Anne Dirty Girls' Good Books's Reviews > Playing Knotty

This is the first book by Elia Winters that I've read, but I'll certainly be reading more! I loved practically everything about it!

Emma is a pretty shy bookstore owner who doesn't really know anything about bondage or rope play when Ian asks if he can use her back room as meeting space for a bondage class he teaches. She knows Ian from high school and he often shops at her bookstore. She's not sure about the bondage, but she needs the money, so she agrees. Then she uses the power of Google to learn a little more about bondage and finds a kink she didn't know she had. When Ian asks if she'd be his model for the class she agrees.

There was so much to enjoy about this book. Emma has self esteem issues, especially as related to her appearance and weight, but she's pretty comfortable with her sexuality. She has the bigger character arc in this story as comes to realize her own self worth.

Ian is pretty much perfect from page one, and I was fine with that. He probably had some flaws somewhere, but I didn't notice any.

The story of their relationship was solid and incredibly hot! The rope play was described with just enough technical detail for me to picture what was going on. There's enough time in Emma's and Ian's heads to understand why they are turned on by it. While this book would technically be a BDSM book, it's really only got the Bondage part of BDSM, with very little of the D/s and no M at all.

There are some geek references in the story that were icing on the cake to me. Ian plays board games with his friends. They were games I've played and loved. Ian and Emma each have good friends and their time with friends advanced the story and was entertaining. I particularly liked Brent, Ian's game store owner friend who is both lazy and ambitious.

The only thing I didn't like about the story was a misunderstanding that happened toward the end of the book. It was resolved fairly quickly, but I wish it had been addressed immediately. Overall, the rest of the book easily compensated for this misunderstanding.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys contemporary romance. It's going on my Best of 2015 list and I'm looking forward to more by Elia Winters!