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A review by klindtvedt
Lowdown Dirty by Holley Trent
3.0
A Charmingly Unhurried Romance Marred by Typos and Lack of Detail...
"Lowdown Dirty” by Holly Trent is a gloriously unhurried stroll to love. A book built on a kaleidoscope of characters led by the core story of Valerie and Tim. Valerie being a driven architect, determined to not repeat the mistakes of her mother. A fiercely dominant woman in the workplace, one so resolute on achieving her professional goals she adopts a lifestyle devoid of anything other than work so as not to appear weak or unworthy of the professional milestones enjoyed more freely by her male counterparts. A woman who feels unable to freely express her desires for submission in her personal life as she fears it will taint and derail everything professionally she is working tirelessly for. And Tim, a lonely, forty-something man longing for a sense of being beyond his success as a well-known and respected boat builder. He is a man with a reputation for being as dominant in the bedroom as he is on the factory floor, an integral part of the well-entrenched kink community in his tiny town. A man desired by many but whom has his heart set on finding the submissive key to his particular brand of Dom lock. What follows is a refreshing tale of the realities of what it’s like to be both kinky and a high achieving female professional in a male dominated field. The realities of trying to “have it all” while also being taken seriously in a field you love and are passionate about.
I have to say, this story struck a deeply personal chord within me. I have been part of the BDSM community my entire adult life. However, I have also existed within a professional realm dominated by men who would happily use (and have used) my female-ness against me in order to discredit my work or get ahead themselves. As a result, I have often made choices, such as never getting married, in order to better succeed professionally and be able to support myself beyond the standard societal domain of “mother”, “wife”, “woman”, because I am so much more than just those things. So to encounter such a lovingly written, sleepy romance that enrobes your heart lazily like warm honey, all while dealing head on with such important issues was a joyous find for me.
And while I loved the slow and steady, southern sensibility. I wish it had been completely what it is advertised as being, an unapologetic story of kink and D/s within the reality of the everyday normative world.
This book, while remaining a wonderful story overall, sadly falls far short of its full potential. First, it is surprisingly kink free despite being positioned as a BDSM themed story world. There were no real forays into kink, merely suggestions and innuendos, something that, considering the plot framework was disappointing. Especially given that it takes away your ability to truly get to know both Valerie and Tim as they are at their cores. You never really get to see what type of Dom Tim actually is and how his flavor of Dom-ness fits with Valerie’s distinctive type of submission. You don’t actually get a full sense of how they complement and complete each other as partners, especially where Valerie's skittish tendencies and black and white thinking come into play; a huge let down for me overall.
Additionally this book, despite the kink-lite reality of it, would have still been worthy of four stars in my opinion, if it had not been for the horrendously awkward phrasing and word omission issues present. There were so many typos and places throughout where a sentence structure issue made me stop and reread a sentence or passage to discern what the author was intending, that it greatly distracted from the story within. And while the core of the story, the hearts of the characters within them, are worth the arduous, error riddled journey to the end. I would love to see this book proofread, the issues within re-written and/or corrected, edited properly, and rereleased so that it can be enjoyed thoroughly and without distraction.
"Lowdown Dirty” by Holly Trent is a gloriously unhurried stroll to love. A book built on a kaleidoscope of characters led by the core story of Valerie and Tim. Valerie being a driven architect, determined to not repeat the mistakes of her mother. A fiercely dominant woman in the workplace, one so resolute on achieving her professional goals she adopts a lifestyle devoid of anything other than work so as not to appear weak or unworthy of the professional milestones enjoyed more freely by her male counterparts. A woman who feels unable to freely express her desires for submission in her personal life as she fears it will taint and derail everything professionally she is working tirelessly for. And Tim, a lonely, forty-something man longing for a sense of being beyond his success as a well-known and respected boat builder. He is a man with a reputation for being as dominant in the bedroom as he is on the factory floor, an integral part of the well-entrenched kink community in his tiny town. A man desired by many but whom has his heart set on finding the submissive key to his particular brand of Dom lock. What follows is a refreshing tale of the realities of what it’s like to be both kinky and a high achieving female professional in a male dominated field. The realities of trying to “have it all” while also being taken seriously in a field you love and are passionate about.
I have to say, this story struck a deeply personal chord within me. I have been part of the BDSM community my entire adult life. However, I have also existed within a professional realm dominated by men who would happily use (and have used) my female-ness against me in order to discredit my work or get ahead themselves. As a result, I have often made choices, such as never getting married, in order to better succeed professionally and be able to support myself beyond the standard societal domain of “mother”, “wife”, “woman”, because I am so much more than just those things. So to encounter such a lovingly written, sleepy romance that enrobes your heart lazily like warm honey, all while dealing head on with such important issues was a joyous find for me.
And while I loved the slow and steady, southern sensibility. I wish it had been completely what it is advertised as being, an unapologetic story of kink and D/s within the reality of the everyday normative world.
This book, while remaining a wonderful story overall, sadly falls far short of its full potential. First, it is surprisingly kink free despite being positioned as a BDSM themed story world. There were no real forays into kink, merely suggestions and innuendos, something that, considering the plot framework was disappointing. Especially given that it takes away your ability to truly get to know both Valerie and Tim as they are at their cores. You never really get to see what type of Dom Tim actually is and how his flavor of Dom-ness fits with Valerie’s distinctive type of submission. You don’t actually get a full sense of how they complement and complete each other as partners, especially where Valerie's skittish tendencies and black and white thinking come into play; a huge let down for me overall.
Additionally this book, despite the kink-lite reality of it, would have still been worthy of four stars in my opinion, if it had not been for the horrendously awkward phrasing and word omission issues present. There were so many typos and places throughout where a sentence structure issue made me stop and reread a sentence or passage to discern what the author was intending, that it greatly distracted from the story within. And while the core of the story, the hearts of the characters within them, are worth the arduous, error riddled journey to the end. I would love to see this book proofread, the issues within re-written and/or corrected, edited properly, and rereleased so that it can be enjoyed thoroughly and without distraction.