Oh, boy… we got a doozy in this book, friends.
The cliffhanger from last book is resolved, but a new one arises. Haliee’s friend features more throughout this book, giving us more to bite into other than men obsessed with our main character. The guys continue to be obsessed, mean guys still exist to cause drama, sex still happens. There’s more nuance than that, I guess, but I don’t want to give away spoilers. I guess if I’m going to be vague on plot, I might as well stop wasting everyone’s time and jump into my thoughts… isn’t that the entire reason I’m writing this?
We all know I’m not a fan of the editing/lack there of, so I’ll save us my comments this go ’round. Some other things I don’t love include:
- Creed rides a motorcycle to come save Ollie. To be fair, Lukas is like “uh, bro…” but still just watches it happen. Ollie has some huge piece of glass sticking out of his thigh and a lot of blood loss with the threat of the glass moving causing life ending blood loss to occur. Why are we balancing him on Creed’s motorcycle? Additionally, Creed is able to get Ollie onto the motorcycle, cradle him with one hand to ensure he doesn’t get bumped and die, and still drives to the hospital, no problem. On a scale of zero to even, I just can’t.
- We get introduced to the guys’ lawyer. Never knew they had one, don’t really mention details on why they’ve needed him. Also, he magically knows about Haliee without any discussion whatsoever. It’s a super weird side plotline that just has me scratching my head on the details we just have to skip over and I’m not really sure it adds all that much to the book.
- Throughout the book we have the guys telling their stories. These stories include assault, rape, verbal abuse, etc. It’s fairly graphic and horrifying. That’s fine, there was a trigger warning with the book at the beginning. What bothers me is before we find out all of the sex results in consequences, we have to read an additional trigger warning for that. Why? Why is that what gets separated out as a special warning? Being someone who can’t have children, I appreciate the warning; however, her being mysteriously hungry and vomiting was a big clue way before we get to this warning, so it wasn’t needed. It also feels like it further degrades the seriousness of the other topics somehow.
I feel like that was brutal. Deserved, but still brutal. To make me feel like less of a dick, let me move on to some things I did love:
- The guys refuse to dick Haliee when she’s sick. I felt like this fit solidly into the overprotective vibe of their relationship, so I appreciated that we stuck it out for a few chapters sans orgasms for the sake of plot and with a good reason.
- There are some unexpected plot twists. I’m on the fence on this part because I think I know where it’s going and that will be anger-inducing, but I still give props for trying something unexpected.
- We finally brought the friend back into the book for some non-dude related scenes. Again, I think she’ll end up being part of a yet to happen twist that will be ridiculous, but at least, for now, she helps move things forward with some levity.
I’ll be honest, at this point, I’m too far in not to finish the series, but I seriously don’t think I’d start it if you haven’t. Cross your fingers my spidey senses are wrong on coming plot twists. I’ll keep you posted.
Reading Minds 