Review: "Do you Trust Me?" "I want to."
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 8, 2014
TrustBy: Terry Towers3/5 stars*I was given a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*This is a dark romance book, but for me personally it wasn’t as dark as it could have been. Yes, there are scenes that will make you cringe and definitely hate the perpetrators. If you are new to the dark romance genre or are unsure of it, I would suggest starting with this book. Whereas I prefer black dark, this was more of a grey dark.Gwen is the quintessential “All-American girl,” she’s an 18 year old senior in high school, a cheerleader on the state-qualifying team, blonde-haired virgin dating the captain of the lacrosse team, one-half of the school’s power couple and comes from a very good family. She has a very bright future in front of her, including college and love.Lance, is the son of The Boss of the criminal organization, though, he hasn’t been a part of it or known of it for most of his life. Lance has essentially only been involved in the criminal organization for the last 2-3 years. It becomes obvious, that Lance isn’t like all the other men in the organization…especially when it comes to dealing with the men who deal with the girls in the sex-trafficking ring. Lance’s hands are not pristine clean, he has had to do things to gain acceptance from within the organization.Gwen gets kidnapped one night and taken back to the compound, where she is evaluated and will be trained before being sold to the highest bidder. As an unmarked virgin, her selling price will be very high. When Lance sees Gwen being carried into the compound, he is attracted to her. He knows that things would be different if they both lived “on the outside.” He could take her on proper dates, get to know her and romance her. Then The Boss decides that it is high time that Lance participates in the sex-trafficking side of the business and assigns him as Gwen’s trainer. Gwen also finds herself attracted to Lance, thinking he is too hot to be involved.In all, I did enjoy this book. I liked the story line and I liked Lance and Gwen both as individuals, as a Master/slave and as a consensual couple. I believe that Ms. Towers shows promise in a genre (dark romance) that is new to her. I would have liked to have seen more interaction between Lance & Gwen, where the psychological aspects of Stockholm Syndrome come in to play, especially since psychology is what he studied in college. I felt that that aspect was just kind of glossed over. Even though Gwen was somewhat infatuated with Lance and felt sorry for the other girls, there was an absence of self-loathing which I think is a feeling that she would have felt, not matter how many times Lance told her that she only should worry about herself.The formatting (at least in the ARC copy) didn’t flow. Sentences and quotations were cut off midway and new paragraphs were started, several times all within the same paragraph. Made it somewhat annoying to read, but I got used to it about 60% through the book.