It is not a full-length novel. It is mostly about Bondage, specifically, Shibari. It is not about the D, S or M parts of BDSM.
Weirdly, this is another story in which the hero and heroine had some high school backstory. But in this case, they hooked up briefly (made out in a car) and then she snubbed him because she was Cool and he was a Geek. She feels bad about it, so when she runs into him at a science museum a decade or so later, she starts out with an apology then asks for his assistance with the tarantula she just bought. I spent a good fraction of the beginning of this book really worried that she was Not Trustworthy, even tho I know this author and the character is actually extremely sweet and quite believable.
The geek as man has turned out truly fine, as our heroine discovers quickly. She grew up a service brat, traveling constantly and has continued to ramble as an adult. Her roommate boots her when roommate's husband gets leave; Our Hero turns out to have a Very Nice Place in Pacific Palisades and is eager to have her surf on his couch, er, in his guest bedroom. The detailing on his place is awesomely delicious: his garage is organized (hey, Kate! He should have had metal shelving for the bins, instead of stacking them up in columns -- that's what my husband did ;-). His study has a wall of terraria. He made Beaucoup Bux designing climate controlled terraria now sold at Wal-Mart (dorkily delicious). But best of all, he has adopted a serious rope hobby.
I think I want to complain slightly that Our Hero got Our Heroine into the private club without her having to go through Orientation. But only slightly, because while I know how things work at one of these kinds of clubs, I don't know how universal the orientation-required practice is. Willoughby's depiction of a couple guys glomming onto our heroine in the gift shop was truly perfect, and her depiction of Dennis missing the significance of the collar then really blowing it by what he said after and getting booted from the conference was a nice bit of fantasy (in a good way!).
In so many ways, Willoughby did a great job: Our Hero not only provided aftercare, he did a decent job telling Our Heroine ahead of time that he would need to provide aftercare to the person he used in the demonstration; he made mistakes (failing to talk ahead of time about possible previous experience being tied up) but he acknowledged them after and talked them through without pressure. Our Heroine did a _fantastic_ job of calling Our Hero out on phrases like "you're not ready yet". And the relationship was consistently depicted as one of equals, despite numerous "real world" ways in which inequality could have crept in (top/bottom, disparate wealth, whose house it was, etc.).
I was tickled when I read it, and I'm even more tickled having read Stacey's book after this one. I know what I like and I liked this.
