substitute teacher by day, is ready to quit being a domme. Despite her best intentions, none of her partners can keep up with her scene fetish and attention to detail—let alone her demand that they have a costume and set waiting every afternoon by the time she’s home from school.

Over a dozen potential subs have left her in the past year, but just when Cerise thinks it’s impossible—that she’ll have to go back to vanilla relationships, or be alone forever–she meets William, who wants to make all her fantasies come true. He turns her home into a geisha’s dream apartment, a concert hall with a grand piano (which he uses to play an original composition while wearing a tuxedo), and even rents an abandoned loft for a zombie apocalypse scene—complete with canned goods.

But there’s something strange about William. Well, a lot of strange things. He must be absurdly rich, since he can afford to provide extravagant costumes and props on a daily basis without having to leave work early. He must be insane, since he puts up with Cerise’s over-the-top demands. And most importantly, he doesn’t redden when he’s spanked, and his skin is as cool as satin sheets. When Cerise discovers she’s become domme to the infamous “Chilly Willy,” as he’s known throughout BDSM urban lore, she begins to find out there’s a whole lot more to her handsome submissive than a creative mind and a hard body.

And when it’s William, ironically, who starts pressing Cerise to give him the kind of commitment she’s never given anyone, it’ll take everything she has to work through her issues, confront her past, and learn to be vulnerable.

Before I begin, I have to admit that I am not a fan of vampire anything and I have never read anything so . . . steamy. However, in the last few years I have begun to stray out from my little sheltered cove of book reading to try new things. With this book, I killed two birds with one stone.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I intended to read it over a few days as I had a deadline looming with my Grandparents paper as well, but that didn't happen. I read it in two evenings while Boyfriend watched movies I didn't care for, like Kill Bill. I literally couldn't stop reading.

We find that Cerise (or Mistress Cherry), our female Domme, is one helluva picky gal when it comes to her potential submissive men. Comically and annoyingly picky. She has an eye for detail and is highly disappointed when her Sub doesn't and they are summarily dismissed. She has ridiculously high standards and requests from her Sub being self-employed to the Sub being required to have a scene set up and waiting for her each afternoon when she gets home from work, and let's not forget that eye for detail. Details are the "thing" and are extremely important in Cerise's world of "scenes".

The most hilarious bits of this book include Bizzy, Cerise's very demanding . . . hmmm, how do I keep this this family friendly? I'm sure you get the point. Ahem. Anyway, Cerise describes Bizzy as a kind of heckler with absolutely no filter, and at least once accidentally attempts to silence her out loud, making people look at her funny.

She's fresh off the Disappointment Train when she goes to a BDSM type of speed-dating gig and meets William. From the moment she lays eyes on him, she can't stop thinking about him. He's not put off by her high demands and is hot enough that it makes Bizzy scream. William's nickname is "Chilly Willy", and pretty much tells Cerise point blank that he's a vampire but she doesn't believe him. Since vampire is very trendy these days she thinks nothing of it. But because William does things very differently than her previous Subs (mostly he does stuff right and amazes her with details) she soon begins to wonder just what secrets he's hiding. And William slowly pushes his Mistress to open up and we find out just what events in life have made Cerise who she is.

Another comical bit is that since she's a substitute teacher, Cerise is often reading things from William, or just thinking about him and gets lost in thought to the point where she wonders if the students in the classroom have any idea why she's flushed.

For me, one of the best things about this book was that the vampire thing, while a constant in the background, wasn't shoved in my face (you know, because of that whole not-into-vampires thing). It didn't really become a huge deal until the last quarter of the book. Considering the title of the book and the fact that William basically outs himself right away, you already know what he is, you're just waiting for Cerise to figure it out. Another thing I liked was that when Cerise realized the truth, she embraced William as he is; she didn't fly off the handle, wig out, and tell him that he was "dismissed".

Cerise has a lot to learn about being "human", and a vampire shows her that. A bit of a twist there and I liked that.

Overall, this was a great, saucy, humorous read that I recommend to just about anyone. I am definitely looking forward to reading more from Mina Vaughn. To get yourself a copy of this book, click here. To see what other great books are available, check out the Indie Chicks Store.