I got this book as a free e-book of the day on http://www.allromanceebooks.com. I thought I would try it out. I will say that the sex scenes are pretty hot and the BDSM is not rough as I thought it might be. This is a total power exchange relationship. Marcus is always dominant and controlling over Jim. I know that this works well for some people, but it just did not work for me. It made Jim seem really weak to me. Marcus forces Jim to get tattoos and piercing, which Jim eventually learns to love. But it seems to me that Jim learns to let Marcus tell him what he likes and dislikes and how he should feel. I just like to see characters who have a stronger personality and do not need someone else to do all their thinking for them 100% of the time. ( )

The book starts being quite exciting when the dominant Marcus meets Jim in a bookstore. Jim is suffering from the aftermath of accusations of sexual harassment at his school. And of course I got curious how the men would deal with all of these problems. But the solution in this novel is so easy: Let's have sex, I'll spank you and You'll get another piercing or ink. Well, I am sure that sex can help you living a rewarding life but some problems need to be addressed in a different way. A lot of issues remain open and after yet another chapter filled with more sex and less content, I was only waiting for this book to end. Almost 400 pages of repetitive sex is too much and too boring. What a shame! ( )

The patience is the strong men's virtue. Or women... Since to read Bent by Sean Michael you need to have a lot of patience, it's a 400 pages book and so, patience, time and a comfy chair. That is, if you are like me and usually you want to finish a book in the same day you start it.

Jim was a college teacher. Gay but maybe not so out, he was involved in a scandal when one of his female student accused him of rape. Obviously Jim was innocent, but nevertheless he lost his work, his home and also his partner. And so now he is a grumpy man, who sticks to an obsessive routine to not fall apart.

Marcus is a Dom who is deeply involved in the life. When he meets for the first time Jim, he knows that the man is a natural sub and needs a Master in his life to help him to rebuild what he has lost. Even if Jim has never felt the pull to the D/s lifestyle, he has all the symptoms: he needs a routine to focus, he needs someone who gives him rules to respect, and he sometime needs to break the rules to be punished.

It's pretty hard to read of how Jim submits to Marcus in every side of his life; Jim is a very clever man, with an independent life (even if ruined) and was taught that a man is the master in the couple. Plus he has always tried to 'hide' what he is, avoiding public display of his homosexuality. What he suffered during the scandal was a real 'mental' raping, being exposed to stranger eyes in every intimate details. And so embrace the D/s lifestyle is hard, since it's not only a thing he can share with his partner in the intimacy of his house; and even if they avoids the 'scenes', little details betray their real relationship in front of stranger eyes.

So yes, I like the book, above all I like the tenderness between Marcus and Jim, and the fact that Marcus is not always a big bad Dom, he is able to address Jim to the right path without crashing him under his own personality. What I have problem to like is when Jim asks to be left alone, and instead Marcus forces him to face all the trouble together.

Sean Michael has a very particular style; it's difficult to explain, but the images and the dialogue are like flashes or lightnings, a non stop bombing that always takes the reader in alarm. The use of short chapter helps in this sensation of rollercoast, since reading them, you have a pick after the other, in small sequences.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1603704353/?tag=elimyrevandra-20