It took me a long time to read this, which shows how interested I was in it. It felt like RFice couldn't decide what sort of book this was. BDSM Erotica? Love Story? A psychological exploration of the BDSM lifestyle and love? Because of that, I found it hard to get into. I didn't like the characters much so I wasn't invested in them.

I think the story would have worked better as a love story with kinky bits and stuck to that arc. Instead, there were scenes of BDSM at the Club that I found did little to move the plot forward or help us learn anything about the characters.

I loved Interview with the Vampire and Rice's way of showing how seductive vampires are, how seductive wanting to be a vampire can be. I've read some of her other "erotic" books and found them much sexier than this one. ( )

The surprise was to find that this novel is quite the anti ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. In ‘Fifty Shades’, we go from an innocent main character to a more mature, adult, woman. Here, this is rather the opposite: the main character, Lisa, is a BDSM dominant who has it all: fortune, an exclusive BDSM resort and the management of it all. However, she ends up falling in love with one of the newly arrived ‘slaves’, Elliott.

So readers who are looking to get some ‘thrill’ from erotic scenes are going to be disappointed, because the main themes are rather the love story, the characters’ inner thoughts and developments throughout the novel. Basically, we go from a standard BDSM scene into vanilla sex.

I’ve found their characterization a bit stereotypical whereas some peripheral characters stand out better than them, for example, ‘the mentor’ Martin is better defined, he is easier to picture than Lisa or Elliott.

If you’re looking to read about a good love story, then this is the book for you. If you’re expecting more out of it, you’re going to be disappointed. It’s a leisurely read, nothing more. ( )

". . . Eden is the state of the heart and the mind where the age-old power of innocence and love can still be recaptured. "

Panders to the brutal reality that we'd pretty much all like to get abducted and taken off to some island where we are all given exactly what we wanted back from the beginning... ( )

Eigenlijk vond ik dit boek haast beter dan bijvoorbeeld O. Het is meer in een fantasie wereld geschreven en het laat je dromen dat je hoopt zo'n fantasiewereld ook (ooit) eens te vinden. Ja van mij mogen die satijnen ketenen wel. Geef me graag over ...en niet alleen in mijn dromen. ( )