everything but the last chapter was perfect :') yes, i saw that ending coming from a mile away, but i still had hope, ok? i'll just make my headcanon and pretend that this last chapter doesn't exist, because i don't wanna taint all the fabulous angst and boiling hot smut i got ♡
‼️ MAJOR SPOILER ALERT NOW ‼️ there's no way of discussing my pet peeves further without spoiling. you've been warned.
so... ok, i get it, y'all have a kink for completely creepy fathers, nothing wrong with that! truly, i'm quite literally the last person who could judge y'all! but i like my fictional incestuous fathers dealing with crippling guilt, being caring and, well, fatherly.
when you have paragraphs over paragraphs of the son thinking about how painfully he misses his father, and what gets him going on for the first time is remembering the hugs, security and care he used to get from his dad, it's hard not to get pissed off with the conclusion being that the father had been beating his meat to his son's suffering for months.
making your son (who worries about your depressive state 24/7 and became a sex worker majorly because he couldn't handle your pain anymore) carry all of the guilt over the lust alone, and secretly tempt him with money until he gives in while believing he became a pervert and abuser of his own father... well, there's nothing that could make me hate a character more.
idc if it turns the sex scenes "consensual"; non-con from the son, given the story's circumstances, was a ten times less awful outcome. besides, it also makes for a more interesting, tragic story from both sides, and way more compelling big reveal.
before that last chapter, this is a story about a depressed father slipping further away each day, poverty and longing driving a son to the extreme, and the tension of what will happen when that broken father discovers the lengths his son has gone for them. after that final chapter, the story is reshaped into a suffering, longing son being manipulated by his secretly horny father into becoming an abuser and hating himself. i prefer the first option much more — and that's where my four stars are at.