This is Who I Am, By Cherise Sinclair

When trying to save a woman from slavers, Sam screwed up. Royally. Now Linda wants nothing to do with him. Or with BDSM. She won’t even admit she’s a masochist. As a dominant and sadist, he can give her what she needs, and when an opportunity arises, he slips into her life, intending to make amends. She’s everything he knew she would be…except for her bullheaded determination to be ‘normal’.

Now the horrible time is past, Linda just wants to return to her small conservative town, pick up her quiet life, and be normal. But how can someone who likes pain be ‘normal’? To her dismay, when someone spray-paints her home with obscenities, Sam shows up to rescue her. Again. Doesn’t he understand that the last thing she needs in her life is a sadist? He’s amused by her objections. But his dry sense of humor can’t disguise that he’s tough as nails and dominant and stubborn. He’s not going to let her drive him off this time. Soon she realizes she wants him to stay.

When he takes her to the Shadowlands, she feels as if she’s found a home…until she hears a voice from out of her nightmares.

I am not a big fan of pain, or of reading books where there are large mentions of pain.  So you can imagine my back and forth with reading this book.  I have read all the other books in the series and I had really thought about not reading this one.  But I can say completely, I am really glad that I had read this book!

Having known Sam for quite a few books, I had been waiting for his story to come to light and I thought that the author did an amazing job with this story.  She could have taken this story and made it completely horrible to read.  But I think that she did a great job at writing this story in a way that even people who don’t enjoy reading these types of books would enjoy.

One thing that I did completely love about Linda’s character was how she didn’t just “jump in” to a relationship with Sam.  I was really worried that she was just going to jump in without really knowing what she wanted.  So I was really glad that she actually took the time to consider her options.

With the drama that was happening in this book, I thought that the author did a really good job balancing everything that was going on.  This book caught me completely off guard throughout it all because of how well written it was done. 

Overall I would recommend this book to everyone who enjoys reading books from the BDSM genre.