Book Review - Claimed by Daddy by Vanessa Brooks

 

Five Stars!

What would you do if you suddenly found yourself transported to a parallel universe where everything was different? You have a different home, different job and instead of being single, you discover you are actually married to a sexy tall American guy who shares all your kinky preferences?

To be honest I would probably behave exactly the same as Penny West, the heroine of Vanessa Brooks' Claimed by Daddy when this happens to her: whirling through a merry-go-round of emotions including incredulity, fear, panic and - what with the sexy 'new' husband - lustful abandonment.

Given such an outlandish premise, it's really rather relatable.

The book starts with Penny flying back from New York to London. The plane is caught in turbulence, she blacks out and then suddenly everything has changed. Well, not everything. She is still herself. Her face is the same, her family history is (almost) the same but suddenly she is in the middle of a life that she has no memory of.

Time slips are a tricky business. To everyone around her, Penny's story seems wildly implausible. To everyone else, including her husband, she looks like the same person doing the same thing as she always done. But to Penny, it must feel like starting a movie halfway though with no memory of how the first half went.

I found this diagram relating to multiverse time slips. Hope that explains everything.

Finding yourself a sexy husband who likes to practise Domestic Discipline and calls himself Daddy has its benefits, that's for sure. David, the books hero, is pretty damned perfect, make no mistake about it. But it's hard for Penny to get onboard with the situation when she not only has no memories of meeting and marrying him but also has her own perfectly clear memories of living a completely different life during that time period.

Luckily Penny has the support and acceptance of not only David, but also her sister, her sister's partner and her Dad (who is actually dead in her own timeline). Once they are onboard, it becomes possible for Penny to accept her situation and focus on adjusting to her new reality.

Parallel universes explained in Superman.
Note, in neither of the universes in Claimed by Daddy, are any of the characters "ape-like beings".

And it's a pretty amazing alternative reality that she finds herself in. She and David are clearly not short of a few quid, they run a successful business together and own a fancy house in an expensive part of London. Alternative-Reality Penny has the Submissive/Little lifestyle that Protagonist Penny had only ever dreamed of. She has her own special playspace and everything that a Little could wish for. And she has a husband who absolutely adores her.

Except there's the problem. David adores his Penny. The one he married, the one with whom he has five years of shared history. Can he accept this interloper who doesn't know anything about it, has no recollection of their wedding day, their favourite restaurants, their shared experiences and their in-jokes?

Can Penny allow herself to love David knowing that simultaneously she both is and isn't the woman he loves?

Well, happily, they have a jolly lovely time of it finding out. The sex and spanking scenes in this book are absolutely delicious. Poor David has to adjust to a role which is outside any expectations that he might have had when he signed up for life as a Daddy Dom. That of negotiating a relationship with a woman who is both the person he knows both inside and out and who is also, in every meaningful way, a complete stranger that he needs to woo all over again. Given that Penny is physically exactly the same as his Penny, it does make it a lot more straightforward for him to give her the most earth shatteringly amazing orgasm that she has ever experienced. He literally knows which buttons to press.

Kind of like this.

They don't just stop at the one earth shattering orgasm obviously. There's lots of that sort of thing.  Penny gets a very thorough lesson in everything that she has been hitherto missing out on.

There is a strong age-play element to this story. But there is also a lot of grown-up Dom/sub stuff as well. David and Penny draw a distinction between their age-play and their grown-up time. David actually tells Penny off at one point for using her "little voice" in the bedroom.

I wouldn't describe myself as a Little (although there is definitely a Daddy Dom dynamic in my relationship with Gentleman Friend even though we would never use the actual 'D word'.) I quite like Penny's little lifestyle though. I'm quite jealous of all the Disney stuff she has, for one thing.

I would be quite happy with a bedroom like this.

Claimed by Daddy is a highly original take on the Daddy/little genre. Cuddles, spanking, sex and the multiverse Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. It's got it all!

I really, really hope that Vanessa Brooks writes a companion book to this one telling the story of the Other Penny who switches lives with our Penny at the start of the book. What does she do when she suddenly finds herself in a universe where she never met David? As Penny says to David, "I honestly believe that she would try to find you." I think so too. How do you persuade a man who has never met you that he's actually your tried-and-tested perfect Daddy Dom? Sneaky seduction or just fling yourself over his lap and be done with it? It would be great fun finding out.

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Book Review - Stolen Moments by Maren Smith

 

Five Stars!

Stolen Moments is a fantastically good book. It also, oddly, the first book I've read of Maren Smith's where I kind of wished there was less spanking in it.

Not because the spanking in this book isn't amazing. It is. The hero, Draven Gray, is a satisfying hunk of brawn, intelligence and emotional wherewithal all wrapped up in a butcher's apron. Flora O'Bannon is a twenty-first century girl in a nineteenth century spot of bother and often in need of a bit of discipline.

The thing is though, a lot of people in the world think that a book's hero shouldn't keep putting a grown woman over his knee and spanking her bare bottom. Those people are wrong of course but there you are. Maren Smith's book is so exquisitely written, so atmospheric and so compelling that, quite frankly, it deserves to be in every bookshop everywhere. It seems almost a shame to limit its readership to our little niche corner of unashamed spankos.

Pictured: Unashamed spankos

This is in no way a complaint, you understand. You know me, I'm all about the spankings. I also love time travel, historical romance and late nineteenth century London in particular so this book pushed all my buttons, ("Pushed my buttons" sounds so much like a sexual euphemism there that I am just going to leave it and pretend that I meant to do it.)

The sense of time and place is so brilliantly evoked that you can almost smell it. The dark dingy streets of Whitechapel serve as the backdrop to Flora's extraordinary adventure as she's whisked from present day New Orleans to London in 1888 and straight into the path of Jack the Ripper.

The violence depicted in the early part of the book is visceral and bloody. Smith spares us none of the grisly details of the Ripper's appalling crimes. Which makes it truly gut-wrenching when Flora's own life is in danger because we know what the man is capable of.

Contrasting with the horror, is the natural, supportive and loving relationship between Draven and Flora. A relationship that starts, as so many great storybook romances do, with the hero rescuing a damsel in distress. In fact, Flora is not so much distressed as completely unconscious and when her consciousness does come back, her memory doesn't come back with it.

Everything about this book is great. The dialogue is a joy to read. Making the hero a butcher by profession was a stroke of genius. I've been vegetarian for the last thirty years but now I'm wondering why all romantic heroes aren't butchers? Not only can he see off bad guys with a vast selection of knives and the knowledge of how to use them, but he'll then take you home and cook you a hot meal. What's not to love about that?

"Lay one hand on her and I will personally send you straight to the devil's front gate.
We have a long-standing relationship, he and I. You can give him my regards."

Stolen Moments is fast paced with plenty of plot twists to keep the reader on their toes throughout. Yet the love affair between the two main characters doesn't seem forced or rushed. The author allows enough space in the tightly-plotted action for the two characters to get to know one another properly.

At one point in the story, Draven wonders if Flora is "simply a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time". Flora may be a woman out of her own time but, it turns out, she is in exactly the place and time where she needs to be.


Want to know more about the book review star rating system? Or find out what other books I've reviewed? Check out this page here.