Book Rant

I just finished reading the book Game Misconduct by Bianca Sommerland.  I am going to have to give this book a weak 2 stars.  It had so much potential and just fell flat on its face.  I was excited to see something about a sport that interests me that I know very little about.  Hockey.  I knew better than to expect a lot of technical information since it was a romance novel after all.  However, I did expect some kind of plot to develop.  Apparently that was too much to hope for from this author.

The entire book was one gang bang after another with a BDSM tossed in for extra fun.  I love a good steamy sex scene as much as any reader of the genre, but not at the expense of a good story.  There were so many ways the plot could have taken off into a great story.  The potential was there to really build up suspense and in some cases this did happen briefly.  The problem?  Nothing happened with the story except more sex.  Little crumbs were laid out giving me hope to find something more in the next paragraph after they get done having sex, or the next page after they get done having sex again, or okay, maybe in the next chapter after they get done having sex....AGAIN.  Okay, so it's gonna be awhile before we find out what's happening to the team or the coach and his daughters.  

Well, okay, I've made it far enough into the book that I will at least finish reading it.  It just won't be on my list of favorites that I read over and over.  So I continue to read and look for some other redeeming quality in the book.  How about the BDSM stuff?  I haven't read a lot of fiction with BDSM involved.  I have read all of Cherise Sinclair's books and I am in love with those.  I have read a bit about the lifestyle and I understand the basics pretty well.  That being said, I found the BDSM parts to this book somewhat unbelievable.  These guys were supposed to all be Doms sharing the one sub.  That in itself seems a bit odd to me, but I can accept it as possible.  The real problem is that these Doms let their sub get away with just about anything she wants and only threaten punishment.  When they do finally follow through with spanking her, they find that she is a masochist and only gets off on the pain that much more.  They agree that they need to find another means of punishing her for inappropriate behavior, but they never do it.  She continues to mouth off at them and tell them what to do.  No true Dom would stand for the way she acts.  

We finally get through several rounds of sex and a new piece of plot shows up.  The ex-lover/head coach has been using her as a PR weapon for the team's investors.  It isn't much and doesn't seem to be developing into anything plot-wise, but things heat a beat when we find out her father/the team owner was in on it all along.  He cuts her off and she is on her own to find her way through life and get into med school (another plot detail left unused as she never goes to school and only references it weakly a couple of times). So, then we have more and more and more sex.  We go meet one of the players' father and an ex-flame and have an almost hockey game that ends up with our main character running out when she gets mad at two of her boyfriends who then run after her.  Then more sex ensues.  Then we get some meat to the plot when another of the players/masters shows up and takes our heroine (I use the term lightly) home after a scene goes bad with the other two Doms. He shows up and tells them her main boyfriend who got her started in all this got arrested and may end up charged with attempted murder, but his attorney will be trying to get him out on bail that night.  Another place where the author veers off into the unbelievable crap.  No worries though.  Nothing is going to actually be done with this part of the plot either.  To further build tension, we learn that the main boyfriend got in a fight with the coach when he tried to get him to throw a game for money and keep the team out of the playoffs.  

Now I'm thinking we are onto something.  This is getting interesting. We're getting right up to game time and the star player is now in jail unable to get a bail hearing when he finds out the team lawyer is in on the entire mess with the coach.  He has to hire another lawyer to get him out of jail.  Just as girlfriend and Dom arrive at the arena, out pops boyfriend.  His new lawyer miraculously got him a bail hearing in the middle of the night and got him out.  Charges for attempted murder were apparently dropped, but that isn't explained until the last chapter.  For now all we know is boyfriend got out on bail and has a restraining order against him, so he has to hide from the coaches during the game and rely on girlfriend to sneak into the room where he's hiding and give him updates on how the game is going.  Ridiculous!  Game is tied and only minutes are left and the coach is doing everything he can to keep the best players from being on the ice together at the same time so chemistry will be off.  Then someone gets hurt.  He ends up getting rushed to the hospital and girlfriend and main boyfriend rush after the ambulance.  Next thing we know all the players are at the hospital and then the other daughter of the team owner comes in and tells her sister their dad had a heart attack.  So who won the game?  What happened there?  Oh we get told by one of the players that the kid had two skull fractures and would be out probably a full year, but he is stable.

Now let's go see daddy in his hospital bed.  He is in and out of consciousness.  Not sure what's going on here.  All we know is he had a heart attack and he is supposed to be in stable condition.  He starts waking up and sees his currently cut off daughter at his bedside and yells for her to get out and get the other daughter back in there.  That's the last we hear of daddy.  He made his favorite daughter power of attorney and eventually turned over the team to her.  Did we get any details on any of this?  Why of course not.  We learn about it in the last chapter when everything that happened is summed up in 2 pages at a barbecue at the player's house FOUR MONTHS later!  Nothing about what happened to Daddy.  Nothing about what happened to the coach who was fixing the games.  Nothing about what happened to the main character who was arrested, only that his lawyer got charges dropped.  The two lovers went on a vacation where they got engaged and the master bought her a collar and they agreed to have the wedding and the collaring ceremony on the same day.  The end. What the hell?  That is it?  I wasted two days reading for that?  So what happened to the kid with the skull fractures?  Oh yeah.  At some point he apparently met up with the other player's old flame and they hit it off and she became his Domme.  Turns out he was actually a sub and nobody saw it but the Master who collared our heroine.  Geeeez.    

As if it wasn't painful enough making my way through the first book, I decided to try reading the sneak peek for the next one in the series.  It starts off at the wedding and collaring ceremony.  Then it ends up at the Blades and Ice BDSM club where one of the Doms is marking her in his own way to claim his piece of ownership.  Her sister doesn't know she is into the pain and goes nuts when Dom draws blood with his whip.  One of the coaches/a master at the club jumps in and takes over as the sister's Dom and tells her he doesn't give out safe words for use during punishments.  I had to stop reading there.  I just can't accept that any Dom worth a grain of salt is going to take on a new sub who has stated just minutes before that she isn't into the lifestyle though she was at the club with two other men and tell her she can't have a safe word.  

If you are into sex for the sake of sex  upon more sex upon more and more sex with multiple partners just for the sake of having more sex with multiple partners then I suppose you'd probably enjoy Game Misconduct.  If you want a story with some kind of plot detail involved and at least some semblance of plausibility, then stay away from this one.  I'd love to have my time back to spend on a more entertaining read.

PS - Sorry if there's lots of typos in this one.  My keyboard is messed up - backspace key is broken.  I tried to get most of them as I went, but I'm sure I missed a few.