Book Review: The Service Sub by B.J. Frazier (erotica, femdom)

Title: The Service Sub
Author: B.J. Frazier
Publication Date: March 29, 2023
Genres: Erotica
Protagonist Gender: Male
Fetishes: Femdom, BDSM

If you want to know what The Service Sub is about, then feel free to hop on over to B.J. Frazier’s site and read the blurb – it tells you all you need to know. I’m not going to talk about the plot, and I’m not going to dwell on the characters. After all, anyone can put characters in a situation and tell a story. No, what I want to talk about is the emotions, because I had a lot of them reading this and, while anyone can tell a story, it takes something more (someone more) to make you feel a story.

Anticipation. Curiosity. Frustration. Anger. Amusement. Discomfort. Surprise. Satisfaction. Sorrow. Joy. And, finally, Contentment.

If I were to lay out an emotional roadmap for this story, that’s pretty much how it would go. Anger is a tough one for me, but there’s a character here, a rival to the protagonist, who I wanted to slap, smack, and strangle – not for challenging Pierre, but for his absolute disrespect towards Lady Crimson. Discomfort is an even harder one, especially because it was something I felt with both Pierre and Lady Crimson. There’s a key theme of protocol woven into the story, and I cringed to see it tested, violated, and hotly debated on both sides. As a submissive, it was a difficult exchange to witness and not take sides.

Sorrow was something I absolutely did not expect to encounter in a story of this nature, but I’m not ashamed to say the tears were running freely through the last chapter. Some of them were sorrow and some were joy, but all of them were sincere. There are aspects of the finale I suspected, others I saw coming, and then others that hit like a sucker-punch to the gut. That final exchange between Pierre and Lady Crimson packed an emotional wallop that I daresay you’re not prepared for either.

As for the final emotion, contentment, that’s something sort of tangential, related to a secondary character, but it’s a thread I was so . . . well, content to see tied off.

The Service Sub is an erotic tale of female domination, protocol, and the power exchange, but it’s likely not what you’re expecting. It’s largely non-sexual, more psychological, but completely satisfying. There’s genuine character growth here on all sides, and so many of those emotions I mentioned are only possible because of that growth. This is definitely worth a read.

Rating: ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀

My sincere thanks to the author for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.