🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️4 / 5
This features many explicit scenes with lots of detailed language. This book is heavier on the spice, but the plot is still there and doing something interesting. Also, it's probably at least a little kinky.
The Smut / Kinks include: DADDY KINK (all caps because my god does it come up multiple times a page), headmaster / student (which is just to the left of teacher/student), dom / sub power dynamics, spanking / pain play, sugar daddy / caretaking, praise kink, degradation, orgasm denial / chastity play, sex in public & So Much Dirty Talk. So much of this book was smut I may have missed something, but honestly the main kinks made it into pretty much every scene.

"Meghan," you might say, "I see that list of kinks and so many are hits for you! Why isn't this book rated higher?" I hear you. The thing is, this is a pretty good book! I will probably read other things by this author to see if they are more my vibe. The thing is: I don't mind Daddy kink. I don't go out of my way to avoid it and it tends to be packaged with a lot of other things I'm super into so I tend to read it a lot. However, this book Daddy kink is the Main Kink (tm). Instead of Sir or Master, Gideon's title is exclusively Daddy so it is used like 3-7ish times every page during sex scenes. This is fine! If it's your kink, you will love this book! However, I picked this up expecting it to go harder on the teacher/student vibes and honestly that isn't the main focus at all. They have sex at the school a few times, but it was rarely during the pre-built in daily detention that is established to be happening but is almost never on screen. They have sex way more at home and it falls much heavier on the caretaking / daddy kink. Totally fine, but not what I was here for.

Okay, some things I did like though:
- The plot was weirdly compelling, and I'm really not sure how they fit so much plot in considering like every other scene was smut?? I think this book feels so fast paced because we are bouncing back and forth between Intense Smut scene and Intense Plot scene with very little down beat.
- I have never come across a more absolutely devastatingly filthy amount of dirty talk from the dom. Gideon talks a lot during the sex scenes and honestly I wasn't mad about it.
- It's kind of funny, but this really does go very hard on making a taboo romance aggressively not taboo. Gideon is only his headmaster for 6 weeks, Cal is 19 years old, and they had sex before Gideon realized he was going to be Cal's temporary headmaster.
- The backstories for each of the characters were complex and the trauma they were both carrying made sense and caused understandable obstacles for them, which I'm not always expecting in a smut novel. It's surprisingly emotional!
- The way the plot resolved was very satisfying, both for the romance and for the overarching plot of preventing Cal from being expelled for bullshit reasons and uncovering a cheating/rich people paying for spots in top schools scandal. I didn't expect the places it went and weirdly integrated itself well between.

TLDR
Anyway, if you are looking for "taboo" romance that is actually perfectly unproblematic with a lot of Daddy Kink smut and some headmaster/student flavoring, this is the book for you. If you really wanted the student/teacher stuff only and/or you don't want too much plot in your erotica, you'd probably be better off skipping this one.

Teacher/student isn't particularly my thing most of the time, but I enjoyed this enough to read it the entire way through, so props!

Details: Alternating POVs, third-person, past tense
Favourite character: Cal
Happy ending?: Yes
Other content warnings: Unsafe BDSM (in the past and not between the MCs, but discussion of a past partner ignoring safewords and another using their Dom/sub relationship as a way to abuse them)

Favourite quotes:

On paper this book seems really interesting, and I typically love Onley James’s writing. However, this one just wasn’t quite what I thought it would be or wanted. I think the characters were a bit underdeveloped, they fell in love too fast, & some of the plot points had no foreshadowing so they felt out of left field. The spice was very good though. 

Dark Romance, Daddy Kink, Age Gap, 4 🔥

“It sucks loving somebody whose love comes with conditions.”

“‘Do you think you could love me forever?’ ‘Sometimes, it seems as if I have and just didn’t know it.’”

Deliciously steamy read that I devoured in one evening. Gideon and Callum are a perfect daddy/boy match. The story had a bit of mystery/suspense that kept me intrigued until the end and lots of heartfelt emotions in between. This was my first book by this author and I look forward to checking out her other titles!