Well, I'm highlighting the bad stuff here. (Though I skipped a lot of bad stuff too.) Other people might find the sex scenes hot, for instance, and there is one funny part where Damian gets Cynthia off then she falls asleep, making his blue balls turn even bluer. If that kind of thing had happened more often, it might have redeemed the book.
Considering the SBTB review, it obviously came off differently to different people, including people who are usually not at all okay with asshat "heroes". I think maybe Damian's cold kind of asshattery is not one that bothers a lot of other people as much as it does me. Plus I hated Damian from the opening scene, where he gets drunk and gambles away an estate, and then he keeps blaming Julian for it. Someone blaming other people for not protecting them from their own stupidity crosses a line for me. There was a lot of "if not for my own life, I might not hate this" in this book -- I feel like Damian was designed for me to hate him.
This book's by a big name and relatively well-written. (The "roiling bollocks" line was the only one I remember blinking at stylistically.) Plus, Julian really is incredibly hot. I feel like the writer tested herself to make the hero as assy as possible while still redeeming him, and ended up going too far in his assyness for the light tone she was trying to set. Basically I think her reach exceeded her grasp. I can't see any excuse for the slut-shaming, but sadly it's common in romance novels.
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winterfish
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Date: 2015-02-28 10:32 pm (UTC)Considering the SBTB review, it obviously came off differently to different people, including people who are usually not at all okay with asshat "heroes". I think maybe Damian's cold kind of asshattery is not one that bothers a lot of other people as much as it does me. Plus I hated Damian from the opening scene, where he gets drunk and gambles away an estate, and then he keeps blaming Julian for it. Someone blaming other people for not protecting them from their own stupidity crosses a line for me. There was a lot of "if not for my own life, I might not hate this" in this book -- I feel like Damian was designed for me to hate him.
This book's by a big name and relatively well-written. (The "roiling bollocks" line was the only one I remember blinking at stylistically.) Plus, Julian really is incredibly hot. I feel like the writer tested herself to make the hero as assy as possible while still redeeming him, and ended up going too far in his assyness for the light tone she was trying to set. Basically I think her reach exceeded her grasp. I can't see any excuse for the slut-shaming, but sadly it's common in romance novels.