The Art of Submission by Ella Dominguez

The Art of Submission by Ella Dominguez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have conflicted feelings about this book. The story was excellent, and based on that alone I would have given the book 5 stars. It was fun, playful, kinky, and definitely sexy. So why the mixed feelings…??

Here is what I loved:
1) Dylan – Dylan is your typical rich, sexy, smart alpha male. He was great. I love how his character was written. He liked control of everything, but at times his alter ego got the better of him, making him say and do things he regretted. I do wish we could have gotten a little more into his past. It's hinted on, but there were no details. However, the way this book ended (don't worry, no cliffhangers) made me highly suspicious there is going to be a second book possibly dealing more with Dylan's past. Yay!

2) Dylan's POV – The book was broken up into Dylan's POV and Isa's POV, switching every other chapter. Dylan's parts were pretty much awesome. I loved being in his head and I thought the author did a great job writing him.

3) The story – I really enjoyed the story. When I first started reading I was worried this was going to be a FSoG re-write, but it most definitely wasn't. The story was wealthy alpha male meets shy, somewhat inexperienced female (though not the way too overused I'm a Virgin and Don't Know What a Dick Is type of female, thank God) thrown together with some kinky sex, but that's where the comparisons ended. The story line was original and very well thought out.

Here is what I did not love:
1) Isa - Isabel's self-depreciation got old very quickly. I did like the few times she stood up for herself and took control of herself (and Dylan), but the whole I'm not good enough, I'm not pretty enough character is…I don't have a word at the moment, but I hated it. She was also very immature at times.

2) Isa's POV – First, I did not like having to go back and re-read the same scene as the point of view changed. The actual change was not the problem, as it was done well and it was made clear who was speaking each time. It was more of having to read the same thing from two different perspectives. When switching views, it would have been better to pick up where the last one left off rather than going back through and re-doing the same scene all over again. It was redundant and ultimately did not add anything new or useful to the story. Additionally, rather than stick to the 1st person POV, Isa's portions of the book were more of a stream of consciousness, which was not very fun to read and it did not flow well. Ultimately, I would have loved the book better if Isa's parts would have just been left out completely and we would have only had Dylan's story. About 70% into the book Isa's story finally became different from Dylan's and it was not quite as tedious after that.

3) The dialogue – There were many times in the book where Dylan and Isa would be having a conversation and only part of it would be dialogued out for us. Meaning the dialogues seemed incomplete, as part of it was written as thoughts and we were just supposed to assume it was spoken out loud, so really it looked to us as the reader like Isa/Dylan was reading the other one's mind and it got very confusing. Make any sense? That's hard to explain. This could be easily fixed with a few strategically placed quotation marks to denote conversation.

Ultimately, if Isa's parts of the book weren't in there I probably would have rated it 5 stars. As such, I have been going between 3 and 4 just for these things mentioned above. I ultimately decided on 4 because I loved Dylan so much and the story itself was great. Holy long reviews. (You'd get that little joke if you've read the book.)


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