Review: Banging Rebecca by Alison Tyler

Ok, so this story starts out quite standard. The old fantasy of the guy in the band actually noticing the girl who fancies him and them getting it on in an alleyway. From there they move quickly on to satisfyingly kinky sex at his place. And of course, their kinks happen to be perfectly compatible and they understand each other without having to have what I like to call 'The Talk'. It's tightly written, with some well-chosen background details of the Los Angeles night. And it's just fantasy-land enough for me to think, 'well, this isn't very safe, but hey, it's not real.' And it's just realistic enough for me to... well let's say, read on, and leave the rest to the imagination.

So far, so nicely escapist. In an inescapable bondage-y kind of way. Reminds me of the teenage crush I have on the singer from Biffy Clyro; the video for their single The Captain doesn't help - there's rope and flogging and a sort of cage thing below decks on a ship. But I digress. 

Tyler then ups the ante in a scene with a cane. You've got the old 'sub has to count the blows' theme. Well, Tyler reverses the order. Sub counts, then Dom hits. This messed with my head. It's just so different from the standard way of doing things. It's a pretty simple switch, really, but massively effective. It's the sort of thing that, as a writer, you wish you'd thought of already. And as a reader, putting yourself in the heroine's shoes - by which I mean cuffs - it's damn hot. 

So, you've been surprised once as you get right into Rebecca's head while this is going on. And the writing helps you get right there, deep into how she's feeling and what she's thinking. But then things ramp up a gear again. You see, it's the drummer of the band Rebecca's been playing with so far. But there's a singer too, you know. A singer she has a little fling with too. And when the two guys find out... What happens next? I don't want to spoil it. What happens next is very much in keeping with the escapism of the story, riding the edge of believability but just about pulling it off. What happens next surprised me - and believe me, my filthy imagination knows few boundaries. What happens next was off-the-scale hot, unexpected in all the right ways.

Banging Rebecca's a short read; I got through it in the bath. I'm sure there are other activities you could do in the same time frame that don't require the use of both hands. But don't be fooled by the opening into thinking it's just another formulaic casual hook-up story with a bit of dodgy kink thrown in. It's so much more than that. And then some. 


I bought Banging Rebecca at Amazon UK.