Review: This Dark Romance ended up falling short for me...
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 10, 2014
I gave myself time to really simmer on this story. For one, I didn't have to really have a review posted until today for the review tour. Second, I had to think on it before my masochist got all excited over the whole capture fantasy scenario.I started out weeping for William. I loved him, I hated the prologue, I wanted to wrap him up and take him home, and love him forever.Then came Number Thirteen, and my whole reading world sort of tilted over into this pool of hate. Yes, I started to hate William. For one, I wasn't a fan of the physical abuse in order to 'fix' the girls and what was wrong with them. That is like those people that believe BDSM is therapy to people that have suffered sexual abuse. It is just um NO for me. I had to wade through Thirteen and her strong will getting her beaten and locked in the basement for a good portion of the book.Honestly, the story was inconsistent.Let me tell you why. For one, Thirteen and her 'group' were supposed to be the most 'broken' group of women. He was going to 'pick' a lover from this group. Now.... I get it but I don't. You are talking about a group of women that have sexual issues as it is. I wasn't under the belief that getting acid poured in your eyes made you a sexual deviant. I was under the impression he didn't want to be the 'bully'.Then, because he's not making enough progress with Number 13 he does stuff with Number 12. I nearly stopped reading there. I cried. Yes, over that, I cried. Because it flew in the face of so much of what I wanted out of this story.After this point, there was a few other mucky issues that made me sort of just want the book to end there. I honestly wanted 13 to heal enough to head out the door get a good job in Nordstrom's and leave it all behind.Then we have the profession of love, after he 'punishes' her again. Now, I can forgive him his moment of weakness because he does say she's sorry. He is in love with 13, I believe he is a victim of not only the bully but his parents and his upbringing. I felt for him once again and I was being built back up as a reader for this story.Then the cops raid the party.Now, this is where my opinion differs from a lot of people. And that is totally ok. Most people say the women's response at this point was stockholm syndrome. I say this was their only real option at this time. He wasn't building a harem, he wasn't going to get it on with all of them. He was just making them work hard by that point and conditioning them to go out into the world. I knew this when one of the women said, "I want to be able to get a real job and have a real relationship away from William." That right their said that each women wanted to be able to work their way away from him.As a whole I got the point of the book, I even liked the book for the most part, I just think the execution failed many readers and came very close to failing me. At the end of the day the story was unique and original and it olds its own in a world of very samey material.*I received a FREE copy of this book from Between the Sheets Tours in exchange for an honest review*