BOOK DESCRIPTION: Emily Vargas has been taken captive. As part of his conditioning methods, her captor refuses to speak to her, knowing how much she craves human contact. He's far too beautiful to be a monster. Combined with his lack of violence toward her, this has her walking a fine line at the edge of sanity. Told in the first person from Emily's perspective, Comfort Food explores what happens when all expectations of pleasure and pain are turned upside down, as whips become comfort and chicken soup becomes punishment.
DISCLAIMER: This is not a story about consensual BDSM. This is a story about "actual" slavery. If reading an erotic story without safewords makes you uncomfortable, this is not the book for you. This is a work of fiction, and the author does not endorse or condone any behavior done to another human being without their consent.
I first heard about this book last June, at the Lori Foster get-together. An author was talking about it in great detail, and I was so disgusted by the description of the story I just knew I would never read it. It made me so angry to think of a man treating a woman like a trophy, uncaring of anything other than his pleasure. I quickly dismissed the notion of going anywhere near it.
Flash-forward to October, when I actually bought the book. Again, Twitter has had quite an impact on me as I'd noticed several readers who really enjoyed it, or at least were more accepting of the idea than I had originally been. Some even fantasized about a Master of their own. While I wouldn't take it quite that far, I did get some insight into the Master, saw that he believed he could break someone and own them, and with her obedience came great care from him.
When we first meet Emily, she's already been captured, and wakes up in a prison cell. She's terrified, convinced she's going to die or at the very least be raped. At this point, her fear is such that she really has no thought to go against him, to fight him. She will comply if it means her survival.
The Master is silent in his approach to her, communicating by action and by expression. Emily has to try to figure out what he wants, and she quickly does. The more she obeys, the more accommodating he is with her. But if she refuses him, he will leave her in the cell, naked, alone. Without human contact. And Emily cannot handle that. She craves, no, requires human touch. She cannot survive without it, and it's her great fear to be deprived of it. So she let's him do what she wants to her, even enjoys it, as long as she's not alone in that cell anymore....
My thoughts:
My thoughts:
This was a challenging read for me but also could have been much worse because of my personal feelings about sexual slavery. Ms. Thomas isn't overtly explicit in her descriptions, so while we understand the Master's goal is to have Emily be his slave, and that most definitely includes owning a sex slave, it's not portrayed as extremely violent or abusive, and soon Emily is conditioned over time to crave his firmer touch, to long for any sexual punishment he sees fit to give her. To me, I feel that a relationship of this magnitude tends to be out of balance. Though Master always silently offers Emily a choice, he knows what her weaknesses are, so he sets it up in such a way that she's going to choose what he wishes her to choose. It's all done with the belief that he is choosing what is best for her when it really means he is manipulating her to get what he wants in end.
Now Emily is so different from me. I am an introvert, so being around crowds drains me. I crave touch as much as the next person, but not to the same critical level Emily does. Despite the fear, I think I would have fought more. Or at least I hope I would have. But when you are kidnapped, and you're terrified, who knows what desperate measures you would take to stay alive. Emily received a lot of pleasure from the Master, so while I wasn't totally consensual, she did enjoy it.
And it certainly doesn't hurt that the Master is extremely good-looking and ungodly rich. I kept having to remind myself that it was just fiction, so it was going to be written in a more appealing fashion than it most likely would have been in real life. Even myself, who has no desire to be anyone's slave, found him to be attractive, and perhaps I wouldn't have minded my captivity with such a Master. Much.
And it certainly doesn't hurt that the Master is extremely good-looking and ungodly rich. I kept having to remind myself that it was just fiction, so it was going to be written in a more appealing fashion than it most likely would have been in real life. Even myself, who has no desire to be anyone's slave, found him to be attractive, and perhaps I wouldn't have minded my captivity with such a Master. Much.
But I am me, and though he was attentive to her needs, I also found him to be too cold and calculating. He treated her like a pet, not a human. His goal was to break her. His plan was to have someone to control, to do his every desire, and in doing so, that was to be her pleasure. I think that's a turn-on to a point. You want to pleasure your partner, but at the same time, you have your own fantasies, and the idea of someone else controlling what you enjoy so completely bothers me.
But that was the point. It wasn't a game, it was a real case of slavery. This man methodically planned to kidnap this woman. He watched her, planned out her abduction, built a cell to keep her like a favored pet. Relinguishing control over to another sounds appealing on a lot of days, but not complete control. I like to cook my own food, wear my own clothes, and don't wish to subject myself to another's wishes to such as extreme consent. But for A LOT of women (and men too), this is a very hot fantasy. It's much more common than one would believe. In fact it's not far-fetched to imagine it being more mainstream in the not too distant future.
So while I didn't warm up to the Master and eny Emily (much), I still found it to be an absorbing read, one that surprised me with how much I lied in the story. I think Ms. Thomas writes a compelling story, and knows how to capture the reader's attention. I would definitely read more by her.
Rating: **** out of *****
Labels: Kitty Thomas, quickie reviews
posted by Stacy~ at 11/26/2010 07:33:00 AM
| 13 comments
