Gemma James

I rarely write reviews so if I do, it's because I feel so strongly that I can't stop myself from putting it out there. As a result of reading the first book and this one back to back, this review is somewhat of a combination, though I did not find Kayla quite as sniveling and obnoxious in book one, nor Gage quite such a sociopath with trust issues.

**Also, this does not convey my feelings for all of Gemma James' books because I recently recommended a series of hers to friends. This series show more just takes it too far for me.

This book is NOT BDSM. It's not any form of BDSM. Just because the author gives a warning about it being BDSM without "safe, sane, and consensual" or the alternative "risk aware consensual kink (RACK)", doesn't mean she can then go and spit on all that IS BDSM. SCC and RACK are what make BDSM, BDSM. This is purely non-consensual and honestly, I don't mind consensual non-consent stories. I like them. This, however, involves a spineless, weak woman who is controlled and blackmailed by an abusive megalomaniac with trust issues.

Book 1: Kayla is a woman (with a very young, impressionable daughter) who is blackmailed into being her boss' "sex slave." She's given a safeword but, wait! If she uses it for any reason, off to jail she goes, and screw her daughter's life, safety, and happiness. Soooo let's just give it up altogether, shall we? Let's "prove" that we trust this crazy man who has been abusive in the past (aka book 1), including but not limited to: blackmail, beating her while angry, forcing her to have sex with him in front of another man (who she supposedly loved) and another woman (with whom he has had past relations), essentially causing the other man to be raped while she watches, and not allowing her to see her dying daughter in the hospital because he "owns" her. Again - not BDSM, purely abusive.

That's okay though! She loves him so she'll forgive him all of this! Book 2: Gage gets out of jail (with no lasting effects apparently, as he goes back to his crazy self), and comes to woo Kayla back. He redeems himself! Yay! For about 2.5 seconds. Until he mistakenly thinks that Kayla slept with his brother (despite Gage having no claim over her whatsoever) and kidnaps her and her daughter and puts them on a plane with the same OW as mentioned before. Kayla somehow gets over this with no ill effects and falls in love with the non-sadistic side that Gage shows. Swoon, young love.

Smooth sailing, woohoo! Unless you factor in the less-than-no trust that he appears to have in Kayla. She has no access to the outside world unless she receives permission from Gage (because she is apparently 12), including her phone and purse locked in a closet that only he has access to, having to clear female friends by him, being allowed no contact with the male gender whatsoever for any reason regardless of who initiates it, and being told she cannot have a job because her daughter "needs her" more. If he was really so concerned about her daughter, wouldn't he have let her visit her on the weekends when she was supposedly at death's door? Nahhhh. Crazy talk, y'all. In an actual conversation between the two, Kayla says she is being treated like her 3 year old daughter would be, to which Gage essentially replies...yes. Whelp, guess that's that. Good try, Kayla.

I kept waiting for Kayla to grow a backbone over one issue or another, things like: the fact that she was hired and then used to get back at Gage's brother, the fact that despite compromising "hard limits" Gage crushed 2 out of 3 of hers and then proceeded to break the single hard limit he allowed her to have (as an aside, hard limits are for 1 person, usually the submissive, to choose and the other to accept, not negotiate; hence, HARD limit), Gage punishing her when angry (again) despite the whole thing being a misunderstanding (ya know, just a casual pregnancy) AND gagging her so that she couldn't defend herself anyway, Gage not believing that he got her pregnant and kicking her and her 3 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER out of the house, or Gage continuing to not believe her after she lost the baby and giving her the cold shoulder for weeks; however, Kayla, who started out as a strong mother, willing to do anything to save her child and by all accounts, an independent woman who got out of a previously abusive relationship, just kept on keeping on.

By the end of the book when she was essentially coerced into marrying him, knowing that nothing in their relationship would change, I lost all hope. There were almost no redemptive qualities in Gage and while I might have felt for him due to his childhood, he pretty much ruined any chance of sympathy with his actions and lack of remorse. I also lost most, if not all, of my sympathy for Kayla. At one point, Gage told her she could leave him but that she would not be allowed back. She chose to stay. She essentially chose to give up all of her self-respect, freedom, dignity, and independence because she "loved" Gage. What a great role model, Mama.

I feel like I should reiterate that I am a big fan of the BDSM genre. Dom/sub, Master/slave, Top/bottom, whatever the power exchange may be, if done well and respectfully, is beautiful. This Master/slave dynamic didn't work for me mostly because the entire basis for their "relationship" is blackmail and revenge.

Personally, I think this book would have been better off marketed in the non-consensual domestic discipline genre. But then, that's also known as plain old abuse. show less

After having read this, I can only come to one conclusion. Gemma James hates her characters and lives to torture them. Maybe at some point in her life, a couple of people named Rafe and Alex done Gemma wrong, and this is her revenge. If so, remind me never to piss her off, because I'd hate to see what she did to me. That being said, I'm pretty sure that there is something wrong with me because I liked reading everything that Gemma James did to her poor characters. Maybe I subconsciously hate show more them? Whatever the reason for it is, I devoured the book and need to read more.

It's important to note that this is a boxset of the first 4 books, and that there are more that come after. It's a serialized book, so each section isn't overly long.

When Alex was 15, she sent the man she loved to jail. He testified that he raped her, even if he didn't. She had a very good reason to do so, she was forced by her family. Her step-brother, Zach, had raped her and told her that he would kill Rafe if she told anyone that he hadn't hurt her and that Zach had really done it. She's spent the last 8 years in her own living hell. Zach sees her as his own personal playground and has continued to rape her. Her body has been conditioned to like what he does to her, but her mind won't let it go.

After 8 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, Rafe is finally free. But he has plans for little Miss Alex. Plans that she's not going to like. He's going to get his own back and find out why she lied about him all those years ago. He has dark, deviant plans that involve a cage in his cellar of a secluded cabin in the woods on an island in a river. Since Alex has a serious phobia about water, he knows that she's not going to try to escape.

Rafe comes to Alex's house to find that she's getting ready to leave. She's finally decided that she can't be around Zach anymore. It's finally gotten enough to her that she just can't do it anymore. She's engaged to be married to a man that she doesn't love, her crazy, possessive step-brother keeps raping her and he's trying to keep her from marrying the man that her father wants her to. She just can't be there anymore. So, Rafe shows up at just the right time. He drugs her, stages her death, and takes her away.

I can't go much further into the later books because anything I say about them will ruin the first part and then all the books after. But, it's important to know that this is the basis of everything that happens in the book.

Every time things look like they will be getting better, something terrible happens. They never really seem to have more than a moment of happiness before some shadowy figure is willing to beat them, torture them, rape them, or kill them. Or all of the above. Rafe and Alex never really know who to trust because all sorts of things happen and it seems like everyone else wants to lie to them. I'm not joking when I say that Gemma hates them.

But, I loved reading the books and watching how Rafe and Alex start to work together and start to heal. They are both profoundly broken people who have had terrible things happen to them. It's interesting watching how they heal themselves and how they manage to heal each other and how each one of them works on gaining control over what they can. Rafe is very much a Dom and sadist and Alex is very much a sub and masochistic pain slut, so the level of control that each has varies, depending on their dynamic. But, it works for them.

I am looking forward to reading the next one ASAP. show less

The premise of The Devil's Kiss is similar to that of Claire Thompson's Enslaved.
Both of them are explorations of the blackmail / non-consensual / dubious consent theme. Both depict main characters with an employer-employee connection, and in both cases the novel start with the employee stealing a large sum of money from the company cash register. Both employees are given a choice: Face the law or submit to their employer for an X amount of time. Both of them choose the latter and that's show more where the forced submission, torture and rape starts.

The Devil's Kiss comes with a warning sticker. The author states it "is a dark romance with a BDSM edge that does NOT conform to safe, sane, and consensual practices."
And she's entirely right. There is no safety, sanity or consensuality (SSC) in this novel.

While reading this novel, The Devil's Kiss, the absence of SSC made me slightly uneasy. I wondered what caused it, because I could not remember feeling uneasy when I read Enslaved, and I am in fact not generally disturbed with novels where SSC BDSM practices are absent. So what made the difference?

After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the problem involves three factors.

First factor is the motivation the money-stealing employee has for giving in to her blackmailing boss.
Kayla in The Devil's Kiss has a four year old daughter who is very ill. The money Kayla steals goes directly to paying the hospital bills. It is made clear that without proper and expensive treatment, the child would die. This situation is described detailed enough and throughout the book, which makes it impossible not to connect with Kayla's predicament. Is there anything a mother will not do to save her child?
Rae in Enslaved on the other hand steals money from her boss in order to pay off personal debts after an investment deal went sour. The only one she will save by submitting is herself. These circumstances are only mentioned in the early chapter of the book.
The emotional response towards Kayla and Rae could not be more different as a result. Whereas Kayla comes across as a person, Rae remains much more abstract.
I simply found it is easier to swallow non-SSC BDSM-ish practices performed on an abstract character like Rae than it is was when they were performed on a "live" character like Kayla.

Second factor is the money-stealing employee's proclivity for BDSM
Kayla in The Devil's Kiss has a history of abuse and is not into kinky sex at all at the start of the novel.
Rae in Enslaved, however, has had soft-BDSM sex with her boss before, but stopped exploring this side of her as it shocked and scared her.
In other words, at the beginning of the novel, Rae is much more likely than Kayla to develop some sort of liking for her submission and enslavement. The naturally negative response towards the enforcement of it is much more poignant in Kayla's case than in Rae's case.
It is simply more palatable to read about non-SSC BDSM-ish practices performed on someone who has an actual chance of gaining (even the smallest amount of) enjoyment while engaged in them.

Third factor is the description of the dominant sadist blackmailer boss.
In Enslaved, Sam (Rae's dominant sadist blackmailer boss) gives clear indications that he knows that what he's doing to Rae is unethical, unwise and unacceptable. He also gives clear indications that he knows what he's doing in a technical sense. It is obvious he knows his ways around whips, bondage equipment and what have you. It is obvious he, or at least the author, understands the underlying dynamic of SSC BDSM practices. Sam clearly has the potential to be a responsible dominant sadist who could easily establish a SSC BDSM environment.
In The Devil's Kiss, on the other hand, Gage (Kayla's dominant sadist blackmailer boss) is a rather more worrying, scary, abusive, irresponsible and potentially dangerous character, who definitely does not qualify as real life Master material. I am unable to fathom if this is because his character is worrying, scary, abusive, irresponsible and dangerous in its core, in other words, if the author made him that way on purpose, or if the author is at fault here for not fully understanding the SSC BDSM dynamic and therefore unable to give Gage the necessary finesse. As it stands, with Gage drawing up meaningless contracts, providing and retracting bogus safewords, asking for but disregarding personal statements, cutting short any explanations of objections or emerging emotions, and isolating Kayla from her social environment, his character made me very uneasy.

While many of the kinky sex scenes were written well enough, for me the novel as a whole was not as enjoyable as it could have been, for the reasons stated above. show less

I so wanted to love this book. The description was awesome, and as I started reading the story I was hooked from the start. The writing flowed well, and the chemistry between Ashton and Sadie was so hot! I was hooked, until Sadie's personality became more and more clear. I wanted to smack her so many times. I don't care what your parents think, as a 23 year old woman, stand up for yourself! No one can tell you how to live your life. She let her cheating ex and her dad walk all over her. She show more gets mad at Ashton for actually saying what needed to be said, but not at the cheating ex who tells a whole room full of people they're getting married after they break up?! I couldn't take anymore. I would most definitely give this author another read, but this book just made my blood boil. show less