Review: Dark but good
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 23, 2014
Catrina has a problem. She is currently over $150,00 in debt. Having no family or friends to turn to, Catrina turns to Debt Management Association to help her out. DMA is a company that will take care of your debt, and in return, Catrina will be owned for a year to her benefactor, his to do with as he wants. Raoul is her trainer at DMA, and there she learns how to give BJs, and how to take a spanking with more than just a hand.Jared is the benefactor who buys Catrina out of her debt and in return has Catrina for a solid year, to do with her as he wishes, including letting friends and strangers use her too.As punishment for spending more than she earned, Catrina is subjected to daily spankings, anal sex, BJs and any other punishment Jared sees fit (all directed toward Catrina's behind). Along with those punishments, Catrina is forced to take online finance courses to help her understand why spending more than you have will land you into trouble, and how to prevent it in the future.After her year of indentured servitude is up, Catrina is sent back out into the world, but she still has monthly appointments at DMA, where she has to tell Raoul everything that has gone on in the month, unaware that Raoul has been tracking her at her new job and knows exactly how poorly she is doing. When she omits a few things, Raoul spanks her.When Catrina's finances start diminishing due to her spending again, Jared once again steps in and offers Catrina a proposal- to move back in with him for more training, and he will once again pull her out of the debt hole she is slowly sinking back into.Catrina agrees, but after a few months, with no end in sight, Catrina runs away. Still needing help, but at a loss as to what to do or where to turn, Catrina turns to a dark place.First off, while this was a lot darker than anything I have ever read, I did enjoy it. Catrina is not the easiest character to love, but I did feel sorry for her. Yes, as she is often forced to say that she did this to herself, no one deserves the abuse she endured, and it was indeed abuse. What I didn't like was that at the end of the book, I felt that I barely knew any of the characters. There was barely any background on Catrina- like how she even got into the mess that set off this whole story to begin with. The lack of parent involvement was explained, but Catrina kept mentioning family, and that made me wonder if she had more family (a sister was briefly mentioned) and was too embarrassed to go to them, or if her parents were her only family. As for friends, she claimed she had them, but where were they? The author briefly touched on why Catrina felt the need for retail therapy so often, to the point of near bankruptcy, but apart from the few times it was mentioned, it was almost ignored.As for Jared, I'm lucky I remembered his name. I know very little about him, and while I get that in a sense he was Catrina's Dom, he was almost like a minor character, except that he wasn't.Yes, there were issues that bothered me, but overall, this was a book I couldn't put down, and that says it all.