Title: Knight & Play
Author: Kitty French
Publisher/Year: Kitty French 2/22/13
Length: 200+ Pages
Series: Knight #1
Overview
There’s only one thing in life Lucien Knight really hates, and that’s husbands who cheat on their wives.
There’s only one problem in Sophie Black’s life. Her cheating husband…
From the moment Lucien & Sophie meet, the seal is set.
Romantic, emotional & intensely erotic, Knight and Play is the perfect read for lovers of international bestsellers Fifty Shades & Bared To You.
Let yourself be swept away by Part One of the Knight series from Kitty French, a romance so hot it’ll burn your fingers…
CEO of Knight Inc. Lucien Knight is catch-your-breath gorgeous and damaged by his troubled past in Norway. All grown up and relocated to London, he’s built his empire of adult clubs from the ground up to become the gorgeous patron saint of the sex industry. No one knows the dark childhood secrets that have given Lucien a backbone of steel and a heart encased in ice.
No one until Sophie Black, that is…
From the moment girl-next-door Sophie accepts the job as Lucien Knight’s PA, she understands how Alice must have felt when she tumbled down the rabbit hole.
Lucien takes her safe, vanilla life away and plunges her head first into a huge dish of fantasy flavours. Rich, spicy chocolate covered with dark, oozingly lickable sauce? Check. Tutti-frutti with indecently red, glistening cherries on the top? Yes please.
Lucien strips away all of Sophie’s inhibitions, and when he instructs her to select three new toys, she soon realises he has more than a game of Monopoly on his mind…
He’s opened the door to a whole new pleasure packed world without limits, and Sophie is utterly intoxicated. But how far is she willing to go? And what happens when she has to step back into reality again?
Lucien & Sophie’s is a story of star crossed love and forbidden passion, a sexual odyssey that spans the globe and changes both of their lives forever.
Let it change yours, too.
My Thoughts
I’m a sucker for a story that has a powerful man leading the charge, which we have with Lucien, and a women who’s clearly powerful, but doesn’t quite know it yet. which is what we get with Sophie.
This is a ‘coming of age’ in a sense, where Sophie is trying to learn about herself, based on what’s missing in her relationship with Dan, her husband, but we get a story that’s so much more complex. She’s in a job that she isn’t thrilled with – it’s dull, and she’s being groped by her boss at every chance he gets. It’s because of this that she answers an ad for a PA role in Knight Inc – definitely stepping out of her comfort zone, all in the mindset of adventure and doing something for herself.
Convincing Lucien to hire her was the first way that Sophie showed that she’s got some balls, and trying her best to make the job work is the 2nd. While she’s there, she actually comes to terms with the fact that her sexless marriage isn’t because of her, it’s because her husband has been having an affair with her, and therefore she feels like she’s justified to explore more about herself. Can’t blame a girl – can you?
Just on a personal note here, i like that the way this is written is that it’s not entirely like Sophie didn’t know that her husband was stepping out, she 1) didn’t want to believe it or admit it to herself but 2) she kind of did know, based on his travel patters for work and how he’s been towards her, so it’s more of an ‘if it aint broke, don’t fix it’ mentality than being in denial.
Where this story takes us from there is quite interesting actually. Lucien, as we know is emotionally closed off in the sense of never having loved and not willing to love…and we know that it’s because of his background which he doesn’t really share. We know that his father cheated on his mother and that drove to her to her death, and cause the big riff in Lucien’s family. With the entrance of Sophie into his life, things are turned upside down, and he’s forced to look at things a bit differently. He has this huge feeling of protectiveness over her that’s not typical to how he has felt about any of his past conquests, and that’s something that he’s afraid to take pause at.
With Sophie’s bit, we see a woman who’s struggling with her self worth, coming into her own personally and professionally, and kind of fearful about where her journey with Lucien since she’s beginning to feel like it could be more.
From UK to Norway, and tons of places in between, we’re taken on an educational journey. Not just about the passions that happen between these 2 which are certainly growing throughout the book, but of Lucien’s business of toys, since there are a few even that i’m not familiar with. The story itself is well written, really making me pleased given that it’s based in the UK, with British characters and i have come to expect several things from this type of writing. Verbiage that is overly british and references that are of the same nature. SO not the case here, so i really enjoyed the smooth read. Regardless of that, you really just want to hope for the best here, hope that there’s relationship development on more than just a physical level, but emotional too. i think that we’ll get there.
Where the story took us towards the end, while very expected, didn’t necessarily tick off all the boxes that i had in my mind. We knew that certain things would come to a head with sohpie/Dan and as a result, Sophie/Lucien, but i’m not sure that i was fully expecting it to happen as it did. The good thing though is that i have book already so i don’t have to wait much longer to find where the story goes. I’m already a few chapters into Knight & Stay and we’ll just have to see what happens next. i’m sure we won’t be disappointed.