Haven by Rebekah Weatherspoon (Beards & Bondage #1)

Summary from Goodreads:
A week-long getaway…

City girl Claudia Cade’s carefree life is plunged into chaos when a camping trip with her brother in the national forests of Northern California turns into a deadly dash for her survival.

A solitary world turned upside down…

Nature photographer Shepard Olsen has resigned himself to a quiet existence, with only his dog by his side, until a woman in need of his protection shows up on his doorstep and throws his universe into disarray.

Two lives linked by tragedy…

Claudia is desperate to heal from her traumatic loss, but can’t stop thinking about her run-in with evil….or the grizzled mountain man whose quick thinking and good aim saved her life. When she shows up on Shep’s doorstep again, she finds she isn’t the only one who can’t move on.

…saved by bliss.

The two begin an intense, passionate relationship of Dominance and submission, pleasure and pain, but with dark memories haunting them and decisions about the future rapidly approaching, Claudia can’t help but wonder…how long can they be each other’s haven?

*** WARNING: This book contains a sexual relationship between a fashionista and a cranky mountain man who are dealing with physical and emotional trauma. And a very big, cuddly dog.***

Rebekah Weatherspoon has been popping up in lists of romance authors recommended to me for a while now. And I’ve been intrigued, but her usual genres (contemporary, BDSM) aren’t always my bag. I’ve had good luck with contemporaries of late and I was told that Haven would be a good place to start so I decided to give it a whirl. (I was also tickled by the series name: Beards & Bondage.)

Haven takes off like a rocket right from the first page. Shep, a large bearded mountain man with a penchant for bondage, saves Claudia’s life when she turns up at his cabin bleeding and running for her life. When her attacker steps out of the woods, and offers to share her with Shep, Shep gives one warning and then shoots the man. On the way down the mountain to the hospital, she relates a horrific story: she was camping with her brother when they were attacked by two men. As Claudia recovers from her injuries Shep tries to give her some comfort, simply holding her so she can sleep. Although they each try to return to their previous lives, the experience has irrevocably changed both of them. Claudia soon returns to Shep’s town, to find closure and explore her attraction to the man who saved her.

I’ll probably never be a fan of 1st person POV in my romance reading, but it worked for this book. Weatherspoon would give us several chapters in one POV before switching to the other, so it wasn’t too much back and forth. Shep isn’t some sort of grizzled, nasty dude in a shack; he’s a very rugged, fit nature photographer with a modern cabin who just happens to be an introverted Dom. The conversations that Weatherspoon gives him with Claudia, where they discuss exactly what she wants from her time with Shep and what a D/s relationship with Shep would entail, were refreshing; no one does any quibbling about feelings before getting down to business. This isn’t a sweet or funny romance (although Claudia is a smartass with excellent one-liners). It’s a story about two people who work through some very, very heavy emotional stuff mixed with incredibly hot sexytimes (if you’re like me and the pain thing is really not your jam, the scenes lean into the Bondage portion of BDSM more than anything else). The only part of this book I really felt didn’t work was that the HEA didn’t seem earned. I totally got the instant emotional connection between Shep and Claudia – they both went through something traumatic and it created an instant bond worth exploring. But they’re given a week – which is eventually cut short by a plot point, so maybe 4 days – and it just doesn’t seem long enough for them together. They each work through some things separately, but I would have liked them together in one place for collectively more than a week.

Dear FTC: I bought my copy of this book on my Nook.