Okay, so... I started reading this with the expectation of it being not my cup of tea at all, that the BDSM part would make me feel extremely uncomfortable.
In that way, it absolutely did NOT meet my expectations.
Because I loved every single word of it.

The writing style is absolutely lovely and rather unique to my personal experience, and that was what kept me hooked the first 3 chapters when I wasn't quite sure what to think yet. For some reason, I was very surprised how accepting and at ease the main character was with his state as slave (as most enslaved protagonists are very much against being slaves, and not used to it at all).
But Sylvan was trained from his birth onward, and slavery (and the sexuality in context along with it) is normal and institutionalized in the book. For me as a reader, it was unsettling, but it was rather well implemented in the story's setting.

I liked the story well enough from the start, but it was at Chapter 7 that it got me completely hooked. I won't go into detail, but it was there that the future dynamics of the relationship between Sylvan and Nygell dawned on me and it left me so thoroughly intrigued that I couldn't stop reading anymore.
From then on, it only got better, and while the extra outside conflict in the last chapter made me anxious, there is still a happy open ending with enough hints to leave me satisfied.

There IS a lot of sex, and definitely BDSM, but it never made me uncomfortable the same way as other books with similar content did (and that even though this story has the extra slavery issue) - which is not to say that it's unproblematic, and I was unsettled by a few scenes, but not in the way that I thought I'd be.

There were lovely side characters that, as always, I wished had gotten some more redundant appearances, but for the sake of pacing and density it's good that they didn't get it I guess.