WARNING: This contains the FULL synopsis of Whimper Wonderland and includes spoilers. Skip this section if you don’t want to be spoiled!

We meet Dove (35) at a bar in New York City. She’s being hit on by a younger man who comments negatively on her age. She leaves him and goes across the street, where Dorian (36) is waiting for her. Dove and Dorian have established a domme/sub BDSM relationship and they engage in a “play session.”

The narrative then moves to the past, where we uncover Dove’s “origins of kink.” She discovered that she was into BDSM by reading a book called Damaged Hearts by Quinn Siobhan. In this “loose memoir,” Quinn relates the story of how she enlisted her brother-in-law to help her discover BDSM in order to spice things up with her husband. As the story progresses, Quinn and Poe (the brother-in-law) start a tangled affair. Dove attends a book signing where she asks about the club Quinn and Poe attend. Quinn declines to answer her, but outside the bookstore, Dove runs into a woman called Ophelia who invites her to a private kink club and encourages her to download an app.

Dove downloads The Seekers Club app, an app to match people in the BDSM community. She joins Ophelia to the actual club itself, which is in a private brownstone uptown. Here, Dove discovers her love for being a submissive. Together, she and Ophelia have a blast at the club every Friday night. Over time, Dove meets Carver (a playboy dominant), Phantom (Ophelia’s elusive dominant), and Princess (a transwoman who works at the club). The members become family to her.

Dove meets Shawn, a dominant her age, and the two hit it off. They become boyfriend/girlfriend and dominant/submissive. Dove wears his collar and accepts being “owned” by him. However, as time goes on, Shawn loses interest in the club and the kink lifestyle. Without a safeword to protect her, his controlling nature becomes toxic. At Ophelia’s Christmas/birthday party, Shawn forces Dove to make a choice: the Seekers Club or him? She choses him, something she’s deeply ashamed about to this day. Even after she breaks up with Shawn, Dove is too riddled with guilt and shame to return to the Club.

Desperate to reinvent herself, Dove changes her status on the app from “submissive” to “dominant.” She gets a message from Dorian, who is an attractive man looking for a dominant to “f*** him like she hates him.” Intrigued, Dove starts to message Dorian back and forth. The two hit it off and start a sexy and playful D/s relationship over the next six months. Although they never date and never interact outside of “kinky play,” they start to develop feelings for each other.

The narrative jumps back to the present. It’s Christmas week, and the week of Ophelia’s birthday party. Dove wants to attend, but is afraid of going alone and facing her old friends from the Seekers Club. She asks Dorian to go to the party with her, and he agrees. Dorian and Dove join the crew (Ophelia, Carver, Phantom, and Princess) at a bar downtown. Ophelia is waiting on her boyfriend, who she thinks will propose to her tonight. Instead, she gets a note stating that he’s left her a scavenger hunt all around the city. She and her friends have to follow the clues to find different ornaments with riddles inside of them.

They spend the night hopping from bar to bar, hunting for riddles. Dove and Dorian take a detour into Dorian’s bookshop (The Paper Cut) when Dove sees a book in the window she wants. It’s Quinn Siobhan’s latest release. Dorian goes to wrap the book for her. As he does, Dove realizes there’s something oddly familiar about the bookstore. She pieces it together and comes to the conclusion that she knows this place from the book — Dorian is Poe, the “dominant of her dreams” from the Damaged Hearts book.

When she confronts Dorian, he admits that she’s correct. He had an affair with his brother’s wife (Quinn) and deeply regrets it. When she published the books about their scandalous affair, he lost friends, community, and was ostracized by his family. Dove discovers it was around that time that he started talking to Dove, using their D/s relationship to bleed his angst.

Dove can relate to him, suffering from her own “damaged heart.” Dove and Dorian have sex in the bookstore. During sex, they accidentally “switch”; Dorian takes the dominant position and Dove takes the submissive position. It feels right in the moment, but Dorian feels guilty about it afterwards.

The two meet up with their friends at a venue where adults are having a public pillow fight. They run into Shawn (Dove’s toxic ex) and his new girlfriend, Ginger. Dove discovers Ginger is wearing Dove’s old collar, and Dove goes blind with rage. She and Dorian enter the pillow fight. Dove corners Ginger in the pillow fight, but finds she can’t hit the other woman. She sees too much of herself in Ginger, and in that moment, Dove learns to forgive herself — her old self, the self that was bullied by her ex. She hugs a confused Ginger, who exits the ring. Dorian sees Dove’s transformation, and the two have a moment. Meanwhile, Ophelia finds the last clue, and the gang moves to the final location.

At the last bar, Ophelia finds her boyfriend. The only problem? He’s kissing another woman. Ophelia, drunk and upset, loses it and her friends have to pull her out of the bar. Outside the bar, Dorian and Phantom have a moment, during which Phantom reveals that Ophelia’s boyfriend did not set up the scavenger hunt — Phantom did.

Dove and Dorian take Ophelia home and put her to bed. Finally alone, Dove and Dorian have a moment. Dove opens up about her relationship with Shawn, then breaks down. Dorian holds her and comforts her. Before Dorian leaves, the two kiss heatedly in the hallway with promises to “finish this” later.

The next day is Christmas morning. Dove interacts with a healthier looking Ophelia, who says she wants to go to the Club tonight. Dove says she’ll go with her — the first time she’s been to the Club since her break up. First, she has to go to a shift at her work. There, she runs into Ginger, who is still reeling from last night and wants to talk about Shawn. Dove talks with Ginger and encourages her to go to the Seekers Club.

Back at the apartment, Dove finds Dorian’s bookshop keys. She takes them and breaks into his bookstore with the intentions of painting a new mural for him as a “grand romantic gesture.” Only she sets off the alarm and Dorian comes storming in with a bat. The two startle each other, which prompts them to admit their feelings for each other. Dove laments that she’s fallen for a “self-loathing submissive,” and Dorian corrects her (“I’m a switch”). The two have “switchy” sex, exchanging power roles at various points during their encounter.

Dove tells Dorian she’s going to the Club later. Dorian agrees to go with her, even though the Club is a sore spot for him, too, since the last time he was there, he was with Quinn. The two return to the Club, ready to face down their demons. When they enter, it “feels like home.” Their friends greet them warmly and Dove shows Dorian her favorite “toys.” Dorian and Dove reclaim the space and begin to play together.

• Main characters:
  • Dove – a 35 year old woman who finds herself through kink.
  • Dorian – a 36 year old man in the kink lifestyle who has a secret past.
• Tropes and themes: Contemporary romance, romantic comedy, private kink club, femdom / male submissive, BDSM, “switching,” idiots to lovers, found family, characters over 30, dirty talking MMC.
• Tone and style: A character-driven story with flashbacks woven between the present day narrative. The story is told in first person from alternating points of view.
• Trigger warnings and content tags include but aren’t limited to male/female open door sex scenes, BDSM scenes and a public kink club, public play, femdom / male sub scenes, masochism & receiving pleasure from pain, on-page panic attack, “Top Drop,” flashbacks to FMC’s toxic ex and their relationship, mentions of MMC’s past toxic relationship, reclaiming power through kink play.

Q: Is this part of a series?
A: Yes! Whimper Wonderland is Book #1 in the Seekers Club Series. Each book revolves around a new relationship in the Seekers Club, a BDSM club in the heart of New York City.

Q: Is there a cliffhanger?
A: No, Whimper Wonderland is a complete story with it’s own happy ever after.

Q: Is it multi-POV?
A: Yes, Whimper Wonderland is a first-person, switching between present tense and past tense narrative as we delve into the characters’ histories. The chapters flip between Dove and Dorian’s point of view.

Q: Is it queer?
A: Both of the main characters identify as bisexual, although their sexual identities are not a driving factor in the book.

Q: Is this a spicy book?
A: Yes, the steamy scenes start in chapter one and keep getting hotter. It’s an erotic novel.

Q: Where are the spicy chapters?
A: Chapter 1 (yes, the spice begins there!), Chapter 6 (phone sex and dirty talk), Chapter 8 (“Read and Weep”), Chapter 10 (the bookstore), Chapter 16-19 (switching).

Q: Is The Seekers Club a real place?
A: No, but it is loosely inspired by a real club in New York City.

Q: Is there an audiobook?
A: Not yet, but hopefully soon…

Q: Is it in Kindle Unlimited?
A: Yes, Whimper Wonderland is currently enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. If you are a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can borrow it for free.