Elia Winters. Playing Knotty. POcket Star, 2015. 264 pp. $4.99

****

Set in Boston (local to me) with just enough attention to detail to feel authentic. Bookstore owner Emma is barely making ends meet, and when an acquaintance –Ian– asks if he can rent her back room for a ropes course, her feelings are mixed but she ultimately says yes. The scheduled rope model catches the flu, Emma stands in, and her simmering attraction to Ian bursts into flame at being consensually bound up by her crush. A misunderstanding over how much each likes the other nearly derails the romance, but things turn out all right (neatly wrapped up?) in the end.

Long paragraphs over the knotting process may have some readers skimming, but the realistic characters that normalize fetish play, polyamory, and consent, paired with hot sex scenes, made this one a winner for me.