Book Review - Making the Rules by Ashe Barker

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Do your shirt up, Mister. You'll catch a chill.

Ashe Barker’s Making the Rules would be just perfect as a BBC television drama. Something classy like Broadchurch or Happy Valley. It has all the right ingredients for good telly: Death, intrigue, family secrets, a grey rain-soaked Yorkshire village as two people – both, in their own way, visitors to the village - team up to understand a tragedy which happened there 20 years before.

This sort of thing.

I think the BBC should get on this as soon as possible. Not sure what their policy is on devoting significant amounts of air time to sexy spanky BDSMness, mind. Are they cool with that these days? Let’s hope so because those are the really good bits of Making the Rules.

The story begins in the small village of Mytholm Bridge in 1998. Ben is thirteen years old when a school friend’s family picnic turns to heartbreak with the loss of his friend’s little toddler sister.

Years later, history gets dredged up when Lily, a visitor to the village starts asking questions about the toddler’s disappearance. Apparently, nothing in Mytholm Bridge is quite how it appears on the surface.

Ashe Barker balances beautifully the advancing plot and its unravelling mystery with the wonderful kinky love story of its two heroes. Ben is a practised Dom who persuades Lily to accept a nerve-calming spanking. She doesn’t need much persuasion. Hitherto vanilla Lily is a natural submissive who finds the whole BDSM business very much to her liking.

The sex and spanking scenes are a joy to read. Ashe Barker delivers full kinky satisfaction in the bedroom department. As does Ben, come to think of it.

Not that their relationship is purely physical. Ben provides much needed emotional support and practical assistance to Lily as she attempts to uncover exactly what did happen on that fateful August day in 1998.

It is lovely to see Ben and Lily’s relationship develop from a spur-of-the-moment bit of fun to something much more meaningful.

The book wraps up with a neat and very satisfying ending which obviously I am not going to spoil for you. I thoroughly recommend you read it. Not least, because it might be a while before the BBC adaption hits our screens.

Perfect for BBC prime time