Wicked Weekend

If you're like me - and God help you if you are - the letters BDSM don't quite ring a bell. But upon further examination, you might make out this: bondage, discipline, sado-masochism.

Yep.

When I began reading Wicked Weekend, by Gillian Archer, I realized I was way out of my depth. I've never heard of BDSM, knew nothing about it, and really am not interested in it. But that does not mean that Wicked Weekend is not an entertaining, if slight, novel.

Lauren miserably attends her sister's pre-wedding ski party (who knew you could ski close to Las Vegas?), pining over her sister's fiance, over whom Lauren nurses a bad crush. To get away from the happy couple for a few minutes, she goes to the bar to buy a drink. While there, she sees a gorgeous man across the room and recognizes the black bandana peeking out of his back pocket. She knows enough about the BDSM culture to tell that this man is into BDSM and prefers to be the dominant person in the fun. He sees her looking at him, approaches her, and the next thing you know, she's upstairs in his room, getting spanked. Literally. Before they engage in their festivities, however, Jamie, the spanker, defends Lauren to her snotty sister, which sets the tone for a possible romance.

Oh, come on. You know there will be romance. This is a Hot Romance Novel, after all.

But that's where it feels slight. While the sexy times are interesting and quite hot, the romance does not have any heft to it at all. Lauren is impressionable and slightly buttoned up, but I can see why she would fall for Jamie. The problem is why he falls for her. His choice of her over other women is not made clear. He has trust issues, but why Lauren? And really, now that I think about it, why does she decide she wants to date him?

It's almost as if Gillian Archer can't decide if she's writing a bondage tale or a Hot Romance Novel. It's almost as if she cannot do both, unless she provides more information. Still ... it's hot. The headboard rocking is HOT.

Here is a brief glimpse:

She could do this. God, he looked so hot sitting there with that smug grin on his face. She could tell that he was getting off on her torment. Truth be told, so was she. Release hovered just out of reach. And she knew the only way she as coming was if she followed his directions exactly and let him control her body.

Hot, right? Wicked Weekend has a lot of hotness.

And who knows? Maybe you'll have a hankering for a spanking.