Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The cover is simple but gets the job done. It DEFINITELY caught my eye.. I mean I hope it caught yours too, haha.

This book is AMAZING!!! Obviously, it won't be for everyone. Not everyone can handle reading a book about a strong, independent dominatrix, that's for sure. But my goodness I could NOTTTTT wait to read this book. And i'm so glad I read it. Interesting, funny stories. Education on the art of being a dominatrix. And everything was told in such a classy way. Seriously, check this book out.

I'll definitely be looking out for other work by this author.

I definitely had higher expectations for this book in terms of being a confidence-building self-help resource. I think there will still be a readership at my library, so I will be purchasing it for the collection.

Full disclosure: I used to work at a fetish club in the 1990s/2000s which had a dungeon and a resident professional dominatrix. While I was not employed in the dungeon (i was a DJ), I witnessed the scenes played out there in the course of a normal work shift. As a DJ for that club scene, i occasionally was brought to spin a guest night at other fetish events around the country, including the Fetish Flea Market in Boston MA. I don't personally know any of the women interviewed for this book, but I know/knew their colleagues.

It felt like this book never really gelled into a cohesive narrative. The concept is interesting--use the archetype of the dominatrix as the framework for a self-help book on boosting one's confidence. It is written for a cis heterosexual vanilla female reader, possibly someone with a starry-eyed view of what it must be like to work as a dominatrix. The author interviewed women all over the country working as dommes (either in dungeons or on their own) as well as some peripheral industry professionals like the latex clothing couturiere, The Baroness.

Portions of the book feel like memoir--she attends DomCon (a convention for pro-dommes), she visits a dominatrix and engages her for a session of BDSM, she confesses various things about her own sex life and personal history. Other portions feel like a guide to embracing your own kinky fetishes--a lot of pep talks about the validity of your desires and even an actual check-box Cosmo-style quiz on "how kinky are you?"

The author herself gives the impression of being a kind of wide-eyed fangirl of dominatrices, of the ilk who used to hang out on the sidelines of the dungeon in the club i worked at. Which, not denigrating that, but she never delves into the darker side of professional domme work (not everyone is a well-adjusted powerful ice queen...but that doesn't fit the archetype this book needs in order to work conceptually), and she doesn't interview anyone who acts as a dominatrix not for money but just as part of their own lifestyle/relationship(s).

In general, this felt more like a series of shorter pieces for women's magazines that have been cobbled together into a book. The most interesting part about it is her profiles of the dommes and excerpts of the interviews--i wish she would write a follow-up book that further expanded on those and kept the focus tight on the women themselves.

I received an ARC of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.