✨Im Literary Anxious✨

Estimated Reading Time🕒: 3 minutes

𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿: Willow Winters✍🏻 𝗣𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁:740📖

Stars:⭐⭐.5
Spice:🌶️🌶️🌶️

Broody mafia MMC?✔️
Forced proximity (heavy on the forced)? ✔️
You’re mine (in an unhinged sort of way)? ✔️
Touch her and die? ✔️
Stockholm syndrome-like behavior? ✔️✔️

Deciding how to rate this one has been a challenge; I’m going to give it 2.5 stars because:
♦ The writing was decent
♦ It kept me entertained the whole way through
♦ By the end of the fourth book the MMC had mildly grown on me (something I did not think was going to happen)

That being said, I do believe I finally found a variation of a trope that does not rock my boat because there’s kidnapping, and then there’s KIDNAPPING .
(Disclaimer – all kidnapping is wrong, I know this, whatever FBI agent keeps an eye on my digital footprint can go back to their crossword puzzle.)

Carter Cross has been obsessed with his enemy’s daughter forever and a half, so naturally, he kidnaps her (technically has someone else kidnap her for him but, semantics).
He then proceeds to:

♦ Lock her in a cell
♦ Repeatedly mention how he’s going to enjoy “breaking her”
♦ Tell her his plan to kill her entire family
♦ Allow her to eat only what he hand-feeds her
♦ Makes her kneel for him
♦ Puts a collar on her (a pearl and diamond one granted, but again, semantics)

And then has the nerve to say things like:

“𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚖𝚎”
“𝚆𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚍𝚒𝚍 𝙸 𝚍𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜?”

Um, Sir?

Zade Meadows would NEVER.

He also seemed to have a particularly hard time understanding why Aria would continue to choose her LITERAL FAMILY over him and his… the nerve of the woman. 🙄

I honestly think my favorite parts of the story were the secondary characters, especially Jase, Daniel, and Addison; their stories I’m looking forward to reading.

Overall, I couldn’t connect with Carter until the very end, Aria bummed me out (not her fault, sis had issues) and the representation of the BDSM dynamic felt incredibly flawed and poorly represented.

If you have nothing else to read, feel free to give this a go but otherwise I wouldn’t recommend.