Title: Learning to Drown
Author: Sommer Marsden
Publisher: eXcessica
Buy Link: Buy Learning To Drown Here!
Rating: 
You Gotta Read
Reviewed By: Mickey
Blurb:
Ember is into the whole abduction scenario. She tries and tries to coach her boyfriend Damien in the fine art of being her abductor and sexual tyrant. It’s not working. One night, while locked in his truck’s tool box, she’s towed from Damien’s property. Lucas Crow, freelance repo man and all around growly dominant, rescues her from her self-imposed prison. He even takes her home, feeds her and gets her cuffs off when it becomes evident that Damien is not coming to her rescue.
Taken with Ember and her story, Lucas gives her a choice. Stay in her unhappy relationship and play ‘games’ (basically dominating Damien by dictating his behavior) or stay with him as his ‘captive’ and learn what true surrender is. It’s like learning to drown, giving up to get where you want to be. Ember is eerily taken with this man and his quiet and sure ways. The more she discovers the more she wants to discover. Like his history, his back story, where that sexy scar in his eyebrow came from.
When Ember meets Matthew Crow, she’s not sure she can do what might be expected of her. Matthew’s everything his brother isn’t. He’s mouthy, petulant, younger and spoiled. And he informs her on the way to a repo job, that they share women–he and Lucas. And they’re going to share her–and he can’t wait to get his taste.
Ember is torn. Stay and get to experience more of the sexual talents of Lucas and Matthew Crow or leave. Does she stay and learn to drown and maybe experience the erotic levels she truly craves, or does she keep struggling and never learn the joy of submission and surrender?
Warnings: This title contains spanking, corporal punishment, BDSM, m/f/m sex, multiple partners, sex toys, abduction scenarios, and shades of erotic asphyxiation.
Word Count: 65,400
Review:
Sometimes as a reader you are fortunate enough to find a novel that touches you in a certain way, disturbing you, yet hitting all those buttons and sparking something inside making you want to read more; for me that book is Sommer Marsden’s Learning to Drown. I absolutely loved this book! It is extremely different from anything I have ever attempted before, being heavily weighed on the bondage side of the phrase BDSM, yet it does not just focus on physical bondage as much as psychological. The author may show one character being tied up, but both have their emotional ties to unravel before the novel ends.
The story is beautifully told, with plenty of emotional interplay evident between the characters. Ms. Marsden is not a maudlin or timid writer, this is erotica at its absolute best and she never lets her readers forget that for a minute. The love scenes, while graphic and intense, are just short of brutal but they could never be considered coarse as the author does not hold back from fulfilling Ember and Lucas’s every fantasy. Even the secondary characters have strong personalities, and I have hopes that we will see Matthew somewhere in the future. Will I read this book again, I already have. Is this a keeper, it already is. Do I recommend it, I already am.
