Review: Guilty Pleasures by Kitty Thomas
“A Hot Submissive Fantasy”
The Download… Straight from the Cover
As their secret meetings progress, she falls farther down a rabbit hole where the line between rape and illicit affair grows increasingly blurred. Anton will accept nothing short of her complete surrender as he molds and shapes her to be sold to the highest bidder. |
Vivian Delaney leads a life of privilege, but behind closed doors she feels isolated and trapped in a gilded cage. Unable to achieve sexual pleasure with her husband, she finds herself in the capable hands of Anton, a massage therapist intent on awakening her to her full sexual potential. By any means necessary.
Zelda’s Two Cents…
In Guilty Pleasures, Kitty Thomas’ second novel, she has once again produced a wickedly arousing tale of nonconsensual submission that turned me on, satisfied me and left me wanting for more.
Trapped in an unsatisfying marriage, Vivian has not enjoyed sex or achieved an orgasm in years. The passion she and her husband had felt when newly married had been fleeting and long since been replaced with disgust and regret. When her husband sends her to a sex therapist out of frustration, Vivian must know in her heart that this is the end, but what she finds is only just another beginning.
Vivian’s journey to submission and slavery is an unconventional one. While her circumstances find her blackmailed, kidnapped and forced into submitting to Anton and his staff, she also discovers her latent desire to be dominated. Her discovery starts slow and is accompanied by a great deal of shame – both in dealing with disgust over her newfound desires as well as for her complicit role in her infidelity to her husband. Vivian’s internal struggle is an interesting one throughout. Most individuals discovering their submissive tendencies go through similar insecurities and upheavals, however, the fact that Vivian’s are accelerated and out of her control adds a definite element of arousing coercion to her adventure.
What I loved most about Guilty Pleasures is the element of force and nonconsent. Of course, as is clearly stated in Thomas’ disclaimer at the beginning of the book, it is a work of fiction and she does not endorse or condone any activities done to an individual without his or her consent. But, from the perspective of an active submissive who has fantasized about kidnapping, captivity and torture from a very young age, reading a book about just that is quite titillating. But Guilty Pleasures is less about evil people doing bad things than it is a tale of undeniable sexual allure. It is the equivalent of forcing someone to take a sip of the best hot chocolate in the world (oh, the torture) and then luring them in with a “you know you like hot chocolate… why don’t you follow me into my lair where you can have all the hot chocolate your heart desires?” Who could resist?
That being said, to truly appreciate Guilty Pleasures, I think that it is important that the reader suspend their moral outrage over the aspect of nonconsent and simply submit, as does Vivian, to their feelings — to submit to the hedonistic pleasure of sex and arousal that Vivian finds in the house, to submit to being out of control along with Vivian as she proceeds in her journey.
Aside from the aspects of nonconsent (more an element of titillating fantasy than horror) and the glamorized reprisal of Kitty’s “mansion of kink,” Kitty Thomas has done an especially good job at making Vivian’s adventures and the characters in them believable and realistic, even to an audience well-versed in kink. Vivian is lost and confused as one would expect a sheltered housewife to be under these extraordinary circumstances. Her reactions and emotions are very real. Her responses to captivity, pain, seduction, arousal… all are very believable. My favorite metaphor in the book is the repeated reference to Vivian’s banshee – her superego self – freaking out inside her head. At the risk of sounding schizophrenic, I also often refer to my own superego as if it’s an entity unto itself… one that, much like Vivian, I have my own struggles to calm and control.
In addition to this, Vivian’s husband comes off as just the right mixture of helpless, aloof and irritated over the situation with his estranged wife, and the treatment that Vivian and the other submissives in the house receive from the various dominants is also very believable. Specifically, Anton, Lindsay and Gabe are the perfect combination of heartless bastard and sensitive romantic that, at least for me, is the recipe for the perfect dominant.
All in all, I found Guilty Pleasures to be a great and titillating read. I enjoyed Vivian’s ride to submission and am hopeful that Kitty Thomas’ decides to keep the story alive so that we can learn more about Vivian’s life with her new Master.
Zelda Gillian is a wife, a mother and a lover, likes strong espresso, stiff corsets and never strays far from her Kindle.
