For Real (Spires #3)
Alexis Hall
Self-published
2018, 442p
Read via my local library/Hoopla app
Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: Laurence Dalziel is worn down and washed up, and for him, the BDSM scene is all played out. Six years on from his last relationship, he’s pushing forty and tired of going through the motions of submission.
Then he meets Toby Finch. Nineteen years old. Fearless, fierce, and vulnerable. Everything Laurie can’t remember being.
Toby doesn’t know who he wants to be or what he wants to do. But he knows, with all the certainty of youth, that he wants Laurie. He wants him on his knees. He wants to make him hurt, he wants to make him beg, he wants to make him fall in love.
The problem is, while Laurie will surrender his body, he won’t surrender his heart. Because Toby is too young, too intense, too easy to hurt. And what they have—no matter how right it feels—can’t last. It can’t mean anything.
It can’t be real.
I have had a lot of success with Alexis Hall books – only one hasn’t really worked for me. I did have a bit of hesitation in reading this one because I’m pretty jaded from all the BDSM books that came out in the late 00s and early 2010s but it was the dynamics of this one that convinced me to give it a try. It felt different from the others I’ve read and so I was curious to see how it was done.
Laurie is a doctor, he’s in his late 30s and a few years ago, his longtime relationship with his partner ended after a mishap. Laurie seems like he’s been really just going through the motions since that loss. He’s still a part of the ‘Scene’ but he’s not really present, if you know what I mean. He’s a man going through the motions. He’s a sub who doesn’t really seem or act like a sub, and when he spots Toby, a very new baby Dom exploring that side of himself for the first time, for some reason, Laurie goes over to him. What is supposed to be a one time encounter, before Laurie quietly moves on, ends up being anything but. Somehow, Toby keeps finding his way back into Laurie’s life – and Laurie keeps letting him.
What follows is an unusual pairing that somehow works for the both of them in ways they never expected. Despite being the sub, Laurie is the experienced one, guiding Toby through this journey and helping learn what he wants himself in someone submitting to him. Both of them have strong ideas about what that service is and although Laurie always fights the submission, it’s all part of how he chooses to submit.
This is an age gap romance, Toby is only 19. And it’s definitely something that comes up a lot and is explored a lot, from the perspective of both characters. Well, it’s mostly Laurie that agonises over it, that mulls it over, that seems to accept the fact that for Toby, this will probably be an introductory relationship, rather than a long term one. That when Toby grows and matures, he will realise that Laurie is in a different phase of life, and move on. For Toby, that’s insulting and a waste of time thinking about. People break up for all sorts of reasons, he points out. Just because there’s an age gap it doesn’t make them any more or any less vulnerable to a break up, in his mind. I found it interesting, because there’s definitely a view in society that all age gap relationships are predatory and the older partner can only have ill intentions. I feel Hall attempts to challenge this by making Laurie, the older of the two, the sub and giving the power in the relationship to Toby as the Dom, even though he’s inexperienced and learning, he still has the ability to choose what happens. Toby is a thoughtful Dom, he thinks hard about what it is that Laurie wants and needs in his desire to submit and part of that is Laurie arguing, even if it’s just internally, before doing it.
I quite enjoyed this. Like it’s not going to become an all time favourite, but I think it was done well. Like a lot of (all?) Alexis Hall’s books, it’s not just about the budding romance or relationship, there’s also a lot of personal exploration and trauma and grief. There are conflicts that come up in the relationship between Laurie and Toby that are external to themselves in a way, but are about other factors. There are insecurities, there are struggles with emotional intimacy, there is the ghost of a previous partner where Toby has insecurities. It’s very well written, I became invested in the characters and their journey. Not all of the scenes were for me, but they’re not really supposed to be. Despite the fact that they’re not my jam, they didn’t pull me out of the story – they felt like they fit. Which is often my biggest gripe with BDSM and ‘control’ scenes – they feel shoehorned in, or written because that’s what people think men in romance books have to/should be like. This didn’t feel like that. It felt like two people exploring these things about themselves that they both needed and enjoyed.
If I did have a criticism, it would be that I didn’t really feel the connection at the start. I don’t really know why Laurie went over there or why he knelt for Toby or why he took him home. It honestly didn’t really feel like it was something he was looking for from Toby at the time and it felt like it developed pretty rapidly. There’s a lot in the beginning that’s casual but there are these developing feelings, even though I never really felt like the two of them had many conversations in the beginning that showcased who they were as people. Even towards the end, there’s still so much that Laurie and Toby don’t really know about each other. So that aspect I feel wasn’t the strongest.
Still enjoyed the ride. I have read the first in the Spires series (they’re in the same world but are fully stand alone) but I still have book #2 to go and I’ll definitely be reading it.
7/10
Book #115
All The Books I Can Read 
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