Friday, December 20, 2013

Spanking Stories Book Club: An Old Fashioned Christmas by

Please Welcome Cara Bristol who has graciously offered to host this week's discussion of An Old Fashioned Christmas by Nickie Flynn. 

By Cara Bristol
A few authors I know raved about An Old-Fashioned Christmas on Facebook. Based on their recommendations, I decided I had to read it. After a woman witnesses a mob hit, she is placed in the witness protection program. With a new identity and unable to contact her family, she faces a solitary Christmas until she’s invited to spend the holiday’s with a co-workers family. But what her friend doesn’t tell her is that her family is “old-fashioned,” a euphemism for spanko. The entire family practices domestic discipline.

Here’s the blurb:
Melissa Mitchell is going to be alone at the holidays, at least until her new friend Terri Coleman takes pity and invites her to the family home in rural North Carolina for an old-fashioned family Christmas. It sounds wonderful, and to top it all off, Terri has a single and very eligible brother, Richmond police detective Joe Coleman. 

Then Terri drops her bomb shell: the Coleman family is old-fashioned in more ways that one, and Terri has recently fallen afoul of her brother, who took care of the situation in the time-honored way. Could it happen again? There are issues unresolved between Terri and her brother, and Terri feels she needs to warn Melissa that no-nonsense Joe just might resort to spanking if he thought the situation warranted it. And that's not all: Terri's other brother and his wife are in a domestic discipline relationship, and are very open about it. 

As irritated as Melissa is that Terri has dragged her into family drama, Melissa also has a secret of her own: she's been fascinated with tales of old-fashioned over-the-knee-discipline forever, and the idea that that could occur in real life seems too much to believe. At first, the holiday celebration couldn't be better. Melissa and Joe feel an instant attraction, fueled by the fact that Joe quickly figures out that Melissa's interest in what had recently happened to Terri goes beyond mere 
concern for her friend. 
Old-Fashioned Christmas by Nickie Flynn
But Melissa has another secret, a dark terrifying reality from her past. Just when she feels the most safe, through an innocent mistake, the secret is revealed endangering everyone in the family. And Joe will do anything to protect his family…. 


Discussion:
I found much to enjoy with this book. I loved the set-up. From the moment I discovered the heroine was in witness protection, and the hero was a police detective, I waited with delicious anticipation for trouble to start. And I wasn’t disappointed! For the most part, I thought Joe Coleman was a hunky, sexy hero—although I felt he overstepped his bounds on a couple of occasions. An Old-Fashioned Christmas is well-written and very well plotted for a spanking romance—it could have stood on its own without the spanking.

But here are some opening questions:

In the Coleman family, the parents spank the children, the husbands spank the wives, and brothers spank sisters. And they are open about it. Did you like the family angle? What did you think about the family’s openness about their domestic discipline practices?

Terri (the sister) had made some poor choices and her brother stepped in to correct her. Did you like the spanking of one sibling by another or do you prefer that spankings be limited to the H/h? What did you think about the fact that a brother spanked his adult sister on the bare in such a way that he could see her lady parts? Is that too intimate of an act? Did he cross a line? In real life, how would you feel about a brother spanking an adult sister in an attempt to improve her poor behavior?

When Joe becomes suspicious of Melissa’s identity he rifles through her purse and wallet. Do you feel he was justified? How else could he have handled it?
The book ends, not on a cliffhanger, but still open-ended because there will be another book. Did you want more closure or were you satisfied with the way it ended?

What kind of boundaries should be set in a DD arrangement?


20 comments:

  1. Thanks Cara for hosting this week!

    I haven't read this book, but I think I would find the brother/sister thing really freaky. Maybe not over clothes, but on the bare butt when he can see her lady parts? Yes, that would bother me.

    I'd also be bothered by someone going through my purse.

    But, I do like the set up for the story. The witness protection program offers so many fun options, I might still check it out...What do the rest of you think?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The purse thing struck me as such a huge violation. And I had the same reaction to the brother/sister thing. Other than those two things, I enjoyed the book. I LOVED the witness protection angle.

      Delete
  2. I've read some reviews on this book, but not the book. I prefer H/h spanking only. I'm not sure how I feel about siblings or parents spanking an adult in real life but I know I don't care for it in fiction. I can handle the sibling thing if the H/h are in an incestuous relationship. Strangely that doesn't seem nearly as icky as a brother giving his sister a bare bottom spanking and then sporting wood while he's talking to the heroine who he catches watching him give his sister the spanking. I would need the erection clarified.

    Is he hard because he was spanking his bare bottomed sister? Is he hard because he was caught by someone he finds attractive? His he hard because he's talking about spanking?

    I like the set up, and I hear once the sibling thing is out of the way the book gets hot, but I dislike cliff hangers. I'm the type of person who will wait till the series is through, read all the reviews, then decide if I still want to get it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I went back and reread the passage where Joe spanks his sister Terri with the strop. Although he can see lady parts, there is no mention of him getting hard. He gets hard afterwards when he's talking to Melissa about spanking.

      Delete
    2. Thanks Cara! Still not in love with the fact it's right after the sister spanking scene but at least I know it's coming, going into it.

      Delete
  3. Hi - Thanks so much for hosting this Celeste. This is Nickie here (sorry about the confusion in my name - I had everything set up as Nikki before I had to change to Nickie) and I am very interested in anything anyone has to say - good or bad! I would like to comment on the one thing brought up already which is his going into her purse. I did think about this and worry about this as I was writing, but I tried to explain it away by Joe's being so worried about who Terri was hanging out with that once Melissa's story did not add up, he felt he had to do it.

    In retrospect, I probably should have handled it differently.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Nikki/Nickie! Thanks for stopping by! I messaged you on FB so I hope I got the right person.

      Isn't it funny that we'll read books about anal punishment, spanking, corner time etc, but going through a woman's purse is crossing the line?

      Delete
    2. I know I've written things and thought, "should I?" and then had readers object.

      Delete
  4. I loved this story. Honestly, I have no problem with family discipline (brother/sister, parent/child) as long as it's well known and accepted and everyone consents to it. I realize Terri (the sister) doesn't verbally consent, but she clearly expects it, even warning Melissa about it, and doesn't make any real effort to say no, (Whining and begging don't count. We all do that.) That's consent, of a sort, to me.

    Frankly, the best part of the book to me is that Joe is HOT. A little gruff and a bit of a bully sometimes, but HOT. Not a great critical analysis, but true nonetheless. :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ruth...your last comment made me laugh. When I hear people go on and on about wines I just say "I'm a consumer not a connoisseur" and your last line seemed similar. Glad you liked the book and thanks for a different perspective. True that it's not like it just came out of the blue for the sister.

      Delete
  5. I haven't read this book but cannot imagine allowing my brothers to spank me. Of course, I know this is fiction and I guess if it is something you've been used to, it's not strange. Might have to give this one a try to see if I feel differently.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nickie again -

    Also want to address the brother/sister spanking thing. This was actually something that Bethany, the Blushing Books publisher, and I went around about. The initial scene, where Terri tells Melissa that Joe spanked her the previous summer, that was basically the set-up of the whole book, the idea that this was an old-fashioned family that REALLY believe in real spanking for real reasons. So that was never open for discussion.

    But the scene in the garage was something that Bethany and I talked about. I considered having Joe and Terri only have an argument in the garage, and then Melissa was spying on that, which would lead to Joe and Melissa talking about spanking, but Bethany encouraged me to go with my gut on this. She said: "You created Joe. You know him. What would he do?" And as soon as she said that, I thought to myself: "He'd bust her ass. Joe's a spanker, he believes in it for both discipline and erotic fun, and he can separate the two... and if his younger sister mouthed off to him like that, well, he'd bust her ass." So I wrote the scene the way I wanted to.

    I tried to keep it very matter-of fact between them. And at no point does he get excited by spanking his sister. That's made very clear.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Nickie! It's so much fun when the author stops by to participate and explain their thinking and motivation. It adds so much to the discussion.

      Delete
    2. I really appreciate your featuring the story . It got off to a bit of a rocky start with the mess-up on Amazon, so the fact that it has finally taken off and gone somewhere and people are talking about it... I'm thrilled. And my thanks again to Cara Bristol for hostessing this.

      Delete
    3. Nickie, I don't think my reaction would have been as strong if Joe had spanked Terri over her clothing or her panties. That I could have accepted as DD. But a bare-bottom spanking in which private parts are exposed has such a sexual connotation to it that the scene felt incestuous. That's what made me uncomfortable.

      Delete
    4. Cara, I feel the same way you do about that. I left a reply on your blog as well. I have no problem with a family practicing DD all around, but the baring of body parts should be left to those who are or could be sexually intimate with each other. I've a feeling I'm going to be bothered by the scene as well, but even knowing about it beforehand is not going to stop me from reading it. It's already in my TBR pile.

      Delete
  7. The plotting was wonderful, and Joe had many redeeming qualities. He was hunky.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I really enjoyed this book. I liked the characters, thought they were well developed and the plot was good too.

    Of course the older brother spanking thing was over the top. Completely unacceptable but it made for fun fiction. I thought the Joe and Melissa spanking scenes were really hot both in words and action. I like the complication around people you enjoy and a family you'd want to hang out with coupled with spanking you'd never tolerate in real life.

    The thing that bugged me about Joe spanking Terri was that he was spanking her for her mouth while cursing himself - think he should have held himself to a better standard.

    I think more books from this same family would be fun like Carl and whatever his wife is named, ex. keeping up with domestic discipline after they get a baby.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I haven't read this book yet but it's next in line on my Kindle!

    I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I love brother/sister adult spankings. Especially on the bare since it ups the humiliation factor for the heroine. It's one of those things that's exciting to read about, but in real life...no. Can't wait to start Old-Fashioned Christmas! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sue, I'm sure you're not alone in feeling this way. We all have slightly different tastes in our reading preferences, which makes for a larger, more diversified publishing market, and that's not a bad thing at all.

      Delete

I love getting feedback. Thank you for taking the time to comment!