The Diary of a Submissive: A True Story [Paperback]

Sophie is middle-class, educated, intelligent: she defines herself as a feminist, has a good job as a journalist and had a well-adjusted childhood - she's also a sexual submissive, and this is her story.

This is uncomfortable, even disturbing reading and yet at the same time it's a book which is impossible to put down. Sophie's story is an honest and direct account of a woman who is independent, intelligent and very self-aware who yet gets her sexual kicks from being demeaned, humiliated and physically hurt.

She makes the point clearly and repeatedly that this is her choice, that she chooses to be `punished', that while she hates it, she also loves it. Some of her own confusion comes over, the way she can't explain her own sexual response in any way that makes sense to us, but that she chooses to embrace it anyway.

Be very clear that this is full of practices that go way beyond any kind of `playful' dominance - we're talking hard-core pain, even agony, that has Sophie sobbing with pain and humiliation. Even more disturbing are the scenes where she tortures herself at her Dominant's request, inflicting the kind of pain that most of us don't even want to imagine.

This isn't erotic in the slightest (and I don't think it's mean to be) - and especially revealing, to me, is the point where Sophie's Dominant is unsettled by his own sadism and questions whether that's who he wants to be.

So this is a million miles away from the coy tweeness of Fifty Shades of Grey: and its very intelligence makes it all the more disquieting. I don't think I can say that I enjoyed this book but I couldn't stop reading it with a kind of horrified fascination.

A fascinating and very intense look into the mindset of a submissive. The author is very descriptive and articulate and the insights into her world make for highly compelling reading! We both enjoyed this book immensely and couldn't put it down until we'd finished. If you enjoyed the Fifty Shades trilogy but are looking for something deeper (and far darker), then we'd recommend this wholeheartedly. But be warned, this is not for the faint hearted!

From reading the blurb this book sounded really good. Even though I don't know anything about BDSM and I do enjoy reading about it and have read quite a few books with that as the theme. Then I read this book and I'm all BDSM'd out, it has just made me weary of reading this genre of book.

The book started out fantastic and I couldn't understand why this book seemed to get such low ratings. The writing was good, Sophie seemed an interesting character and I liked her. The book is set in England so I loved all the references to her life, I never thought I would be reading a book about BDSM that mentioned Jossy's Giants , a TV show from my childhood. The story was well paced as we followed Sophie's life from childhood through University to her first job where she meets Thomas then the story stopped and we had a good chunk of writing that was just sex and spanking and I mean lots of spanking.

Now as I have mentioned I do not know anything about BDSM apart from the other books that I have read so I don't know how true to the `lifestyle' this book is but to me it didn't seem right. This is meant to be the diary of a submissive but in my opinion Sophie didn't submit at all. She came across as brattish and was angry at her Dom at everything he asked her to do. She would eventually and begrudgingly do it but I thought the whole submissive thing was that you wanted to submit and please your Dominant partner. The sex scenes were not inventive there were just lots and lots of Sophie getting caned, spanked, paddled and humiliated and it got boring. I don't understand why people want to be spanked so much that they are literally collapsing but each to their own, I am also not a prude and I have read far worse that what happens in this book however these scenes came across as abusive to me as opposed to anything else, especially the threesome they have. The story the picks up again as we read more about Sophie's life until she meets James and we return to the spanking.
I found the writing to be good and enjoyable however some people may be offended by shall we say the blunt language and words used. I did also notice that the author liked to use certain words a lot at different parts in the book then that word would not be used again which lent it-self to chunks of different writing styles. Having read other reviews it appears that this book has been released before under the title of Subtext by Kate Morley and The Diary Of Submissive has been made a bit longer, tweaked and repackaged to suit a Fifty Shades audience so be warned if you have read the earlier book. This book has potential to be really good if it was re-edited. I really did like parts of this book the start was excellent and the ending brought a tear to my eye. I also really didn't like parts of this book there was way too much spanking, I also had a love/hate relationship with Sophie so for those reasons I am giving this book 2.5 stars.