Review by Sarah, who included it on her Top Ten Books of 2009 list. For the full review, go here.

Sterling is a college senior. He figured out that he was gay years ago, but he’s only figured out his attraction to BDSM very recently. He’s been domming a friend, but they both know it’s not working, and the friend takes Sterling to a BDSM club, where he watches a well-respected dom Owen (and Sterling’s former English professor) scene with and then break off his relationship with a submissive woman. Sterling has a moment of clarity (he’s not a dominant, he’s a submissive and a masochist) and chases down Owen and asks Owen to be his dom. Owen, understandably, refuses. After all, he’s just broken off a relationship, Sterling’s a former student, not yet 21, and almost half his age. But Owen is not proof against Sterling’s persistence, and, to be honest, his beauty, and finally agrees to become Sterling’s dominant.

One thing to make clear is that this IS a dominant/submissive and sadist/masochistic relationship. Owen does not consider himself Sterling’s boyfriend. They do not have a traditional relationship. And although Sterling gets to come and their connection is a sexual one, because fundamentally, BDSM *is* aobut sex, Owen refuses to have either anal or oral sex with Sterling until Sterling is 21. Which pisses Sterling off, because he’s not a patient person, and over which they fight a few times. Which makes it awkward every now and then when they’re not in dom/sub roles and find they have very little in common. This is the one concern I had with the book: what kind of relationship can they have beyond the D/s? Because at the end of the book, they’re together as committed partners as well as dom/sub, and I think the relationship building gets skimmed a little too much and I wonder what they’ll talk about of an evening when they’re just lounging around together.

That aside, everything else is wonderfully done. The characterizations are perfectly clear: Sterling’s bratty but conflicted, so used to getting his own way, brought up to be a hard-ass by his dick of a father, but so desperate to submit, to serve, but so eager to get off because OMG, he’s 20 and a walking erection. And Owen’s older and wiser and very much in control but still vulnerable to a pretty pout and a desperate “please,” just like we all are. And oh, the BDSM is beautifully done. The scenes are hot and these boys TALK. In fact, that’s part of the characterization: both Sterling and Owen are in their heads too much, too smart not to take apart everything they do, alone and together. And so the reader understands every step of the way, everything that’s going on.

In fact, at a climactic (harhar) point in the book, Owen says to Sterling, “I’m not your father,” which causes Sterling to freak out and leave. And the characterization is so perfectly done that even though the scene was told from Owen’s perspective, I was in both of their heads to such an extent that I knew why Owen had said that (he wanted Sterling to know he wasn’t doing something to punish him the way Sterling’s asshole of a father did), felt his utter shock when Sterling reacted apparently illogically by running away from a reassurance, and yet, at the same time, completely understood WHY Sterling was running away (he thought Owen was saying that he thought Sterling was looking for a father figure and he felt Owen didn’t really know him). The scene was so well-done it actually pulled me out because I was astounded at how well I viscerally understood the motivations and feelings of both Sterling and Owen right away.

Back to the BDSM, though. It’s a very formal BDSM. Owen likes things just so and is very much into training Sterling. It sounds too much like hard work to me, especially since Sterling’s quite so much of a brat, but you make it work beautifully, precisely because it’s so much a part of their characters. And the BDSM is done lovingly and well. Here’s an description of Sterling’s masochism:

God, it hurt like nothing else ever. He screamed so desperately that it didn’t even come out very loud; there just wasn’t enough air behind it to create volume. It was like his nerve endings were using up all his oxygen, and he couldn’t breathe or think through the searing pain.

He couldn’t do anything. He was gone.

The scary part was how fucking good it felt, the bright agony ripping him free of restraints that weren’t made of rope or chain. He used the pain, just as Owen had told him to, shaped it, loved it, let it take him. Dimly, distantly, he felt his climax begin, lagging long moments behind his scream, an afterthought, as if his body was trying to kill the pain with pleasure, which was stupid, really, because they were both the same.

And one of Owen’s sadism:

“It’ll hurt,” Owen said, and there was something in his voice that told Sterling how much it would hurt and how much Owen wanted to do it. It was hard to wrap his head around at the beginning of their relationship; the way that for all Owen made him feel safe and protected, Owen got off on hurting him, leaving him bruised, marked, crying. With anyone else, that would have freaked Sterling out, but he didn’t just love Owen, he trusted him. Totally. No limits.

It was what allowed him to ask for more than he could take, made reckless by arousal, knowing that Owen was more aware of his limits than he was. Spanking him scarlet and hot turned Owen on, but controlling Sterling, reining him in, curbing his impulses, did even more for him, and Sterling knew that.

But both of these are told from Sterling’s perspective and brings up one tiny niggle more that’s my own personal issue more than anything else. You GET submission *and* masochism, or at least Sterling does a brilliant job of showing it to us and making us understand it. But when we’re in Owen’s head, it’s much more about the dominance than it is about the sadism. Yes, he gets off on hurting Sterling, but that’s much less explored than his dominance is. And that disappointed me slightly. But not enough not to thoroughly enjoy this book.

The book was a wonderful, slow, thoughtful read with some really REALLY great sex and a fascinating depiction of some very formal, very safe, and yet still emotionally dangerous BDSM. The plot of the book, such as it is, is focused on the emotional trajectory of the relationship and on Sterling’s issues with his idiotic father. There’s no suspense plot, no saving the world, nothing but two people falling in love as they explore each other, both physically and emotionally. Which is why the lack of exploration of what they have in common besides BDSM and hot hot sex was vaguely disappointing as well. But only vaguely. In the end, I trusted that they’d stay together because they were both too damn stubborn to do anything else: Bound and Determined indeed.

Rainbow Reviews 5 stars

Review by Lily. For the full review, go here.

This excellent book really captured my attention throughout. The characters of Sterling and Owen are both so well written that neither one overshadows the other, instead I found them to be a perfect foil for each other. Sterling is young and eager, excited by the lifestyle yet at times almost overwhelmed by it. At first he appears to be just a guy wanting to learn about the kink he's interested in, but as more of the real Sterling is revealed we see a young man deeply affected by the pressures of trying to meet the expectations of a hard inflexible father and a mother who while she loves her son puts her husband first in all things. Sterling's relationship with his father has a very big effect on his psyche and more than once on his relationship with Owen.

To say that I liked this book is not enough. I loved it. Sterling and Owen are wonderful characters and the relationship between them was very well written, from that first awkward meeting at the club to the beautiful and romantic ending their story touched my heart. The secondary characters in the story are also well written and add depth to the story, from Sterling's family to Owen's friends, they all contribute to the richness of the storyline.

This is a book that is going straight to my keeper shelf. Fans of Jane Davitt and Alexa Snow will definitely not want to miss out on reading their latest fabulous book.