Review: Like No One Is Watching by Jaime Samms

Author: Jaime Samms

Pages/Word Count: 154 Pages

At a Glance: Like No One Is Watching is an incredibly beautiful tale of love and healing and new beginnings.

Reviewed By: Sammy

Blurb: Dusty has finally landed a job he thinks he’ll be able to keep long-term, even with his broken brain and bum knee. He didn’t anticipate that cleaning a dance studio would reawaken his yearning to dance—even though he is no longer capable—or that meeting the studio’s director would rouse his dormant libido. Or his sleeping heart.

Conrad thinks his life is finally complete with his successful dance studio and a steady stream of students. When Dusty arrives, he rediscovers his thirst for a man who will let him hand over control and give him the undivided attention he’s never had. The trouble is, Dusty isn’t sure he’s worthy of the studio director’s submission.

To make their relationship work, Dusty will have to trust his ability to dominate the powerful and beautiful dancer, and Conrad will have to stop talking long enough to hear Dusty’s promises.

Review: Conrad finds his professional fulfillment off stage, training young minds and bodies to perform flawlessly and with passion. Ever in control, he does what he must—even to the point of humiliation to make his pupils ready for any stage they may move on to in the future. Once off the clock, however, Conrad is desperate to hand the reigns over to someone who will understand his need to submit and will treat such submission with care and love.

Dusty is broken—both physically and mentally. He was a victim of a violent bashing at the age of fifteen, which ended any hopes of a dancing career and any ability to live without strict rules and routine. Only carefully repeated daily steps give Dusty’s meager existence any semblance of order and control—a control he must have or feel as though his life is spiraling downward in a crazy and frightening rush. Even with such attention to the minutiae that others so blithely take for granted does not always guarantee that Dusty will move through his day smoothly. Nor does it ever pierce the walls he has erected around his need for passion and the hunger to be wanted—to be boldly in love.

Two men—both so very lost in many ways—find each other and are so badly wounded they almost run too far for the other to capture and hold—run too far for love to find them. When they finally stop and embrace the music—their dance is stunning to behold.

Like No One Is Watching by Jaime Samms almost perfectly encapsulates the quintessential trust needed to truly let go and love another person—giving yourself over completely and with it, your heart. For Dusty and Conrad that journey is fraught with tortured moments of honesty that seemed to be pulled from their very souls. The slow building relationship between these two characters is so carefully written and so sweetly executed. Piece by piece this story reveals the deeply buried wounds each man carries with him, and we wait breathlessly to see if they can reach beyond their own insecurities to be the healing balm for each other’s hearts.

From the acts of submission to the tentative steps on the dance floor, this story carefully unfolds the growing understanding and passion of two terribly needy men. I think the only real flaw I could find in this story was the cursory glance it seemed to give both Conrad’s and Dusty’s pasts. I felt the novel would have been so much richer if the backstories of both men had been given a bit more attention and page time. I was, in essence, greedy to know more about them prior to the moment when this book began chronicling their current lives.

However, Like No One Is Watching is an incredibly beautiful tale of love and healing and new beginnings—a dance that leaves one most satisfied. Even though the story lacked some attention to past detail, I found it to be a wonderfully written novel I would highly recommend.