Mastering Marissa by Cyna Kade

Mastering Marissa by Cyna Kade
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A powerful story that takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster. The author does a wonderful job of pulling you into the story to the point that you can feel Marissa's anger, fear, and frustration as she tries to come to grips with the customs and culture of Darinth. It seems almost excessively cruel in some ways the way that Kytar tricks her first into accepting him as an escort, which leads to him binding her, and then into accepting his collar, withholding key information from her all along so that she acts without really understanding what she's agreeing to or what the consequences will be. It is true, however, that she refuses to believe him when he does try to explain things to her, so perhaps his deceptions are a bit more forgivable.

On the negative side, Marissa ends up turning the corner from defiance to submission fairly suddenly and unexpectedly, her change of heart coming a bit sooner than one would have expected. By that point, however, things had reached the stage where something had to give one way or another - either she had to decide to stop fighting so hard and work to accept and submit, or there was a very real chance that the training would have ended up breaking her. Still, things could have gone on just a bit longer, and the change of heart could have happened a little more gradually so that it wasn't quite as jarring to the flow that had been established. The author's skill at bringing the emotions of the situation alive so vividly well overcomes these few negatives, however, and the story deserves the full five stars as being one of the best in it's class.

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