After reading the synopsis for this seventh book in the Collars & Cuffs series, it had my interest piqued for the young Dom/older submissive angle, a switch to the opposite of what we’ve seen so far in the series. When I started reading Dom of Ages, I thought it had some great potential with the way both Eli and Jarod were introduced and meet. But once Eli takes Jarod home, I became a little disillusioned with the story.
The way Eli acts after bringing Jarod home with him, it seems more like he’s looking for someone to do the house chores than for someone to participate in a D/s scene or relationship. He treats Jarod more like a servant or child than a submissive, which to me felt like a lack of respect and like he was taking advantage of Jarod. It’s not just Eli either-after Jarod goes home with Eli, he seems content in the role Eli is setting for him which to me feels absolutely nothing like the other couples we’ve seen throughout this series.
The rest of the characters are wonderful as they’ve been through the entire series. The accept Eli and Jarod without reservations, and envelop them into the Collars & Cuffs family from the moment they set foot in the club. The C&C Doms and subs alike provide guidance and advice to both men, and in the end I came away satisfied that their relationship had evolved into something more equal than where it started. Eli does definitely undergo character growth during this story, and thankfully starts to evolve into more caring and loving Dom than when the story starts out.
Dom of Ages was a 3-star read for me, and I’d recommend it to M/M BDSM romance readers/listeners 18+ for adult language and explicit M/M sexual content. Now for the narration…
Joel Leslie does an AMAZING job of authentically voicing the Collars and Cuffs characters. While I enjoyed the earlier audiobooks in the series, the one thing I was disappointed in was that the narration in those was in an American accent instead of British. That’s remedied here in Dom of Ages, and it really helped me enjoy the story more since now their voices matched who the characters really were. There were some times that Jarrod’s sounded older than he really was to me (he’s only 50 but the tone of his voice made him sound older than that), but otherwise everything was spot-on. The voices were consistent across all of the characters, and their emotions really came through in the narration. A very clear 5 stars for the narration!