Review: How to Train Your Dom in 5 Easy Steps

Title: How to Train Your Dom in 5 Easy Steps

Author: Josephine Myles

Publisher: Samhain Publishing

Pages/Word Count: 295 Pages

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb: Sometimes the little head really does know best.

Jeff White’s needs are simple. All he wants is a submissive to help him explore the dominant side that his ex-girlfriend couldn’t handle. Problem is, inexperience in both dating and domming has resulted in a string of rejections.

What he needs is an experienced sub willing to show him the ins and outs of controlling a scene. Unfortunately, the only one willing to take him on is male, and Jeff is straight. One hundred percent, never-gonna-happen straight.

Easygoing painslut Eddie Powell doesn’t care that Jeff is younger, working class, and shorter. Eddie likes a bit of rough, and Jeff fits the bill perfectly. The trick will be convincing him to follow Eddie’s five-step training programme—which would be easy if Eddie wasn’t starting to have feelings for the rough-around-the-edges landscaper.

Once Jeff lays his hands on Eddie, things definitely get out of hand. But it’ll take more than hot, sweaty, kinky sex to persuade him to come out of the closet—especially to himself.

Review: There are very few authors who head up an “auto-buy” list for me. Perhaps it is because I read so many books in this genre and have become a bit jaded? No, I think more accurately that, like all genres and forms, novels can become formulaic and even though well written, they all seem to fade into one another. Not so with this novel or with this author. Josephine Myles once again proves she deserves every moment of laud and praise for the delightfully smart writer she is and for stories that leave you always wanting just a chapter or two more.

How to Train Your Dom in 5 Easy Steps is humorous, clever, sweet and so romantic in the most annoying of ways. Annoying because one of the main characters, Jeff White, is simply too bullheaded to realize that he is at the very least bisexual, and even possibly gay, and most assuredly falling in love with his “mentor” and submissive, Eddie Powell.

Jeff is not the smoothest man of the bunch. After remaining loyally wedded to a woman he has known since he was 16, he is now divorced and looking to find a submissive to indulge his more sadistic tendencies. Unfortunately, he has little in the way of finesse and even less luck with the opposite sex, so when his next door neighbor suggests he get some training by an admittedly world class submissive, Jeff grudgingly agrees to five sessions with Eddie. The only problem? Eddie is gay, out and proud and Jeff is…straight.

So begins Jeff’s schooling. Honestly, there were times when I laughed so hard, I was gasping for breath. The inner dialogue that author Josephine Myles writes for both of these men is just outstanding. These characters were just so impossibly real with more foibles and quirks than I can begin to describe. Poor Jeff is following in his homophobic father’s footsteps by working in construction, when all he really wants to be is a landscaping gardener. Eddie is so busy convincing himself that he will never find the right Dom who can satisfy all his needs and be of the right sexual persuasion that he nearly talks himself out of recognizing that he is in love with his erstwhile Dom/gardener. The interaction between these two men is steamy—yet so incredibly tender. That is the key here, the author has taken the time in her story to fully flesh out these two men, making them not only believable but also so very appealing.

There are no rushing things in this story. Jeff does not go gently into that gay night nor does Eddie force him to. Instead, theirs is a slow building relationship that evolves cautiously and had many a hitch and falter before it is all done. Realistic to a fault, How to Train Your Dom in 5 Easy Steps, explores two intricately woven needs: that of pain given and pain received. Both men are straight forward in acknowledging that BDSM is a part of who they are and they are eager to fulfill the desires that drive them using each other. When Jeff is reluctant to touch Eddie sexually, there is no quick fix. Rather, the author carefully allows for Jeff to explore his bisexual side and accept or reject it on his terms. True to form, this story plays out with truth and conviction, staying true to its premise and focused on the needs of its characters.

I cannot praise this novel enough. Not only delightfully witty but tender and realistic, How to Train Your Dom in 5 Easy Steps is just a marvelous story well worth its five star rating. I highly recommend it to you!

You can pre-order How to Train Your Dom in 5 Easy Steps here: