James Stilton Fredricks III is the 22-year-old heir to the Fredricks fortune, one of the richest in the region. Having squandered the inheritance that he received when he turned eighteen, “barely only six figures left”, he is dependent upon his grandmother, Helen, his sole living relative, for support until she passes and leaves him with the bulk of the estate. Pampered and spoiled for most of his life, things are good for James. He does what he wants, uses the household staff (especially the female household staff–the latest being a cute little Persian girl named Shari, the upstairs maid) for his own pleasure, and relies on his name and the family wealth to keep him out of trouble. Life is good, that is, until Nurse Victoria moves into the manor to provide full time care for Helen and takes the disciplining of James on as an additional duty. Victoria is an auburn haired beauty in her thirties, taller than James and physically fit with a taught waist and a pleasing swell to hips and breasts. At Helen’s direction (and private delight) James is taken over Victoria’s lap for a bare bottomed spanking with her large, heavy ebony hairbrush. Helen and Victoria forbid James from further harassment or disrespect of the household staff (especially Shari) and back this edict up with spankings and paddlings. At Helen’s bidding, even the cook and her 18-year-old daughter contribute to the young man’s humiliation and correction. Victoria instructs Shari in the disciplining of James, who agrees to submit to weekly sessions over her petite knees in atonement for past sins. Shari’s small stature and inexperience work against her, however, until “Aunt Ethel”, Helen’s 80-year-old private secretary steps in to provide help and instruction. Under the strict and persistent lessons provided by this mansion full of women, James gradually sees the error in his former spoiled ways; he marries Shari, and becomes in every way a dutiful and considerate husband, with nothing but praise and kind words for every member of the household staff (especially its female members).

I was browsing some Femdom tales on Amazon, and came across this. I bought it even though I noticed one major error by this author. Notice the promo copy I pasted above? That’s from the Amazon listing, and it’s also at the beginning of the book. It summarizes the entire book, right up to the end! Good promo copy is supposed to tease the plot, not give it all away. I admit that I often struggles when writing reviews on this blog with exactly how much information to reveal without giving away crucial spoilers, but for this book, fuck it. There’s your spoilers already. So I don’t need to hold back.

I know the main reason readers would pick up the book is for the scenes of domination, and Graves does a good job writing those scenes. If tales of a young man being stripped and spanked by domineering women are what you’re looking for, this book has that. Multiple times James is stripped either completely naked or at least from the waste down and spanked by different women, either with their hands, or a hairbrush, or a slipper, and even a spatula. And the pain he feels is described in explicit, and exquisite, detail.

However, there is also one major flaw in this book: The narration randomly switches back and forth between first-person point of view and 3rd-person narration. It begins being told by James himself and the suddenly, usually in the middle of one of his spanking sessions, it just switches to third-person and then afterward switches back to James. It’s a bit jarring, and can hurt the flow of the story. It would have been better if Graves had stuck with one style or the other. Generally speaking, I prefer third-person narration over first-person, but in this instance I feel that it’s more effective when told from James’ POV.

As the promo states, James is an arrogant and haughty young man, with a feeling of superiority over most people, including the household staff of his grandmother’s mansion. When Victoria moves in he is initially dismissive of her, until the night where, at his grandmother’s direction, Victoria pulls down his pants and spanks him for the first time. This is where the first-person POV works best, as we can “hear” how James is struggling with all of his feelings of anger, shame, and humiliation by this treatment. Over the course of the book we see his arrogant façade slowly fade away as he is abused by Victoria and the other women.

There are also a couple of funny recurring bits, told from James POV. Several times when describes the tall and voluptuous Victoria, especially when she strips down to her bra and panties to administer a spanking, James will remark that she is “not my type.” It’s repetition suggests that he’s trying to convince himself that he’s not attracted to her. Also, early on, after he calls her a bitch, Victoria takes him into a bathroom and literally washes his mouth out with soap. From then on, in the rest of the book, whenever he thinks the word “bitch” he immediately gags at the memory of the taste of soap in his mouth. Scenes like that make the first-person POV most effective.

However, there are other flaws in this book. Graves alludes to certain events, but doesn’t show them, and then certain subjects just get dropped. For example, the first time Victoria and Shari spank James together, it begins with the ladies in bed together, revealing to James that they’re both bisexual and have become lovers. But after that chapter it’s never brought up again. And at the end of that first night, after both ladies have taken turns spanking him, Victoria asks Shari if during any of the times James had previously forced her to have sex with him, he’d given her any pleasure, Shari said no. So Victoria says now they’ll spend the rest of the night “educating” James about pleasing women, and that ends that chapter. The next chapter begins 3 days later, remembering the events of the last chapter and that after he was spanked “what had followed next was too humiliating even to contemplate, although it had finally let to satisfaction, of a sort.” And James recalls that he submitted to their every command. The clear implication being that the women had used him sexually, but we’re never told exactly what happened. That could have been an erotic scene, if Graves and followed through on it. The only real sexual scene we’re given in this book is in a later chapter, where Victoria gives James a handjob while she spanks him.

Also, we’re told that previous to this book, James had forced Shari to service him 20 times, so Victoria decrees that as payback, every Wednesday night for the next 20 weeks, James must go to Shari’s room and submit to her punishment. Now this could have been a good chance to see that character development between those two, because we know they’ll end up married, Shari has strong motivation for revenge. However the first night is interrupted, and that’s where the character of Ethel is introduced to the story. She takes over and spanks James. And then she also spanks Shari. This is a mistake that many femdom writers make, especially male authors, they feel the need to include a scene of a woman being punished, almost to even it out. But if the purpose of femdom tales is to read about women dominating men, not seeing women dominated, so that scene felt out of place. And, overall, I felt that Ethel’s character was an unnecessary addition to the book.

The book jumps ahead in time in the later chapters, we don’t know exactly how long (another flaw), we’re told that there are many more spankings of James by Victoria, Shari, the cook, and Ethel. There’s one more spanking session described in the 2nd to last chapter, where the wife of his grandmother’s chauffer is allowed to spank James with a strip of leather. Then the book jumps forward again several weeks and tells us that at Ethel’s urging, Shari and James were married. This is described as a way to keep James under control, and he had no say in the matter, although it is also implied that Shari had developed some “feelings” for James (which seems out of character for her), and afterward they continue to live in the family house and both still have spanking sessions with Ethel (no mention of what happens to Victoria). And that’s the end, which feels rather abrupt.

This is a short book, less than a hundred pages, and it could have been better had it been expanded. The switching narratives is the biggest problem, and we’re never really given any indication that James changes his attitude, we’re told in the promo that he eventually sees the error in his ways but we’re not actually shown that, which makes the ending feel incomplete. Mr. Graves had a good concept for the story, there’s lot of potential in it (and he is good at writing the spanking scenes), but the overall execution just doesn’t live up to its premise. Chacebook rating: THREE STARS

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