Customer Reviews

Sweet Discipline

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Sweet Discipline starts out with Norris Brownell jealous of her friend Kendra and her svelte new body. Kendra had recently come back from a new spa called Sweet Discipline, some twenty five pounds lighter, and now Norris wants to try. Norris has gone to countless spas and gone through numerous diet and exercise regimes only to fall off the wagon after a few months. What's she's lacking is discipline, so she thinks this new spa sounds like just what she needs. Kendra insists the methods Sweet Discipline use are confidential and if she wants to go through the program, she'll have to sign the contracts blindly and just accept the fact they'll have her best interests in mind. Norris, happily optimistic that she'll lose some weight and get that cute office guy to finally notice her, walks into Sweet Discpline having no idea what's in store. Her trainer, Adrian, was not what she had in mind. First off, he's a man, and second, he's gorgeous and a domineering bully. He strips her and tells her all the things that are wrong with her, both mind and body. He reveals to her all the weaknesses about herself and she resents him for it. She'll show him, she thinks. After the first few sessions, her resistance melts away though, as do the unwanted pounds. As Adrian is conditioning her body, he's also conditioning her mind, making her more pliant and responsive. He introduces herself to the woman she's been all along. While his methods would surely raise the eyebrows of the Better Business Bureau, not to mention the police, they are most effective. Adrian sets goals for her and she meets every single one. Once she sees the results in the mirror and within herself, Norris begins to look forward to Adrian's punishingly effective sessions. After awhile, not even Adrian is immune to the new svelte and confident Norris and their training sessions start to grow more personal and erotic. When the contract for her stay at Sweet Discipline is almost over, Norris doesn't want to leave, but she's also afraid that she's just another client to him. Even Kendra was trained by Adrian. Or was she? Adrian reveals to her that he has both a public persona and a private life and she desperately wants to believe that she was special. Norris embarks on a new exploration of her psyche and her sexuality in a hot, kinky story that will leave you aching to sign up for some sweet discipline of your own.

Norris was kind of a haughty brat when she first starts out in Sweet Discipline but Adrian quickly cures her of all ills. His expertise in getting her to care for her body made me wish he was my physical trainer and his expertise in getting her to widen her areas of sexual exploration made me wish he was more than my physical trainer. While it was outlandish and ridiculous to believe that Norris would submit to this treatment, it was a strong indicator of her submissive side that allowed Adrian to completely take over her body and mind. Norris spends a lot of time alone, thinking about herself and her needs and wants and I found her thought process fascinating. The story held (in my eyes) only mild traces of BDSM, so it's not too far out there for someone just dipping a toe into this genre. Adrian might come across as arrogant, cold and robotic, especially in the beginning when you think he's just doing his job, but Bonnie Hamre gives us just enough whenever we need reassurance. Whenever things get too personal, Adrian gives Norris enough emotion and care to let her know that he's there for her, just as Bonnie is there for us.

The sex in Sweet Discipline was hot, very D/s oriented, which should be a given, yet it was still very respectful. Adrian might have been a hard, implacable man, but when Norris was in his care, he was one hundred percent focused on her and her pleasures. There is mild BDSM, nothing over the top though and a lot of interest in the butt. Also, despite the menage tag, there is no menage.

At the end of the story I didn't think Norris was completely sold to the idea of being his submissive. Basically, I felt like she still hadn't embraced the attitude of "no pain no gain" but I'm sure Adrian was more than up to the challenge she presented. I really enjoyed my first story by Bonnie Hamre and hope I come across her again. Enjoy!

Bonnie Hamre has found a sexy way to lose weight...discipline.

Norris Brownelle is a woman at the top, and at the bottom. She is a highly successful management consultant who has thrown all of her time and energy into her business.The result being, she is tired, overweight, manless, and her list of clients isn't growing. She can't manage herself, let alone convince people that she can teach them how to manage. One meal with her best friend changes all of that. When Norris is currious about her friend's new look and obvious sex appeal, she learns about a spa where new images are created, a place that teaches discipline. Even though discipline isn't Norris' strong suit,after trying every diet known to man (or woman), she knows this is her last chance at weight loss.
After signing into the spa and meeting her hot male trainer, Adrian, an unsuspecting Norris learns what true discipline is. Meow!

If you enjoy reading about bondage and discipline (without the s/m) obviously resulting in earth shaking sex, this is a book for you. If not...pick another title.

Excellent book. This is my first time reading this author and I will be first in line for her next book.
The excerpt from the back cover did not do this book justice. At first I was a bit turned off by the idea of exercise and weight loss in a romance book but this author pulled it off.
Talk about one hunky guy and a very determined chick. But this book is 100% alpha male with BDSM to boot. It's hot and kinky.
You definitely will not be disappointed with this book. If you like a man to be in control then this book is for you.

A cover to cover read......

So....Norris wants to lose weight to impress some shmo at work who never notices her. I hate when women do that, but far be it for me to judge....oops, I think I was judging. Anyway, Norris' trainer is Adrian, a very dominant hot man.

Adrian keeps Norris nude, puts her through grueling work outs and demands she submit to him. I would find this an odd sort of fat farm, but hey, that's me. Adrian senses Norris' need to submit, but I never really understood where he got that from.

Norris eventually submits in totallity to Adrian and becomes his perfect submissive while at the spa. Clearly their feelings are growing, but it's hard to see why - they don't actually communicate.

When Norris leaves the spa, she is trim and happy, but misses Adrian. She finally goes to him and agrees to submit to him always and I find that scene a little brutal since she had never done that with him before. I just don't get how they fell in love. I wanted to like this book better, but it was just missing some elements for me.

I thought the premise was intriguing--woman who has had no success at losing weight previously goes to a mysterious spa to lose weight, only to be forced to submit to her dominant trainer in order to do so. But a lot of the scenes fell kind of flat for me. I just wasn't feeling the relationship between Norris and Adrian. He was like a robot for the majority of the book, and then all of a sudden he's in love with her. And I couldn't get into Norris's mindset either. I mean, I suppose she was believably indignant about all the things she was told to do, but I just didn't find her reactions or his treatment of her all that erotic. He spent a lot more time training her with sexual toys than working out, it seemed--which, hey, I guess that's what we're there to read about, but it seemed so clinical and detached to me. There was humiliation and punishment, which I liked, although I would have preferred more intense and inventive measures of the latter, but somehow all these elements failed to come together to make a really great story for me.

All in all, there were certainly some erotic parts but as a whole Sweet Discipline was only okay for me. Nothing too memorable. I just couldn't relate to Norris, and Adrian seemed like a generic romance novel alpha male robot to me. There was nothing special about him that made me think being dominated by him would be especially thrilling. Not a bad read if you get it cheap, but I didn't think it was worth the full purchase price.

Tight plotting. Good grammar. Excellent editing. Mostly DS, but more than a couple teaspoons worth of some pulse-poundingly realistic BDSM.A+ for the technical stuff.

The sex scenes were explosive and steamy, and definitely hotter for the excellent BDSM elements. Very well-done, those BDSM touches. From the confusion and muscle-pulling pain of one of the beginning sequences (her, the bar and darkness) to the explosive and wildly exciting final bit of playtime, this novel accurately portrays how it feels and what happens when one is falling into the silky aching heat of an enduring BDSM relationship.

Good story, too. Yes, there is a story in this novel and it does more than just carry the protagonists from sex scene to sex scene. The story is essential to the sex scene, actually. Who would believe this kinda thing at all, even in a sexy novel, without a halfway believeable story?

I finished this book and went to bed, where its heat and story line invaded my dreams. Even taking into consideration the tiny problem of her giving fully informed consent ahead of time (something that would [almost] always happen in reality--otherwise we call it a sex crime, right?) this is still among the very best BDSM-leaning erotic romance fiction I have ever read.

This book gets two very enthusiastic thumbs up from me! (Or should that be 'bottoms up'?)

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Ms Hamre's work. I think I've read all her books and wait eagerly for the next release. She always manages to capture my attention and pull me into the story.

That happened with this story too but I was at first overwhelmed by the harder, sexier edge to this story of a woman who wants to lose weight for both personal and professional reasons (what woman doesn't want to change her physical appearance?) and gets help with a spa program, complete with a handsome trainer and a rigorous program. Sounds pretty much the norm, doesn't it? But as the heroine, Norris, finds out, Sweet Discipline is a spa like no oher, and the program Adrian customizes for her isn't advertized in the spa's brochure.

After I got my breath back, I couldn't devour this book fast enough. Norris and Adrian fascinated me, and as both work to achieve their joint and individual goals, all I could do was hang on and turn another page.

Very much recommended!

One of the best books, I ever read. Will be put on the book shelf, to read over and over again. Don't think I will loan it out. As I might not get it returned. Loved the whole Dom/sub thing. Wish Miss Hamre would write Part II.

I'm trying to figure out why so many people liked this book. Adrian is just a big bully who does not know how to treat a submissive!!! To me, there was no plot, just one big bully session after another. The way he treated Norris got to be annoying after a while and took away from the erotic scenes. I would have liked to see him acting just a tiny bit human with her. His "me--macho, you--Jane" bit really hit all the wrong nerves with me. She was a sucessful woman with her own business, but of course being over weight meant she had no self-control or dignity, so here comes super Adrian to take over her life and give her self-control and dignity. I enjoy a good BDSM book with male Doms, but I repeat, Adrian is just a big bully. I finished reading the book hoping it would get better. But to the very end, it ran along the same line. It landed in the trash. I'm going to give this author one more shot, but I hope her heroes are at least human in other books.

The only issue I had with this book, apart from it being slightly underdeveloped and unbelievable, was that it was too short and left a lot to be desired as far as back story. Still, a nice hot read, very original ideas.