deirdre....in my free time

Wow. This actually took me a couple of days to read. I kept putting it down. 
I put it down because I KNEW it was going to hurt . . . I knew the story arc, predicted the flow of the story . . 
BUT, that did not keep me from enjoying this!! 

Great character development. I felt like I knew these guys. 
The DIALOGUE!!! My God, I kept laughing!!
The dialogue made me feel like a fly on the wall to the conversations. It is that good!!
The secondary characters Bill and Angus! Damn I want their story!! They stole each of the small scenes they were in !!

Professional figure skating. Damn, either the author knows a skater, was a skater, or did damn good research. I happen to know an ex pro figure skater, descriptions are dead on!! The hours, the practice, the Russian coaches, lol! 
The eating. The dieting. Watching every calorie. Yup. Skating and dancing . . . Par for the course. 

The D/s scenes . . . I would have liked more explicit consent. That would have made me happier. I would have liked an actual safe word, not three snaps. That doesn't seem too safe to me when people are in the heat of the moment, but I am hearing challenged so . . . My bias I guess.
The big scene that everyone is talking about. Weirdly, not a big deal to me. . . Certainly NOT for me, but total control is total control. 


So why 4 and not 5 stars . . . I reserve the right to change my mind!!!!

*The predictability of the story arc . . . 
*Ben, Rob's son . . . Ummm...... I will go look up his age, but he is not yet a teenager. I am presently the mom of 2 teens, and 2 more not yet teens....I have spent my entire 20 year career teaching teens . . . .no one speaks like that. I do not mean the sophistication of word selection or the ability to talk to adults. I experience that all the time. FOR ME, it is level of sexual content in his language I actually found concerning. A rational adult would be concerned also. Language and casual sexual content like that is a red flag. I kept waiting to find something dreadfully abusive had happened to Ben. 

This was a good if not great read . . . I plan to read more from this author.