Cuts off abruptly and leaves a lot of loose endsWarning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS. Rating: 5/10PROS: - I liked the premise/setup: men who have been lovers for a decade but see their sub only a few times a year. I was eager to see what sort of complications would arise as a result of this situation.- Michael is good at creating situations in which his characters demonstrate acts that are fun and somehow “theirs” while still being meaningful exercises in the BDSM lifestyle.CONS:- The ending here is very abrupt. There’s a lot left unresolved or at least unsettled.- I found Mal’s stubbornness a little irritating after a while.- One of my pet peeves is writing that discourages or prevents fast reading. A sure way to prevent a reader from reading quickly is to involve too many characters (or character names) too quickly. This story has 3 main characters, and when they’re all tangled up together, referring to one another by not just names but also nicknames (which, to add kerosene to the fire, are not all explained), things get a bit dense at times. Especially when there’s not much difference in the narrative voices from one character to the next.Overall comments: I liked the start of this, but the ending left much to be desired. Sometimes it seems to me as though Sean Michael just writes until he gets tired of his current characters, and then he quits. Regardless of whether or not their story is really finished or not. Good exploration of damage - and how healing goes when someone is suffering a great deal of mental anguish. I was very absorbed in this although it is on the shorter side (I think many of Sean Michael's books could use another 50 pages but that may just be me). I liked all the characters. I did feel that the two Dom's relationship needed a bit more explaining - it's hard for me to picture two Dom's sex lives as being more vanilla...though, to her credit, the author gives us a scene that smacks of reality in that they kind of challenge each other for dominance. I'm a huge fan of the hurt/comfort. The reason for 3 stars is this story really felt incomplete at the end - it needed a much better ending to tie the loose ends up and really strongly establish the forward framework...I didn't feel satisfied.
