Why I read it: I was provided with a review copy by the author.

What it’s about: (from Goodreads) Newlyweds Jay and Adriana had a happy marriage and a spectacular sex life—until tragedy struck. Wounded in a car accident, Jay spent a year recuperating while Adriana worked overtime as a chef to pay their bills. Though he’s made nearly a full recovery, some aspects of their intimate play will never be the same. It’s a small price to pay, all things considered.

But when a long struggle with the insurance company results in an overdue payout, Jay has a plan. He’ll take some of it and hire a high-end rent boy who specializes in sexual dominance. Not for him, but as a gift for Adriana, for taking care of him for the past twelve months.

Paul is the handsome stranger they choose…and the one who changes everything. What starts out as a onetime session to fulfill a fantasy turns into something bigger than all of them. But when the money runs out and Paul’s dangerous past resurfaces, the sacrifices required to stay together may end up tearing them apart…

What worked for me (and what didn’t): This book had a very strong start for me. I enjoyed the love and acceptance between Adriana and Jay. I liked how they each wanted the other to have everything they wanted sexually but could not necessarily personally fulfil. I liked it even though in real life that would threaten me so much I’d just hide in the corner forever. But these characters are not me and that was very clear in the book. Because, for them, it worked. For them, it was right and good and healthy.

Jay was seriously injured in a car crash the year before. He’s made an excellent recovery – but he has permanent limitations. Such a serious injury to the spine is no piece of cake and I liked how it was acknowledged in the story as limiting his ability to undertake certain actions but that it didn’t define him. He was a person with a life who was dealing with a disability. He wasn’t a disability within which was a person. The insurance system in the US is not at all like the system here. I didn’t quite understand why Jay would go to the internet to try and understand the language in a letter from the insurance company rather than getting some advice – from a lawyer ideally. Given that his interpretation of the letter was that he was getting a reasonable amount of money – more than enough to pay all of the medical bills, I’d have thought a small investment in some legal advice to make sure he had the right of it wouldn’t be a bad thing. But that’s me and that’s probably more to do with my work history. Over here, in my world, people see a lawyer. But Jay is not in my world so I put that slight disconnect down to my lack of understanding of his world, including the weird (I really do think it’s weird) health/insurance system which is/has been in place in the US. (I don’t know much about how it works but it’s weird to me that the “land of the free” doesn’t have universal health care. I know that Obamacare has started this January but, if I have the right of it, that’s not a government sponsored system, it’s more like a compulsory (?) private health insurance scheme.)

Anywho, Adriana has been bringing home bacon since the accident and supporting them and he wants to do something nice for her as a kind of thank you and for them, a rentboy is that. Jay contacts Paul and the three end up doing a scene. It seemed to me (perhaps I was importing romancelandia knowledge) that there was a strong connection immediately between Paul, Jay and Adriana. Both men are bisexual. Paul is a Dom and Adriana likes to submit but Jay is not into that and what Jay and Paul have is a bit more “vanilla” (although that doesn’t really describe what they have – let’s say theirs is a different dynamic).

My favourite kind of menage stories are where all the parties are having a romantic and sexual connection. I always feel, sometimes only vaguely, sometimes more strongly, that m/f/m is out of balance somehow – the idea of the two men “sharing” a woman as if she is an object has become something I’m less happy about. Equally, I’m not in love with the idea of the woman having two men competing for her affections. So, generally, I don’t read much m/f/m these days because it’s less satisfying for me. However, m/m/f is great. It’s nothing like my life or my experience, but it’s something I’m fascinated about – how do three people make a relationship work? It can be challenging enough for two – how do you manage with that exponential challenge of three? Also, I find it sexy.

The Submission Gift was certainly very sexy. Some of it was a bit more edgy than I’m used to but most of it was very hot and I did think there was always something more than just sex to the interactions of the trio. I liked that there were scenes with Jay and Paul, Paul and Adriana, Adriana and Jay and all three together. I liked that I never felt that Jay and Adriana’s relationship would be threatened if Paul left. That’s a tricky thing to pull off. But I think the author managed it here – that the connections between all three were so strong and it didn’t feel like a competition. That if something went pear-shaped, the remaining bonds would stay strong. Paul didn’t weaken Adriana’s and Jay’s connection by joining them.

There was a career decision Paul made late in the piece I would have liked to know more about – perhaps I missed clues but it came as a surprise to me and I had questions. I did feel, toward the end, that the book veered off into melodrama which meant that there was a lot of time spent on dealing with those things and not enough dealing with the challenges of a menage relationship outside of the sex. The sex was something they always navigated very well, almost instinctively. But the other stuff – well, I wanted a lot more of that.

Also, there was a thing I found out about Paul later in the novel which put me off him a bit. His hero halo was a bit tarnished and, unfortunately, I didn’t get enough context around his history and his current feelings about it to not remain somewhat disappointed. I am a reader who often needs things explicitly stated (I’m like that in real life too – I don’t like ambiguity) and Paul’s history and his feelings around it were a little opaque to me. Also, I found this information out late in the book and that didn’t give me much readerly time to come to grips with the information.

I liked the diversity in the book. There were times perhaps when it edged into a little didactic but mostly it felt very organic and embedded into the story – much like it was (although this is a very different story and the diversity is broader here I think and different too) in the first book of the series – The Dom Project.

For me, the beginning of the story was stronger than the end, but I still enjoyed it very much. There was some beautiful language and metaphor in the story – sometimes I was able to hook into it really well, other times it was a little opaque – that is possibly more about me as a reader. Because there are some metaphors that just work for me and I can see them so clearly but others leave me scrabbling around trying to find purchase on the idea. I’m unable to parse why some work for me and some don’t – especially within the same book. But this is one of the ones I did get and one I liked very much.

His mind was trained to find distinct forms and patterns, but what he felt for them was more like an Escher drawing, or a braid impossible to separate into single strands.