Article first published as Book Review: Awakening by Elene Sallinger on Blogcritics.

Awakening by Elene Sallinger is another title that’s been compared to Fifty Shades of Grey because of the BDSM element in the book. However, the huge difference is that the female character in this book is actually a submissive – or wants to be, anyway. At the beginning of the book we meet Claire, a woman who is still trying to get over the breakdown of a ten year relationship, and she forces herself to start living again. The first thing she does is join a book club for romance readers at her local book shop. Whilst there, she meets the owner of the book shop, Evan, who has a profound effect on her. She also discovers the shop has an erotica section and finds herself drawn to the titles which contain female submissives. And this is where her journey begins.

Evan notices what Claire is up to, and the feelings that have been long buried since his wife died are coming back to the surface. He wants to dominate Claire, to help her discover D/s relationships in the right way. Eventually, the two of them come to an understanding, and Claire’s sexy awakening begins. The trouble is, things quickly become complicated between them – and it could be the making or the breaking of their arrangement. Will they work out their differences and overcome their respective pasts?

This was a fantastic read. I really enjoyed reading about both of the main characters and found them very rounded and I could totally understand why they were drawn to one another. I whizzed through page after page of this book, desperate to know what happened next and how things would resolve themselves. The sex, although not frequent in this book, is incredibly hot and except for a couple of lines towards the end that made me cringe, this was a brilliant erotic romance, and one I’d recommend for fans of BDSM novels.

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