The New York Times Bestseller
THIRTY DAYSThat’s all Adam Steinbeck demands of his wife.Thirty days in a remote cottage, doing everything he commands. After that, he’ll sign her divorce papers and give her complete ownership of their company.That’s how long he has to rediscover the man he once was. The Dominant Master he hid when he fell in love with her five years before. She wants the business … years before.
She wants the business they built badly enough to go to the cottage for a month. Cut off ties to the world and do his bidding. She can submit to him with her body, but her heart will never yield.
She thinks this is his pathetic attempt to repair their marriage.
She’s wrong.
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more
There’s struggle in Diana’s heart . The relationship is turning over.
There’s a letter at the kitchen counter . Adam is blindsided.
Dear Adam: I don’t know how to say this…..
A marriage is either completely straightforward or completely complicated . It’s supposed to be a communion of souls. Alone love can’t suffice and guarantee longevity. The bonds are love , honesty and respect. A wedding can be based on love but a marriage survives only on honesty.
And that’s what’s lacking in Adam and Diana’s marriage. Love is in abundance but there’s a piece missing, their hugs are not full bodied , their cuddles are distant, their lovemaking is a farce. Passion is there, lust is there but the edge of devoration is missing.
Why ………….
I’m so amazed and left astounded by the nuances and watching the tiny threads coming loose in this story, threatening to unravel everything. Marriage, business, club, past, present, future!!!
I keep falling deeper in love with Christine’s writing. One book at a time !
It’s such a delicate and fragile subject , which could’ve gone either way.
Adam is completely disbanded when his life changes with Diana’s note. He falls back to his safe place, his Club -Cellar and his Dominant tendencies that he had buried deep within him to get close to Diana.
The Cellar was a necessary evil though. The club acted as an organization with rules surrounding what would be assault outside its walls.The world we inhabited wasn’t designed for people to be in love. It was designed for intensity, pain, pleasure, courtesy, and ritual.
He fought against his basic nature . The natural instinct to dominate, his sadism and pleasure from pain is his second skin. But he cloaks it with vanilla scent because he keeps his subs and love separate. And they don’t cross ever. He falls in love with Diana and he doesn’t want to make her his sub because Dom-Sub relationship is pure cut and dry, give and take, with no room for love and Diana he wants to attach to, belong to .
Trying to get Diana in the same room for a dialogue fails, so he has almost prepared himself to give up. Both can’t walk away damaged so he tries to find his own Centre of gravity first , then try to support Diana.
I stepped onto the street in my flat-bottomed shoes, the melting ice creating new treacheries, and I knew I wouldn’t fall. <--- what a beautiful line ! Adam is finding his solid ground so he doesn't topple. Brilliant Then there is Detached Diana. She seems cold. Calculated . She's been working on the note for quite some time. She’d become immune to the venom of her detachment, and I kept on asking for the sting. There's no action or reaction from her, it's as if she can't wait to run.... How is this derailed train going to get back on track ? Million dollar question. Adam wants a second chance . You're mine for Thirty Days At the end of the stipulated time, they'll both walk away with clean sliced lives. What happens in the first two weeks is mind boggling WTF ! She didn't even know what she wanted out of life out of her marriage . These 14 days open HER eyes and they manage to spark the missing fire . But wait, Christine's not done yet....... Adam is constantly losing his footing while trying to balance on the marriage beam. Things happen that push them together and they bounce back.....apart ! I couldn't enter the room I just couldn't. It's plain essential offended me. It's not-mineness. Nothing about about it reflected me or my personality it could be anyone's room. The same could be said of the house . Not mine The same of my husband whoever he was . Not mine He wasn't even the man I married anymore. That guy had slowly faded into memory I missed him and never wanted to see him again at the same time His old world is looming like a dark storm pulling him in. And his battle within of sub vs love is growing like a raging hulk . What to do ? ......what ! His purge is also his weakness, a kind of confession At least I could look at the divorce as something I had a hand in . I wasn't whimpering victim. No. I was in control again His soul finds closure , but at what cost. ? He's backing down while Diana is stepping closer I dropped my eyes to his shoes not being able to look at him. I couldn't see what he was doing or tell he was feeling it was disconcerting and at the same time the mystery was sensual. I listened . I felt as though I paid more attention This was the man he'd been holding back .The man he had tried not to be all those years for my sake He was Pure Power . Pure control .A fucking God . because he's beating a woman ? . No , because she needs it and he's a God who delivers it I couldn't stop reading it , couldn't stop looking at the inevitable crash.... Beautiful is her writing , and poetic is her language. Christine is a genius. Look at the end carefully. There's struggle in Diana's heart . The relationship is turning over. There's a letter at the kitchen counter . Adam is blindsided. Dear Adam: I don’t know how to say this..... 5 RIP your heart stars
C.D. Reiss certainly know how to keep you on your toes. Marriage Games will have you turning pages faster than you thought possible. I loved everything about this series.
An amazing roller coaster of emotion that left me grasping for the next book!
CD Reiss rewrites the rules, blazing new trails in this shattering novel of a marriage coming apart. It disintegrates every expectation and preconceived notion of the genre, and gives us characters we can inhabit. We crawl into their skin and heads and feel every bit of their joy, pain, anger and sorrow. It’s not a romance novel – it’s a haunting love story. Full of messy, exultant, punishing , enslaving love. This one will live in your head and your gut for weeks. I loved and hated how this story made me feel. So much anguish. So many misunderstandings and missed connections.
We meet Adam Steinbeck on the worst day of his life – his wife and business partner, Diana McNeill- Barnes, ends their marriage with a note on the kitchen counter. No cheating. No confrontation. Just “I don’t love you anymore” – despite the orgasmic Tuesday night sex. As his life threatens to spin apart, he seeks refuge in the life he left behind five years prior. You see, Adam is a Dominant and he left it all behind when he met Diana, committing himself to a life of vanilla sex with the woman he loved. But that wasn’t his only secret.
CD Reiss is masterful when it comes to the male point of view and Adam Steinbeck is no exception. You WILL fall in love with him. Guaranteed. We live in his head and his heart as he tries to figure out a way to survive the devastation Diana’s words have unleashed. They were the perfect team. Diana was the schemer and dreamer in their business partnership but Adam was the one who figured out how to make it work. Have no doubt – Adam is a man with a plan and never fails to see it to completion. A survival plan that involves 30 days at the play house in Montauk with Master Adam.
Once we arrive in Montauk and the rules of the game are established, the POV shifts to Diana, Adam’s little huntress. But if he had paid attention in class he would know that Diana was also the goddess of the moon, magic and sexual freedom. Her story of sexual and emotional awaking is beautiful and poignant as she rediscovers herself as a woman, wife, partner, lover, and daughter. You will see yourself in her. Also guaranteed. She decides to play the game to win – without truly realizing what she is competing for. She has to battle a past she doesn’t understand and the outside forces tempting Adam back to the life he left behind. A life that has no place for her. Or does it?
As always, Ms. Reiss’ prose is spare, elegant, and lyrical. Her poetic eroticism depicts the emotional brutality of a relationship in its death throes with such realism that it bleeds off of the page and burrows into your heart, leaving a gaping wound in its wake. Marriage Games, at its essence, is about the masks we wear in our quest for a forever love and how those masks change us, allow us to hide from ourselves, and change our love as we find it, keep it and push it away. It’s also about what happens when we finally strip those masks away and have to decide whether we like what we see in the mirror and see in our partner.
Out of every ending is a new beginning. Or is there? Marriage Games is the first installment in a duet. You’ll have to wait for its companion, Separation Games, due in January 2017,to find out.
PS This book defies description. It blows up genre expectations. It’s not an erotic romance -it’s a mother f****** love story!!! Love in all of its messy, painful exultant glory. YOUR BOOK LIFE WILL BE INCOMPLETE IF YOU DON’T READ THIS STORY.
A shower of stars but I am only allowed to give five.
I LOVE Adam!!!!!
The anticipation, excitement, burn and hopes for a HEA was intense. The characters are great and the story has a great flow. Frustrating at times but I could understand why. This book was great and book 2 even better.
I absolutely love CD Reiss and was so excited to get into this book based on the Blub alone. It intrigued me and I was pulled in from the first chapter. I loved how the book went from the past to present tense seamlessly. Some books bounce and you have to focus too hard to keep up, but this one was flawless. Diana and Adam’s story was so gripping and I was so excited to find out there would be a second book to complete their story. It was full of emotion and heart, and so much sexiness my kindle was on fire! But that is to be expected of a CD Reiss book.
In Marriage Games we meet a couple on the brink of Divorce. Adam is blind sided by his wife’s note left to him that she wants to end their marriage. He is pulled back to his past life of how he was before he was with her, and seamlessly falls back into his habits once he realizes what she wants. 30 days is all he asks of her, to go away with him and do whatever it is he desires. She agrees at the beginning in order to gain full control of her company again, but slowly sees as time passes between them that the chemistry has been turned up to a notch they had never experienced in their five years of marriage. Their time away is packed with so much I just feel like saying you have to read this book! Without giving anything else away, I can say, I was crying at times and am so desperate for the second half of their story, Separation Games, that it just jumped to my most anticipated book of 2017! CD Reiss does not disappoint with Diana and Adam!
This is a LOVE STORY.
Past and Present.
Tense.
It’s genre-bending. Blending.
Absolutely stellar.
With staccato paragraphs and flowing prose, CD Reiss delivers a story, not just about BDSM and its dynamics, but about love, marriage, honesty, and self-actualization. It’s the story of falling in love, the struggle of marriage and what happens when it all falls apart.
Adam loves his wife Diana with his whole heart, but for years has held a piece of himself back. That piece is his dominant nature and his place in the BDSM lifestyle.
“You can’t just decide to be vanilla the rest of your life. It’s not a choice.”
“It’s all a choice. And I choose her.”
For Diana, that missing piece of him sparks a distance in their relationship. A sense of loneliness and longing for things she doesn’t quite understand or can grasp. After all, she’s afraid to be honest, both with herself and with him, about what she needs. So, she goes through the motions until one day…
“I don’t know how to say this.
I don’t love you anymore. I’m sorry.”
Adam Steinbeck’s world crumbles with a simple note left on the counter. His love for her, though. That is something that he can never shake. So, he offers her Thirty Days. Thirty Days of honesty. Thirty Days of ALL of him. Thirty Days of her submission.
Anaïs Nin said, “The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”. For me, this book exemplifies that on the topics of marriage, relationships, honesty and the importance of communication. This book is marriage. These characters have real human failings; emotions like guilt, fear and shame are central to their actions. They each have wants and needs they are reluctant to articulate.
You could easily read this book and just look at the story on the surface; it’s angsty with smoldering kinky sex and a solid duet style ending (not heavy on the cliffy). Really, though, it’s the way this author had me looking at the characters, their motivations, and seeing how that could happen in any relationship, any marriage. How she had me learning from it. That was the layer that took this book from genre fiction to genre-bending. I can’t wait to see how things come together in the next book.
This was a walk on the wild side. I am all for sexy, crazy, twisted books, but this one was a bit too much for me. There was way too much killing for me
Oh… my….
The way I feel about this book…. I can’t even describe it. Why did I wait so long to read this? I’m addicted. I’m sleep deprived. I’m completely owned by this story.
The story starts with a letter for Adam. A letter for a divorce.
Diana loves her husband, but she knows that he’s not being completely honest with her. Something is missing. Something is always in the back of his mind when they’re making love, and she can’t continue living with a shell.
When she finds out that Adam was previously involved in the BDSM scene, she feels a wave of emotions. Anger for his lies. Sadness for the distrust. Relief that her decision for a divorce is justified.
Adam can’t deal with the idea of living without his wife. There is a reason why he doesn’t want to involve her in his old world. But if he wants to leave the relationship in one piece, he needs to do it his way. He will break her…. dominate her… all in 30 days.
The first half of the book is in Adam’s point of view. As it switches from the past and present, we get to experience how the relationship started and slipped. The second half is all in Diana’s point of view. She explores Adam’s world and unlocks doors to her own desires.
I love the story. I love the characters. Adam is a freaking sex god!!! C.D. Reiss is an incredible writer, and I’ll be reading all her books soon. Book 2… HERE I COME!
Good read but a cliff hanger
C.D.Reiss writes characters and stories that are great for a story with heat. You’re certain to tangle in your sheets. Nothing like some steamy interludes to elevate the temperature.
Not my type of book, very depressing. I read books to be entertained, and all this book did was depress me I finally just skimmed the last part. I don’t know what the author was trying to get across but whatever it was it was boring and unrealistic. Sorry not my cup of tea.
Mind blowing!
From the first page, CD Reiss writing is just simply mind blowing!
Marriage Games dedinitly not a “simple” BDSM romance. The feels, it’s so deep. It force you to think and feels through a different angle. Got me in so many profounding moments, I was like… Oooh so that’s submissive mean. Ooh that why a Dominant do or think. Ooh that’s BDSM relationship like…
Adam is not a “perfect” Dom. He make mistakes. He lied. He love and become someone else cause he thinks he needs to be that man for her. He didn’t listen his Dominant instink toward her. He is Grey. He is not Ward. But dayuum if I’m not going to kneel for Adam Steinback
Diana is a strong woman. At first I tought she’s so judgie and pain in the as
But with the story goes, I see me in Diana. I see lots of woman who’s not in BDSM relationship and no nothing about it except it’s kinki. Then I understand her feelings and thoughts. Her fear and confusion. Her mistakes and effort to right it back.
One of my favourite reads of 2019.
What a story! It is so intense! You get sucked in from the beginning and can’t wait to see what happens next and all the while you have questions and demand answers but you only get a few, then there is a book two!
Hoping for a HEA
I was just amazed at how this book unfolded. The complexity of the problems Adam and Diana face to save their marriage makes for absorbing and emotional reading, and I hurt for both of them. The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars was because I found the interjection of outside conflict characters disruptive and unnecessary – Adam and Diana were so intriguing they were all I wanted to read about, lol. Incredible book – can’t wait to read Separation Games to see how it all turns out.
It was so good. I wanted to yell and slap Diana at times but than at the same time I felt her thoughts regarding Adam. C.D. Reiss can’t wait to start its next book. Thank you!
I don’t know why I’ve waited so long to read this. But she bundled them in a deal and I finally dove in. What a provoking, stimulating, and emotional read! It starts off on a down beat, right away. Flashes between the past and present, helping us understand maybe what got Adam and Diana to this point. And as upset as I was with her in the beginning, it’s Adam who keeps making me mad now. I want to yell at him and this gets quite frustrating.
Yes there are dirty fun games. There’s a pull into this kind of world, the bdsm world, that’s serious, sensual, but stays with you. It’s been awhile since I read one, and I forgot how good it can be. This does end in a way that you need to hop right along to Separation Games.
My head is pounding with the beginning of a headache. My heart is beating like it might explode. I feel a little bit sick.
God is not in his heaven. All is wrong with the world.
I totally feel like someone has spun the world around the wrong way and I don’t know which way is up anymore and it makes me want to cry. I want to go to bed and be hugged by my nice warm bodied husband.
CD Reiss played a blinder really. Suckered in to Adam Steinbeck and his broken heart, I wanted him to conquer, to win the game, each set, each match. Then the switch. And I could feel the sea change. The air around me changed. It was just off and full of foreboding.
Sometimes I get to the end of a book and I feel joyous and uplifted. Sometimes I get to the end and feel meh. The end of Marriage Games, I know I’ve read a great, great book but I’m really sad and I want January to come. I feel a big sense of injustice and I want to beat Adam with a big stick and I want to smash a Manet painting over Diana’s head and say you brought this on yourself Huntress.
I’m done. I’m out of the game. I did not pass go and I did not collect two hundred pounds. I’m in free parking and I’m waiting for a get out of jail free card.
Such a great book.
What an ending! I did not see that coming…. at all!
Adam, a dominant, and his wife Diana, not a submissive, have a great life together. They meet as he jumps in to try and take over her family’s struggling business. They fall in love, something Adam has never done, but is he really present in this relationship, if he is ignoring his dominant side?
This story proceeds with falling out of love, and trying to rebuild what they had. But I did not expect that ending.
Well written and engaging story!
Now I have to read Separation Games to find out what happens!