REVIEW: The Subs Club by JA Rock

RATING:

Amazon

Blurb

A year ago, my best friend Hal died at the hands of an incompetent “dom.” So I started the Subs Club, a private blog where submissives can review doms and call out the douche bags. 

A perfect example of the kind of arrogant a$$hole I mean? The Disciplinarian. He has a pornstache. He loves meat, stoicism, America, and real discipline. And he thinks subs exist to serve him. 

But . . . not everything about him is awful. His Davy Crockett act just seems like a cover for his fear of intimacy, and part of me wants to show him it’s okay to get close to people. And, I mean, sue me, but I have fantasized about real discipline. Not role-play, but like, Dave, you’re gonna be thirty in four years and you still work in a mall; get your ass in gear or I’ll spank it. 

Not that I’d ever trust anyone with that kind of control. 

I’m gonna redefine “battle of wills” for the Disciplinarian. Or I’m gonna bone him. It’s hard to say. 

—Dave

Review

This is my first JA read. I read some reviews from Goodreads friends. What can I say, monkey see, monkey do. HAH!

I’m glad I read it. It had funny moments, that’s for sure; which is what got me interested in the first place. But it’s more than that. Four friends are recovering from an unexpected death of a friend while in a scene. Each one is dealing with it in their own way. This is Dave’s way of dealing with it. Along the way, he met The Disciplinarian, whose name also happened to be David. Yup, 2 Davids. And so began an interaction meant to provide what each other needs.

Dave, our main voice of the story, had an ulterior motive when he reached out to The Disciplinarian, or D, the first time. But as things progressed, obviously, David started feeling differently.

Dave is one bratty kid, but I get and like him. He’s cheeky and funny. But beyond that, he cares deeply for his friends. I found D to be one serious dude, some kind of Renaissance man, almost. In my head, neither one is typical H’s, especially D. David doesn’t call him Pornstache for nothing. Put them together though, they have both funny and introspective interactions. 

And Dave's friends play quite the roles as well. After all, these friends are big parts of his life. There's easy camaraderie. While they have their funny moments, I think it's important to keep in mind that they're all dealing with something big and emotional as well. Kamen may just be my favorite of all of them.

BDSM is not a theme I usually read in romance, let alone m/m. I have a low threshold for the different kinks in this lifestyle. So call me a wuss, but this did push my limits a bit. Reading this was almost like an education at the very least. I don’t fully understand the dynamics of these kinds of relationship but I think I do get the underlying purpose, the need it fulfills on either side.

Regardless of all that, considering this is not my cuppa', I really did enjoy this book just as I anticipated. I get the humor, but there’s more emotion than that. It touched on dealing with grief, discovering about one’s self, and what trust means in these relationships.

The rest of the series focuses on the rest of the friends. They each get their own story. As curious as I am, I don’t think I’m ready to read the rest at this point, but maybe someday…

Thanks for dropping by!

~Leftie