Once a Brat

Title: Once a Brat ( Kinky Cupid series )
Author: Kim Dare
Cover Artist: L.C. Chase
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Buy Link: Once a Brat (Kinky Cupid)
Genre: M/M Contemporary Romance / Bdsm / humour
Length: 25,400 words
Rating: 3.75 out of 5 rating stars

A Guest Review by Raine

Summary Review: A competent bread and butter BDSM story with sugar sprinkles.

Blurb: Experienced dominant Marcus Tremayne has a stalker. On the plus side, the boy following him around his local leather club is gorgeous and a self-professed submissive. Unfortunately, he’s also inexperienced, bratty, and liable to drive Marcus insane within his incessant chatter and questions.

Bret Daniels fell head over heels with Marcus the moment he first saw him. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to get Marcus’s attention and prove his worth as a submissive. He might not be a traditional sub, but he knows he has a lot to offer a dom who can handle his quirks.

When Marcus gives in and agrees to do a scene with Bret, sparks fly. One scene quickly becomes another, and another. But will it be a case of once a brat, always a brat? Bret intends to prove to Marcus that—expectations and experiences aside—he deserves his master’s collar.

Review:

Kim Dare has written a lot of this type of short erotic bdsm book; dom meets sub romances. This particular one starts off hot to trot, becoming more sweetly funny towards the end; any BDSM tale that ends up muttering about Cupid is clearly not hard core. Bret is an outspoken singleminded bratty sub, luckily the object of his obsession Marcus has a sense of humour. I found Bret very young, which I guess allowed for the innocence, relatively speaking, versus experience trope going here.

As many of these books are, it is based in a club environment. Two of Marcus’ friends, fellow dominants, make appearances that suggest they could be starring in later stories of their own. There is a cute scene in which Bret reinforces both his brattishness like no other brat and his dedication to Marcus. Marcus is the nonpareil of dom’s, honourable and finally ready to be dedicated to one sub alone. Actually, now I think of it, this is a reworked Regency rake romance with added kink……and lots of heat.

It is a competent piece of work, but even allowing for that, I feel Kim Dare could have written this in her sleep. It would be nice to see more of her work that is more challenging and less formulaic. Nevertheless it is a fun if slight read.