She takes exquisite pleasure in knowing more about art, literature, and fine dining than Simon and often sneers at or despises him. In fact the only people she doesn’t look down on are a few other female Doms and even then she’s not really friends with them. I can’t say I’d want to be friends with her either.

As that implies verbal/emotional abuse, now some BDSM relationships do thrive on the humliation factor, but that too is tempered with trust and discussions of what is allowed by the submissive. Sounds to me like the author didn’t do a lot of research on the subhect.

Kirsten approaches Simon and initiates the relationship. Since Simon is in a high position in the government, he at first worries that she’s been hired by the opposition to lure him into something sordid which they will then use to humiliate or blackmail him. He also thinks Kirsten might be a professional who wants money from him and who might use their relationship against him at some future time. She spends a lot of time telling him that none of those two scenarios are true and that she would never betray a relationship she was part of. He believes her and the relationship continues. Then some political issue arrises that Kirsten feels passionately about and about which she holds the opposite view than Simon. It’s then that she threatens to release photos of him to the media if he doesn’t agree to stop working on it. To me that was a betrayal of all she told him earlier.

As you said, a BDSM relationship is based on trust, so based on this review, no read for me. :) I’ll go hunting something else. This sounds like a domestic violence thing disguised as a BDSM book.