Review: Horrible! so sad I normally love BE's books
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 04 6, 2012
Barbara Elsborg is an amazing author in her genre, which is typically erotica. Her books are full of mystery and romance, her characters are smart and well written, not to mention funny, bright and heart-warmingly endearing. But this book fell flat in almost every way. The writing was good but the plot line was terrible! The other reviewers, for the most part, wrote good reviews, which convinced me to get the book but looks can be deceiving, don't be fooled! Only one reviewer talked about the amount of rape that was in this book and that was it! There was so much abuse in this story it got old after awhile, not to mention I think that it is nightmare worthy. By the 35th chapter enough was enough!Keep in mind there are 40 chapters in the book plus an epilogue so most of the book is immersed in this ongoing horribleness.My take: This book goes through many twist and turns that add to the plot and create what I guess would be a good thriller but the heroin never received a chance to truly succeed over the bad guy and defeat evil which to me is just a bad book.Basic plot: young woman is basically a shut in because of poor parenting, loveless home life growing up and raped when she was 16 years old. She has pretty much cut herself off from the world to try and stay safe (this makes the detectives jobs really hard when trying to develop a character base for finding her later on in the book). Crazy psychopath brakes into her apartment saying that he is going to marry her, beats her up and kidnaps her. She tries to escape several times but is unsuccessful. This crazy man kills an older gentleman who tries to help her and rapes her for the first time...it gets worse from here and we are only in the first third of the book. The story takes you through several states and a lot more rape that is very detailed. Crazy guy drugs our heroin and forces her to marry him in Los Vagas and then goes on to kidnap a 3 year old little boy. Turns out that crazy guy was the same man that raped her when she was 16. She got pregnant but lost the baby. Crazy guy tries to create a family in place of the family he lost when he was a boy (his mom was murdered along with is brother, but this comes out much later). So on and on the story goes until our hero finally comes into play. We learn bout our hero as well throughout the book  along side our "ode to rape" storyline and why he is so obsessed with crazy guy. He tracks crazy guy to Colorado and he meets h and little boy there. but it is like chapter 30 before any of this happens and by that time the little boy is brainwashed into thinking that crazy guy and h are his new mommy and daddy and every time h tries to correct the little boy she has the crap kidded out of her. By chapter 35 h and H have escaped and the little boy is finally back with his family but this poor woman is so traumatized by this whole thing that she refuses to speak with the police. Our H breaks through her shell and then magically h gets over being raped, tortured and kidnapped just like that and sleeps with our H. WHAT, that is the stupids thing I have ever heard. That is just not possible!!! So within the last five chapters the story line has come along enough that h and H have developed a relationship and can defeat the bad guy and our epilogue has them living happily ever after one year later. Now is it me or is it a complete and udder miracle that h doesn't need intensive therapy after all of this and she can have a normal marriage with our H. Of course the two main characters never say "I love you" to each other, not even once but I guess that is to be expected. =/So if you've stayed with me this long I applaud you...this was a long rant but come on this book was horrible. I have loved most all of Barbara Elsborg's books but this was so not like what she normally writes. Skip it go as far away from this book as possible. YUCK!