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. 

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?