(AuthorHouse)

www.authorhouse.co.uk

BY ROXANA HADADI

Trying to get some soft porn in your life? If so, Like a Black Rose: An Autobiography of a Dominatrix is probably for you. If you're good at using the Internet to satiate your lust, though, then the book is pretty unnecessary.

By Yadi Pearl, a Polish woman living in Vienna who falls into the whole dominatrix thing after her second divorce, Like a Black Rose reads less like an autobiography and more like a series of disjointed diary entries about a whole slew of uncomfortably erotic situations. Not for the faint of heart - but not necessarily hardcore, either - the book has tons of detailed passages about S&M, bondage and faux-rape, but its plethora of grammatical errors (seriously, it's infuriating), choppy writing style and lack of character development make the book more of a pain than a pleasure (and not, like, sexy pain, either).

The book begins by skating over Pearl's former life, merely mentioning "divorce proceedings [that] had dragged for more than two years" and her inability to find a job despite her advanced education (an M.A. in German) before launching into her reply to an ad seeking "classy, powerful ladies" that somehow, to the author, does "not sound like an escort service ad or anything like that."

Then, by the third chapter, Pearl has entered the S&M world, which she describes as both "a dive into cold unknown water" and a "highly exciting ... unbelievable adventure" ... and that's about all you get. Pearl doesn't go any further into analyzing or dissecting her role as a dominatrix and how her double life impacts her personality or psyche. Instead, she takes up 200 pages with intimate descriptions about her rendezvous with a blonde female slave ("it smelled of women everywhere, and I had never before enjoyed it this way"), her first experience being dominated ("I was totally powerless and at the mercy of whatever was happening") and her attempts at a normal relationship with a man named Tommy who would later betray her ("I was convinced then that the man at my side was strong, that he was the one to protect me and make me feel cherished. ... But that was then"). It's interesting to read at first, but more than 40 chapters worth of it definitely gets old.

But while all of the sex scenes in Like a Black Rose effectively give the reader an idea of what Pearl does for a living, there's little description of other parts of her life or explanations as to why she continues being a dominatrix (aside from the money, of course). That solid lack of information does nothing to help the reader develop a sense of who Pearl actually is, and without that, there's no reason to care about her life - with or without the sex.