Title: Maintenance Night
Author: Trent Evans
Publisher: Tritium Press (27 August 2012)
ASIN: B00935QWGY
A married couple. Friday evening. It’s Maintenance Night. Are they doing DIY? Well, in a sense, yes. They’re engaging in the ‘upkeep’ of their relationship. It just so happens that their form of nurture involves some spanking and caning.
This is the first Trent Evans book I’ve read and I have to say I really, really liked it. Maintenance Night is relatively short, weighing in at just fifty-one pages, but it doesn’t suffer from what I like to call ‘small book syndrome’ (a tale as threadbare as a two-hundred-year-old rug or a story that’s so ridiculously overstuffed that it’s afflicted by literary indigestion). The plot is strong and simple – as mentioned above, it focuses on a single night in the life of a married couple – and the action is centred on them connecting with one another through D/s.
Maintenance Night touched on some concepts that resonated particularly strongly with me. Firstly, courage and open-mindedness. I wanted to cheer Lacey, the female protagonist, for having the bottle to speak up and ask her husband to spank and discipline her, and Troy, her other half, for being so accepting of her needs. (No baulking from this man.) Secondly, the extremely positive portrayal of impact play (and BDSM in general) within an existing, committed relationship was extremely refreshing. Bluntly, it was nice to see two people, already together, still discovering and challenging one another. What a great way to be!
The author also makes a concerted effort in Maintenance Night to highlight that what goes on between Lacey and Troy follows the ‘safe, sane and consensual’ mantra, which, for me, instantly increased its appeal. As they play, Troy consistently checks in with his wife and, when he raises the stakes, he reminds her of her safeword – and, thus, of her choice to participate. He’s a thinking Dom who knows when to hold his hand – and when push it.
‘His low voice was back at her ear. “Do you need to say it?”
She shook her head, feeling the first tear track down her cheek. Her hands twisted in his grip, so determined were they to swipe away the evidence of her defeat.
“I’ll be right back.” He pressed his slacks against her, his huge erection hard against her soft, burning bottom. “Keep them there. If you move an inch, we’ll start over.”’
I made the fatal error of giving this book to my husband to read on my iPad while we were waiting for our kids to finish swimming lessons. By the time he’d reached the end of Maintenance Night half-an-hour later and we were due to collect them, he was as worked up as I was. We spent the rest of the day squirming in our seats with no possible outlet. So clearly this book appeals equally to both genders!
There was only one thing I felt was missing from this story – Troy’s point-of-view. Maintenance Night is written in the third-person and focuses on Lacey’s thoughts and feelings. While the narration is wonderful, I would have liked to have known what was going on in Troy’s head. (I got a pretty good idea from the way he behaved but what can I say? I like to crawl around inside the minds of my fictional characters.)
Finally, a guilty secret. I’m not sure why, but I tend to buy erotica written by women rather than men. Possibly because I unconsciously (or not so unconsciously) make the invalid assumption that I’ll have a stronger connection with the sexual and emotional feelings expressed by female writers. Maintenance Night has shown me how ridiculous I’ve been in not embracing more male erotica authors. This is a great story and a must for those who enjoy tales of domestic discipline (DD) and/or Dominance and submission (D/s).
And Mr Evans? Great cover.
Tickle your fancy? Click on the following links to buy Maintenance Night: Amazon.co.uk (Kindle) and Amazon.com (Kindle).
