Review: "Hero" is an abusive jerk
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 10 14, 2013
I'm so glad I borrowed this from a friend and didn't spend my own money on it. It would have been one of the few books I have ever returned if I'd bought it myself. Oh, and I would have been really annoyed had I paid $3 for this. I think it was 550 or so locations in my Kindle Fire. It's way overpriced.There is so much wrong with this short story that I'm not sure where to start. The writing is rough and needs a thorough editing, especially for punctuation, continuity, and flow. It's almost completely "tell" instead of "show" too, making it difficult to connect with the characters--not that you'd want to, the way they're written.It's a crude piece, which I can handle, but it seems like the author substituted foul language and "nasty", rough sex in place of actual character development, using it to portray the "hero" as the ultimate alpha. He just comes across as the ultimate jerk. He's abusive and practically rapes Nicola for flirting with another man. The age difference bothered me a lot too. It's normally not something that I'm concerned with, but Nicola was such a cardboard character cutout of the typical brat that she came across as immature and way younger than 18. He's supposed to be a "real man" at 35, so what the heck does he see in a little girl? He takes advantage of her burgeoning sexuality and isn't very kind about it. Yeah, she teases him, but the author just makes her seem like a kid exploring her own limits. If the "hero" had been a good guy, he might have still slept with her, but could have been gentler about it, and wouldn't have been doing it to teach her a lesson.I just didn't find anything I liked about this book, and I deleted another book from the same author from my Kindle without reading (thankfully, also a loaner from my friend). I rarely write reviews, good or bad, but this one was just so different from what I expected that I wanted others to be aware. It sounds like it will be a nice romance, with perhaps a slightly rough edge, but it's not at all romantic--unless you find spanking the heroine w/o her permission, forcing her to have all three types of sex, and being deliberately cruel until she apologizes for something that she only did because of hurt feelings (not that she actually had much reason to be hurt that he'd slept w/ another woman before meeting her) romantic. I don't. This is definitely smut w/o any romantic elements at all. If that's what you want, then you'll probably like it, if you don't mind the amateur writing. But if you want an actual story and characters you might care about, you should keep looking for another book/author.