Cunning. Sex. Pure nerve. Only this unholy threesome can raise him to his rightful place as a ruler of Manhattan’s kink kingdom.
Bouncing from bed to bed on the Upper East Side, Kingsley Edge is brilliant, beautiful and utterly debauched. No carnal act or chemical compound can relieve his self-destructive heartache—only Søren, the one person he loves without limit or regret. A man he can never have, but in whose hands Kingsley is reborn to attain even greater heights of sin.
Kingsley’s plan to open the ultimate BDSM club—a dungeon playground for New York’s A-list—becomes his obsession. His expertise in domination can’t subdue the one man who wants to stop him. The enigmatic Reverend Fuller won’t rest until King’s dream is destroyed, and so the battle lines are set; it’s one man’s sacred mission against another’s…
As I delved into the first chapter of this book, I felt myself cringe as the name Grace appeared on the pages. I know this seems to be a strong reaction to what is a perfectly decent name. But I promise, it is not the name that makes me cringe, but the character, Grace Easton. In fact, I stand firmly in my opinion that this character single-handedly ruined The Mistress and even Søren for me. Add onto that, the fact that Søren betrayed his vows, Nora AND Kingsley by sleeping with her, and I absolutely despise this character. This is a betrayal, that as a fan of the series, I cannot and will probably never be able to excuse.
Fortunately, I had already read The Saint and I knew Grace’s presence would be minimal at best, as the White Years are geared towards the beginning of the sexiest threesome to ever have appeared in a book. So despite my annoyance, I trudged on and found a story that I truly enjoyed.
When originally reading the Red Years, I had some awful image of Kingsley as some pathetic, middle-aged, overweight, white guy. I’m pleased to say the White Years have completely replaced that imagery with that of an attractively arrogant and troubled man whose ego is so big, I’m sure it made the Book of Guinness World Records.
Kingsley’s story is that of how he came to be the King of Kink in Manhatten and the struggles he had to endure in order to create a safe haven for those like him and Søren, The Eight Circle. The primary of this tale are Kingsley, Søren and a new addition, the beautifully, alluring, lesbian, Sam, whom Eleanor makes comments about several times in the previous book.
Only a year after he nearly died, Kingsley finds himself living the fast life of sex, booze and drugs. It’s by chance, that just as he’s coming close to going off the deep end and out in a blazing glory, Eleanor’s arrest reunites him and Søren for the first time in eleven years.
Søren‘s re-emergence in Kingsley’s life helps to motivate him to leave the destructive path (for the most part) he’s on and focus his energy into creating the world’s premiere S&M club. With the help of his newly-hired personal assistant, Sam, Kingsley finds himself at odds when it comes to purchasing a particular piece of property that he’s dreamed of, for the club. As he fights to wrangle the property away from a zealous, righteous church, he finds himself struggling with his feelings for Søren and processing the idea that Søren believes himself to be in love with fifteen-year-old, Eleanor.
I’m not sure what this says for me, but unlike the previous book, I did not skim through any of the sex scenes. Perhaps this is because Kingsley’s plans are the primary focus and as a strong plot, it allowed Reisz to keep from utterly overloading the book with sex scene after sex scene. Or perhaps, it’s due to Kingsley’s personality and there were several times that he would reply to something and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
I don’t really want to give away a lot of spoilers. But here’s what I can tell you. If you love erotica, you’ll probably love this book. And if you are a fan of The Original Sinners already, then you will definitely enjoy this book as much as I do. In fact, I can say I found very few things wrong with this book (one being the ebook version randomly placing a space between every ‘f’ and ‘l’ in a word and several other ‘f’ words.) and if it weren’t for Grace (God, I wish Tiffany would kill her off) I would have rated this book five stars.
Disclaimer: As this is my opinion, I make no apologies for allowing my dislike of a particular character to dictate my rating.