Alexis Hall
Oh gosh thank you :) I don't like to get in readers' readers about how to interpret my books - since anything is valid if it means something to you.
But the Ardy books have always had a fairytale vibe, a bit of Cinderella, and a bit of Bluebeard, as you note - and Caspian's "places" have also been a running theme. I always knew I wanted one of Caspian's final love acts to take Ardy somewhere personal, since C uses non-personalised spaces both as a kind of self-punishment and also to keep Ardy at a distance. And I thought it worked well as a reversal of the Bluebeard trope you mention, as well as contrasting ... cough ... strongly against another book of similar structure where the kinky hero's most personal place is his sex dungeon. And obviously it's fine for your sex dungeon to be your most personal place, but that wouldn't have been right for this book, and things I wanted to explore in it.
Plus, more prosaically I wanted to show Caspian truly understood how to make Ardy happy: that One Hyde Park or his cold penthouse wasn't the right place for Ardy. That he needed somewhere he could call home.
AND my inner imp of the perverse was really into the idea of having a billionaire hero living with his bf in a small-ish (though let's be very clear still insanely expensive) house in Notting Hill :)
But the Ardy books have always had a fairytale vibe, a bit of Cinderella, and a bit of Bluebeard, as you note - and Caspian's "places" have also been a running theme. I always knew I wanted one of Caspian's final love acts to take Ardy somewhere personal, since C uses non-personalised spaces both as a kind of self-punishment and also to keep Ardy at a distance. And I thought it worked well as a reversal of the Bluebeard trope you mention, as well as contrasting ... cough ... strongly against another book of similar structure where the kinky hero's most personal place is his sex dungeon. And obviously it's fine for your sex dungeon to be your most personal place, but that wouldn't have been right for this book, and things I wanted to explore in it.
Plus, more prosaically I wanted to show Caspian truly understood how to make Ardy happy: that One Hyde Park or his cold penthouse wasn't the right place for Ardy. That he needed somewhere he could call home.
AND my inner imp of the perverse was really into the idea of having a billionaire hero living with his bf in a small-ish (though let's be very clear still insanely expensive) house in Notting Hill :)
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