Hell's Kitchen Trilogy by Tanya Chris

Posted on May 11, 2024
Word Count: 1447

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I just finished reading a Kitchen Sink Dom by Tanya Chris
It’s the first in the “Hell’s Bedroom” series and it was so good. It really pulled me in.
It’s another off that list of “favorite bdsm books” I got off Reddit. A lot more . . . fictiony than the previous book I read, with a plot about a detective trying to find a kid who went missing in a bdsm club . . . but it features realistic characters and realistic bdsm. Beautifully flawed characters, and a story I just fell into.

And yes. A few graphic sex scenes. Who doesn’t love that 😂

Fewer of those scenes though than Truth By His Hand, so I guess it’s less smut than the last. And less of the wit I’d loved in that book although not devoid of it – I was reading in bed and it managed to get enough of a laugh out of me I was worried I’d wake up Sam.

But solid writing. And! It has sequels 💖

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Welp. I just bought the series. (I hadn’t purchased the first book. Let’s say I was just borrowing it.)
The book was good. I want to read the rest and I’d like to support the author. 🙂

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I started the second book in the Hell’s Bedroom series: Chicken Soup Dom

I have conflicted feelings. I’m only a few chapters in and like… There’s an interesting dynamic forming that the romantic sub in me is cheering for, but the realist in me is cringing so hard from.

The sub was abused and starts the book in a very broken state. Some of the chapters are inside this kid’s head and he’s just…. broken. He needs to be in therapy and no one has thought of that whatsoever.

But no he’s living in someone’s apartment while they are continuing to investigate (because it’s actually a detective/crime story) and they’re trying to take care of him – the biggest thing being making sure he’s eating, because he is actively starving himself due to that past abuse.
And this cute little lovey dovey dynamic is blossoming from it because he is desperate to be a sub for someone, anyone, and the person he happens to be staying with is a young dom who still knows better but is attracted to him anyway and is going to like… slowly give in to the dynamic.

***SIGH*** 😠

And while part of me loves how cute it is, such a sweet little D/s love story… the other part of me is recoiling. Why is no one putting this kid in therapy. They can have a healthy dynamic blossom while he’s getting professional help. That would be better! So much better.

I guess I’m just going to have to put that other part of myself on a shelf for this book because, only a few chapters in, I’m pretty sure I can see the direction this book is going. sigh oh well.

It’s still well written. I love the characters and all their flaws. But this really rubs me the wrong way. I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes.

I’m still going to keep my fingers crossed that someone’s going to be like “hey I know this therapist, let’s go talk to them” partway through all this. I’m going to be unhappy if the direction this goes is “broken toy, healed through D/s with young dom” (gag)

(No spoiler tags because I’m like barely into this book. So it’s all just conjecture. I have no idea for certain what’s going to happen.)

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Well I finished Chicken Soup Dom and uh. yeah.

So The first in the series, Kitchen Sink Dom is a great ethical bdsm love story, wrapped around a private investigation storyline that’s prominent throughout. This one is a D/s love story with a dubiously ethical, or downright unethical relationship, which still follows that PI thread, but that thread is much more toned down IMO, making the first book more of an investigation book, and this one more romance than anything else.

It’s cute, and the relationship is what the romantic sub in me rooted for the whole book. But I’m honestly happy to be done with this story so I can get onto the third book which focuses on two other characters I’m dying to see more on. They aren’t broken. Flawed, yes, but not broken.

I can’t really recommend this book. I can recommend the first one, but not this one.

It’s cute. It’s well written. But it’s not ethical bdsm and it’s played off as if it is. If it wasn’t written to sound like it, then I’d be more okay. I’m fine with fantasy bdsm that’s completely unethical, but both the author and the reader know it’s just fantasy bdsm.

ACTUAL SPOILERS (3 paragraphs) –
The author did her best to take a broken boy and turn him into a whole submissive by the end of the book. He goes from broken to the point of starving himself to eventually standing on his own two feet and realizing what it is he wants and being able to stand up for himself again. With no therapy. Just the support of his reluctant dom and a tiny bit of help from the small community around them.

The dom in question spends 70% of the book agonizing over the fact that he’s attracted to this kid. He says things like “I really shouldn’t be doing this” and I’m screaming at him in my head “THEN DON’T!”

And I keep calling the sub a kid because he’s 18. It was hard to picture him as 18, but he was. And 18 year olds are just kids. And the dom was 24. Who is also, effectively, a kid to someone my age. But he also reads as older, even when it’s pointed out that he’s also still kind of young and inexperienced here. IDK why, but they read that way. 18-24 is not a bad span, but I had a hard time keeping that in mind throughout the book. Which added to my discomfort.

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So uh yeah. I just inhaled the third book in the Hell’s Bedroom series, Upsy Daisy Dom.
I enjoyed it quite a lot. Not as much as the first, but far better than the second. This was primarily about a serious S&M couple and their little getting together story, and also continuing the whole major plot that started in the first book with tying up the loose ends on the case and stuff.

And I mean like serious S&M. Too intense for my taste IRL, but I still loved reading the scenes. There’s actually a really hot knife play scene that’s like… ughhhh so good 🤤 ….

I’m happy to report, in an off-handed comment the author probably added as a response to likely criticism (probably an actual but minor spoiler): the broken boy in book 2 mentions that he’s in therapy in book 3. He mentions having a therapist he’s talking to!!!! Thank fucking gawd.

There are some minor ethical issues in this book but not anything like book 2. The ethical issues were closer to the ethical issues from book 1, and not like… playing with a recent trauma victim.
And there are real consequences to poor choices which I was happy to see, which made the ethical dilemmas actually impactful, and not just something the reader was expected to ignore like book 2.

It wrapped up well, not just to the book but to the series as a whole. No major loose ends… although there’s a small one either I missed the tie of, or it simply didn’t get tied off so that’s a little annoying, but it’s pretty minor. (kind of SPOILER) The dom in this one says he’s going to buy the bdsm club, and either he did in a single sentence somewhere and I missed it, or it never got returned to. And that annoyed me because there were like two paragraphs dedicated to how much he wanted to do that because he was so angry about what happened.

I really wish Book 2 wasn’t such an ethical nightmare, because I could otherwise recommend the whole series. 🫤

It was, overall, a fun read and while it had a few failings, I really enjoyed the series.
🙂

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Honestly after thinking really hard on it, I think I liked the third book best of the three.
Because I can’t seem to shake it out of my head. I keep going over scenes (book scenes not bdsm-scenes but those too) because they were interesting. Thinking about the characters and the character growth. Etc