Permission

February 11, 2019
Vogel’s short but searching debut novel plunges below the physical aspects of BDSM relationships to revel in her characters’ emotional longing. Echo has spent her life afraid of breaking down, isolated by her feuding parents, and unsure of herself. She uses her acting career to hide from herself and the world. When her father is swept away by an ocean current and drowns, Echo loses her sense of self entirely. The only person capable of making her feel alive and present is her neighbor Orly, a professional dominatrix who works out of her suburban home and tutors Echo in the art of dominance. Orly’s older houseboy, nicknamed Piggy, sees through Echo’s attempts to lose herself in Orly’s work and helps Echo find the courage to embrace all she feels and desires. Vogel’s prose elegantly frames this study of embodied feminine sexual power at the expense of the plot, which feels hurried and unfulfilling. Though not entirely engaging, this daring and thoughtful study of love, loss, and pain rewards the patient reader.

March 1, 2019

DEBUT As a young girl, Echo Logan would hear the call of the lovers in the sea. It terrified her as it rose from the cliffs, and her father coached her on toeing the edge so she would not be afraid. Ever since her father disappeared into the waves, Echo has been trapped in freefall, living with her dispassionate mother as she watches her nascent acting career crumble. She's brought back down to earth by Orly, an enigmatic neighbor who turns out to be a Dominatrix. Amid Echo's unfulfilling encounters with men who don't really know her or how intensely she's suffering, Orly opens the young woman up to owning what she's been taught to suppress--her fear, her anger, and her desire for women. As the women's relationship evolves, readers waft in and out of the life of Lonnie (aka Piggy), Orly's middle-aged houseboy who has been searching in the shadows for the perfect woman to worship. Chasing a rhythm of submission and humiliation with tenderness to match, Lonnie believe his deep attachment to Orly is threatened by the presence of a new playmate. Though light on overt sex scenes in the early half of the novel, this erotic debut drips with a sensuality that will enthrall readers while they follow both Echo's and Lonnie's very different quests for healing. Heady scenes of bondage, submission, and prolonged sexual tension complement an absorbing narrative on the inexplicable process of grief and Echo's musings on her absent father's imperfections. VERDICT Highly recommended for fans of weighty, emotionally raw erotica reminiscent of Anaïs Nin.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2019
Echo, a Hollywood almost-was, is aging out of her chance at stardom. Then she meets Orly and Piggy--a dominatrix and her submissive--whose tender partnership helps her redefine what it means to give and to receive.At 25, Echo seems to have missed her shot at the big time; she's foundered on the edges of a Hollywood career, toying with advertising, modeling, even the idea of high-end sex work but always returning to the inertia of hustling for bit parts and living off cash infusions from dad. Then, on a trip home to the Santa Monica-esque hills outside the city, Echo witnesses an accident that results in her father's death. Her grief is claustrophobic, raw, and immobilizing. Though complicated by Echo's difficult relationship with her thorny mother, her paralyzing sense of loss bogs down a character already mired in the fog of her unclear ambitions, and its haze threatens to submerge the book entirely. Fortunately, Echo's miasma is pierced by a second, more dynamic character's perspective. Piggy is one of Echo's new neighbors, a 50-something submissive and the antithesis to his housemate and dominatrix, the stunningly erotic Orly. Whereas Echo is a passive character, content to chronicle what she is offered in the heady descriptive voice that emerges as the author's strong suit, Piggy's desires are much clearer and more direct. His movement from the painful estrangement of his smothering marriage to becoming a member of a community that accepts him with both grace and ardor is nuanced and well-wrought. Meanwhile, the development of his relationship with Orly, his tumultuous rivalry with Echo as she assumes the role of Orly's new assistant and lover, and his eventual reconciliation with both his partner and his own hard-won sense of self are the triumph of the novel. A sensitive and sympathetic figure, Piggy enlivens Echo's character and allows the reader to view her as something other than a product of the cloud of privilege that seems to surround her.An intimate study of power within two of the relationships that define us most precisely--that of lover and that of child.

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