Product Description

Darcy has always been in control. He had to be. He had assumed responsibility for his younger brother Martin when their parents died. Now Martin was getting married and he insisted that Darcy have a date for his wedding.

Without Darcy’s knowledge Martin goes looking for a date for his big brother in the personals. But he slips up and punches in the wrong number.

Darcy reluctantly agrees to meet with the person who answers his brother’s ad, figuring he’ll ask the girl to the wedding and that will be it. However, it’s Ryan he ends up meeting, and he’s NO GIRL. In fact he’s a Dom looking for a submissive, and Darcy seems to be right up his alley.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1064849 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

A Date for the Wedding
Manly, D.J. "So Much More Than Naked", eXtasy Books, 2008.

A Date for the Wedding

Amos Lassen


Darcy had to assume responsibility for his brother Martin when his parents died and now that Martin has grown up and is getting married, he wants Darcy to have a date for his wedding, Martin figured he would help his brother find a date by looking in the personal ads but he made a mistake and answered the wrong ad. Now we need a little background about Darcy--he is a 26 year old virgin and a history professor. Darcy and Martin lost their parents some seven years before when their mother took her own life after her husband's death and Darcy became the only thing in Martin's life. Darcy became somewhat of a controlling person--he wanted everything to be perfect yet he could not deny that he was attracted to men.
Martin's marriage makes his life confused especially since he has no one to ask to the wedding. Martin mistakenly sets his brother up with Ryan, a sexual therapist who posted an ad looking for a lover who is submissive.
Darcy, of course, does not realize that Martin made a mistake, and agrees to meet with the girl whose ad Martin supposedly answered. When he meets Ryan, he discovers a very good looking man who realizes that Darcy has issues. He convinces him that it is okay to love another man but their relationship has problems. Darcy tries very hard to understand himself and as the book focuses on him. We know little about Ryan and we are not sure of his intentions with Darcy.
The story picks up in "So Much More than Naked 2" and here we see Ryan and Darcy working at building a life together. Now Ryan has to sit back and let Darcy come into his own.
The characters that we have here are not likeable and I do not feel we really get to know them. In fact I am not even sure where this book is going. What is evident is that the two characters do not realize is that two people make a relationship and here it is one sided. Perhaps better things are yet to come from D.J. Manly. I guess I have to wait and see.

So Much More Than Naked by D.J. Manly
So Much More Than Naked by D.J. Manly

Darcy is a 26 years old virgin history professor. Orphaned at 19 years old after his mother commited suicide since she was not able to move on the husband's death, Darcy became the only steady point in the family for the younger brother Martin. Darcy reacts to the events becoming a freak controlled, everything in his life has to perfect and in order, and obviously his attraction toward men has to be denied.

Now Martin is marrying and other than throw into confusion Darcy's life with the marriage preparations, he also wants that Darcy brings a date to the ceremony. But since Darcy has no one aroud him to ask, Martin replies to an online add only to mistake the addresses. And so he sets a date for Darcy with Ryan, a sexual therapist who is searching a submissive lover to move on on a relationship that has left him with some trust issues.

Ryan is a very handsome and comprehensive man. He realizes that Darcy has some sexual issues on his own to overcome and also that the man needs badly to leave for once the control. But convicing Darcy that is not a problem if he likes men and to also move from a virgin status to a play room full of chains and strange toys is not so simple.

Darcy and Ryan's relationship is not smoothly. When you think that they have reached a common path something happened that derails them. And despite the argument there are more scenes where Darcy tries to understand himself and the outside world than sexy scene between the two main characters. All the book is focused on Darcy and we know little about Ryan, other than he seems a nice guy. Why he chooses Darcy and why he is not more demanding on their relationship? maybe he wants to give time and space to Darcy to arrive by himself to the right end of the path...

So Much More Than Naked 2 by D.J. Manly

Darcy and Ryan met in the previous book through an ad in a newspaper. Darcy was forced by his little brother, since he was an old "virgin" with a problem with power: he was always in too much control, he seemed to be not able to let go. Ryan instead was a sex therapist who needs control in the bedroom, since his last relationship ended pretty bad when his Dom partner took a bit too seriously they sex games. Darcy was convinced that Ryan was a woman, but when he faced the man for the first time, another of his internal walls crashed down, he finally admitted that he was more interested in men than in women.

The story continues where we left Darcy and Ryan: trying to build a life together learning how to balance their power. In the first book, it was Darcy that learned the lesson, and now is time for Ryan. He has a problem with his former lover, he consciously realized that their relationship was ill but his body seems to have not yet reached the same conclusion. Plus Ryan fears to let Darcy take control, since the man is a natural Dom, and Ryan is scared that if he will taste also that type of power, he will never give it up again. Nor Ryan or Darcy want a total submission or a total dominion, in bed and in life.

This book deals with the extreme layer of the S/M sex games; what Ryan craves in bedroom (and not only) is a little too edgy for me to comprehend, but, all in all, the book is not so dark and angst, I read other books far more extreme. What it really bothers me is that Ryan "cheats" on Darcy; oh, he technically didn't do that, but not talking with his partner, and seeking release to his desires with another man, for me is equal to a cheating. Even more, since Ryan is a sex therapist, and where a physical cheating is less important for him, a "mental" one is far more dangerous and deadly for their relationship.

Of the two, Ryan is the one to blame. It's true that, at the beginning of the book, Darcy seems reluctant to let go, to fully being involved in their relationship, but he is trying. Maybe he is not so fast, but on the other hand, Ryan never tried. He plunged in his error without even looking around for an alternative path.

So here is an example of a book where I like the story, but I don't fully like both characters; even if Ryan is a therapist, he has yet a lot to learn on how to make work a relationship, when he is one of the part involved.

SO MUCH MORE THAN NAKED by D. J. Manly - 3.25 Stars
In this story, a man named Darcy needs a date for his younger brother Martin's wedding. Darcy, who has never dated but swears he's straight, doesn't want to bother with finding a date, so Martin decides to browse the personal ads to find a date for Darcy.

Martin sees an ad for a woman that seems very nice, so he replies and sets up a date for Darcy. When Darcy shows up for the date with the mysterious woman, he realizes that his date is not with a woman at all, but with a Dom named Ryan who is looking for his perfect submissive.

There are quite a few plot holes in this book, the BDSM theme is pretty far fetched, and the overall story seems rather unlikely, but it is a sexy and entertaining story with pleasant characters nonetheless. The love scenes are very nice, too. 3.25 stars.