Anne Dirty Girls' Good Books's Reviews > The Principle of Desire

This was a 4.5 read for me, so I'll round it up to 5.

This is one of those reviews that's hard to write because I love Delphine Dryden so much! I love her like I love Shelly Laurenston - NO ONE gets shifters like Laurenston, and no one writes geeks like Delphine Dryden! I highlighted references to LARPing, a bag of holding, Pavlovian responses, Zoolander, and Star Trek - and those are only the ones I highlighted.

Another real strength of this story is how imperfectly perfect Ed is! There's this wonderful moment where he takes off his shirt in the BDSM Club, when he's agreed to be Beth's sub, and he looks around and realizes he has more body hair than anyone else in the whole place combined. And Beth sees him as he is. He's not a handsome hunk who has her swooning at first glance. Instead we get to see how her attraction to Ed grows over time, and holy cow do I enjoy that!

There was a bit of a love triangle when Beth's ex makes a play for her. That's pretty much my least favorite trope in romance reading, but the rest of the story was strong enough that I kept reading. I also appreciated the fact that Beth's ex was a two dimensional character that had some good qualities. He wasn't EVIL just because he was an ex-boyfriend.

Overall, it was a great read I highly recommend, especially to romance readers who enjoy a little geek and some BDSM.