A review by una_macchia
The Earl's Mistress by Liz Carlyle

4.0

3.5 stars. I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting to like this: I actually thought it might be a hate-read. BDSM isn't really my thing, and in the few romances with a dominant hero and submissive heroine I've read, I've found that they just amplify the autocratic man/doormat martyr woman dynamic that annoys me in non-kinky romance. However, I thought the way Liz Carlyle handled the elements of control and power dynamics between the hero and heroine in bed vs in the rest of their lives, and how that interacts with Victorian gender roles, was actually pretty interesting. The heroine's submissive streak worked for me in a way that it hasn't in other books because she really isn't a doormat in the rest of her life - she hasn't ever had the chance to be. The hero's desire for control and subsequent relinquishing of it to the heroine wasn't explored as explicitly but it also made sense for his character. He's rather unpleasant to say the least when we first meet him, but he gets a lot of character development (no personality transplant, though) so I could buy the HEA.

I must say that I got distracted by how raspy the hero's voice was (as described - I wasn't listening to audio). Someone get this man a lozenge!