Book Review: Comfort Food by Kitty Thomas

Review: Comfort Food
Author: Kitty Thomas
No of Pages: 186
Release Date: 21 March 2010

Emily Vargas has been taken captive. As part of his conditioning methods, her captor refuses to speak to her, knowing how much she craves human contact.

He’s far too beautiful to be a monster. Her attraction to him and his lack of violence has her walking a fine line on the edge of sanity.

Told in the first person from Emily’s perspective, Comfort Food explores what happens when all expectations of please and pain are turned upside down. As whips become comfort, and chicken soup becomes punishment.

My Thoughts:

Comfort Food was a powerful read, but it didn’t truly touch me in the ways I was expecting.

Emily is a captive of a man that has an obsession with her; he intends to make her his slave. After months of conditioning and training Emily is a shadow of her former self, but she’s not entirely sure that she truly hates what she has turned into.

Emily is a strong woman, one I admire simply because I don’t know if I could have done what she did. Instead of fighting, instead of being taken by force Emily survived and submitted to what was being done to her purely because she couldn’t stand being deprived of human contact, and because she always had a sliver of hope that she could escape.

Comfort Food is confronting in ways that it forces you to really ask yourself, what would you do? Taken captive by someone who is obviously sick do you survive by submitting or die by being stubborn. I have been thinking about this ever since I put Comfort Food down, I can think of ways that I would want to survive, but I also think that maybe I would just prefer to die. Emily’s choice was survival but her way of thinking truly makes one question the meaning of inner strength.

I was hoping for more from Comfort Food in the way of writing though. Emily was a very detached character; even though we were in her head I never really felt her fear or her pleasure. I never really felt happiness when she was in the “good cell” or the complete despair when she was in the “bad cell”. In a way it adds to the book, because it gets into your head afterward, one enters a sort of shock response when reading it and that is only lifted after the final page is turned, so in ways it’s brilliant, but in others it’s lacking because the book while staying with you, doesn’t draw you in while reading, it is easy to put down and walk away to do menial tasks and then come back to later.

I think I may have been hoping for more of a psychological thriller rather than a BDSM romance and that is my own fault, for the purposes of this being a BDSM romance though, Comfort Food is once again hard-hitting in some ways, but lacking in others. The sex scenes were written in third person, to show us Emily’s detachment from them but in doing that the true horror or even eroticism was glazed over.

Stockholm syndrome played a major part in Comfort Food, but because we were in Emily’s head and she was the sufferer that was also glazed over romanticised in some ways. I felt that it could have been better represented, Emily has a psychology degree, she saw it happening to herself and yet she couldn’t stop it, but she wasn’t fazed by that at all.

Comfort Food wasn’t as hard hitting as what it could have been, in ways it was as bland as the chicken soup Emily was forced to live on. Some aspects of this book will stay with me for a while but mostly it is just a flash in the pan.

Guest Post: Laura Kreitzer - Phantom Universe & Human Trafficking

Hello Literary-Folk!

My name is Laura Kreitzer, and I’m the author of the Timeless Series and the Summer Chronicles. This week I would like to alert everyone on a colossal crisis that’s gone unnoticed in the world: human trafficking. That’s why I’ve asked hundreds of blogs to be involved with spreading the word on this issue that’s become close to my heart.

As an author, and someone whose life is put in the spotlight, I keep most people at a distance. Only a handful of my friends know the whole me and the events from my past. But this week I’d like to share with you a part of myself that the outside world doesn’t see (and a part of me I don’t like to share). I was emotionally abused for five years by someone I thought loved me, my mind beaten into submission. Though the turmoil I went through doesn’t penetrate as deep as someone forced into slavery on the worldwide market for human trafficking, I can sadly relate in some ways: imprisoned, my life dictated down to what I wore, ate, where I went, whom I spoke to, where I worked, when I slept, bending to his every whim. He did not sway, even when I cried through some of the more traumatic things he had me do. I was a slave in my own home. In my desperation for freedom, I held out a gun and asked him to just end my suffering. I was desperate.

I can’t even imagine how many women (and men) in the world are in a similar situation. What’s even worse, I had it mild compared to the children that are sold for labor or sex. Surprisingly, the good ol’ U.S.A. is reported to be the host to two million slaves. Did you know this? Because I certainly did not; not until I was preparing to write my newest novel: Phantom Universe. The main character, Summer Waverly, was stolen as a child and sold as a slave to the captain of a modern-day pirate ship. From a loved child who only knew “time-out” as punishment, to being whipped into silence was something I knew nothing about. So I researched deeply into human trafficking and the psychological effects of torture of various types that one would endure in these circumstances. I felt shaken at my findings and knew I had to tell Summer’s story. (Read a sneak peek here.)

A storm began to brew in my mind; transforming, morphing, twisting, and expanding into this massive, black cloud. I had to bring this tragic atrocity to the forefront. My own emotional experiences, mixed with the research I did on human trafficking, made me feel an intense connection with Summer, and to all women who’ve been through this kind of brutality. The cloud ruptured and rained all over my computer one day. It took one month to write Phantom Universe, the first in the Summer Chronicles. I was so consumed by the story that I wrote nearly nonstop, only breaking for necessary tasks like eating, showering, and occasionally—very occasionally—sleeping.

Though the book I’ve written would be classified as Science Fiction, or as I’d like to call it, Dystopian, the emotions and psychological aspects are not Science Fiction—they're real. Reviewers have said many amazing things about Summer, this character who is so real in my mind and who I cried along with as the words poured from my soul onto my screen.

“I admired Summer's strength and ability to adapt,” says CiCi’s Theories. “I felt tied to her emotions,” Jennifer Murgia, author or Angel Star admits. And Tahlia Newland, author of Lethal Inheritance, remarks, “Summer is strong and smart in mind [. . .]”

Through her overwhelmingly horrendous past, Summer goes on more than just a physical journey in Phantom Universe, she goes on a psychological one as well; growing beyond her mute state to persevere and survive in a new world beyond the whip she’s so frightened of.

Now that the release date is here, I’m excited and terrified to share this story with everyone. I’m emotionally tied in every way to the words I’ve written, because they’re more than words. More than just a story on a page. Beyond the fictional aspects, there’s a real issue that needs to be addressed: human trafficking must be stopped. We shouldn’t sit idly by while this continues to plague us. Our world’s children—our nation’s children—are being affected. It’s time we take action!

Earlier this month Phantom Universe hit Barnes and Noble’s top 100 Best Selling list. I’ve decided to donate 10% of my sales from Phantom Universe, until the end of February, to the DNA Foundation.

“DNA hopes to help abolish modern day slavery, deter perpetrators, and free the many innocent and exploited victims. We are committed to forcing sex slavery out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

Freedom is a basic human right and slavery is one of the greatest threats to that freedom. No one has the right to enslave another person.”

—From DNA Foundation’s Website

I ask that you spread the word to everyone you know. Look around on the DNA Foundation website and find a way to get involved in ending human trafficking. Take action today. Everyone has a voice—you have a voice. Will you have the courage to use it?

Book Review: The Vampire Queen's Servant by Joey W. Hill

Review: The Vampire Queen’s Servant
Series: Vampire Queen – Book 1
Author: Joey W. Hill
No of Pages: 373
Release Date: 3 July 2007

Lady Elyssa Amaterasu Yamato Wentworth is a thousand-year-old vampire in need of a new servant – now more than ever as she’s suffering the signs of a mysterious ailment that threatens to consume her. As a gift she’s been given Jacob, an extraordinary physical specimen, but all wrong when it comes to being...used. A total alpha male, he’s not accustomed to submitting to any woman’s wishes.

Lyssa soon learns that what really binds Jacob to her are not her sensual midnight hungers, but something far more provocative. It stirs her blood, renews her life, and awakens her soul like only true love can. And the passion between Lyssa and Jacob is about to yield something else unexpected – a shared history that reaches back through the centuries and is fated to challenge their destiny like nothing ever will again...

My Thoughts:

Although I really enjoyed this story, I wouldn’t call it Hardcore BDSM as it has been coined.

The Vampire Queen’s Servant follows the tale of The Vampire Queen, Lyssa and Jacob her newest prospective human servant. Jacob was sent by Thomas, Lyssa’s previous servant who got to know Jacob in the final months of his life.

Lyssa is originally wary of Jacobs’s prescience as she doesn’t feel she can go on living after Thomas’s death and therefore doesn’t feel the need to get close to another servant. Jacob persists though, through everything Lyssa puts him through he continues to be there and be strong.

Lyssa is an interesting character, she is in a way broken and yet she finds a way to continue on day after day. She is definitely very strong and very stubborn refusing to show weakness even after getting a very degenerative disease.

Jacob on the other hand gets what he’s supposed to do, but throws a lot of it out the window to favour looking after Lyssa instead of just serving her as she pleases. They get on each other’s nerves and are constantly try to make the other give in, yet they are both as stubborn as each other.

The themes in Vampire Queen’s Servant weren’t really as BDSM as I expected after hearing various reviews. I found it more to be a love story rather than a master/slave situation. Yes there definitely were slave issues but it was clear that if Jacob really didn’t want to do something he would either just not, or Lyssa wouldn’t force him.

She started out very hard on him, chaining him down but by the end they were more companions rather than servant and mistress. Jacob truly cares a lot for Lyssa and only wants her to be happy and well. Lyssa we could see started feeling the same way for Jacob even though she tried to keep herself composed and Queen-like.

Although it was very romantic, Jacob still was a slave and he was treated like one, especially in front of other vampires. Even though Lyssa could see Jacobs discomfort she pushed him into a situation he didn’t want to be in involving two other women. But Jacob submitted and they both knew that if he didn’t she would be seen as weak.

Lyssa forced Jacob to come to terms with things about himself sexually, that he never would have realised. She didn’t break him but he did change his way of thinking although still retaining most of his Irish charm and bravado.

The Vampire Queen’s Servant was definitely a hot read, but it was also very romantic which for me was a nice surprise at the time. I definitely can’t wait to delve deeper into Lyssa’s world and see where her and Jacob’s relationship goes.

Others in this series:
The Mark of the Vampire Queen
A Vampire's Claim
Beloved Vampire
Vampire Mistress
Vampire Trinity
Vampire's Keeper