Patty's Reviews > Gemstone

A f/f romance novel about Gemma, a good church lady who has a secret online life as a Mistress Lorelei, handing out strict spankings and figgings. Celine, Gemma's neighbor, has been nursing a crush on her for months. When she accidentally finds out about Mistress Lorelei, she decides to investigate the kink-scene, going so far as to contact Lorelei under a secret screenname of her own.

To complicate matters further, Gemma's best friend has set her up with confident, successful Stella, who seems like the perfect woman, except that a) she's not religious, and b) she's not into kink. Who will Gemma choose?

This is a fairly slight romance, with no particularly deep insights into characters or situations, but as long as you go into it with that understanding, it's a lot of fun. Plus, I've never seen lesbians + kinky + religious combined before, and it's worth reading just for that intersection alone. Actually, I wish there'd been more about Gemma's faith. She believes in no sex until marriage, which I found a little confusing when she was willing to act out BDSM scenes with her girlfriends (I know that's a line that professional dominatrixes often draw, but it makes more sense to me as a business transaction than a matter of faith. Clearly Gemma's activities are leading to orgasms for at least some of the participants, some of the time, so why does she – or God! – not consider that to be sex?). I also would have liked to see a bit more build-up to the happy ending. But I'm probably asking for more from this book than it really was trying to be. I wanted something light and enjoyable, and this was the perfect book for that.