I have been waiting for this release for quite some time, the entire salacious players club has been an amazing journey. I thoroughly enjoyed the last release, which was highest bidder, so I did have rather high expectations for this book.
Usually when high expectations are not met, I figure it’s a problem with me, the reader, however, I don’t know how Sarah Cate fucked this up.
After reading this release along with the previous release, which was antihero, she’s no longer an instant buy author for me. In fact, the quality has been so low, it makes me wonder if she’s using a ghost writer or AI for her books.
This should’ve been a simple story to execute. Eden is a character which has been developed since the very first book in the series, just like we experienced with Ronan in highest bidder. But oh no, this plot rivaled Ana Huang’s twisted series with unnecessary drama, blurred lines of consent, an over complicated plot, and lacking true chemistry. Somehow, all of the respect, consent, healthy sexual dynamics, sparkling chemistry, taboo topics, relationships that center on real person type characters, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-I-n-g that makes salacious players club a fantastic read was thrown out the window when this book was written.
At the beginning of this book, it seemed to have promise. It started by giving us more background on Eden St Clair, which we didn’t have previously, mostly regarding her home life and relationship history. Full disclosure, I didn’t really feel drawn to her character until highest bidder when we were able to explore the friendship between her and Ronan.
This is one of the main catalysts to me being curious as to who wrote this book:
-her past history in highest bidder. We saw her interact with a couple (Ronan and Daisy) performing essentially what Jade originally ask for as a service. What proceeds is a plot that is absolutely bonkers when taking in the scope of the SPC story arcs. In HB she was professional, set personal boundaries and stuck to them. She was honest and forthcoming.
-her relationship with Ronan. We know based off HB and other past experiences with Eden that she is mature, thoughtful, in control, and takes pride not only in kink but in performing safe, sane, and consensual experiences. This DOES NOT HAPPEN in this book.
- When Jade first shows up at her work, they have an interaction that Eden feels is cold. It’s not. It was truthful and a wakeup call for a näive, inexperienced, girl who will do ANYTHING to please her taboo age gap boyfriend.
-Very early on we are witness to Jade having a breakdown over if she’s enough for Clay after he is forthcoming with his history of Domme/Sub scenes. We then as readers are supposed to believe she just does a little internal work and says ‘well, I think it’s hot seeing you with someone else, so over night I’m a polyam, domme, who is also bisexual. We have history in Give Me More where we witness a character grappling with their sexuality in that they are bisexual and not heterosexual. The topic was handled with care, finesse, and humanized the character. Jade comes off as a one more character that becomes whatever she thinks other people need.
- After filling out their kink forms, it’s really about what Jade wants. We don’t explore what Clay put down as hard and soft limits at all. Also, there’s no discussion of Eden looking over their forms to decide if not only she’s a good fit for them, but also, with their complex history- if she’s comfortable with what Jade wants to do.
-Numerous times while in a scene there’s a distinct feeling that Eden and Clay are not comfortable. It’s at the very least a yellow situation if not red, but they push through to do what Jade wants. The youngest, least experienced person in this room.
-The amount of lies in this book that seems to be resolved in a single chapter is wild to me. Especially the fact Clay and Eden were in love with each other and kept that from Jade. Again, Jade comes off as a pushover who will accept anything to have this experience. Especially since her reaction is essentially ‘yeah I suspected that, cool.’ It was so much build up for nothing in the story.
-The fetishizing of sapphic love. Not once in the previous stories did I feel that sapphic experiences were invalidated by the author. This one however did. When Eden and Clay fooled around, they stopped immediately, felt guilty, and then confessed to Jade what happened. When Eden goes WAY farther with Jade, they take a spicy video and send it to Clay not viewing it as cheating even though the previous scene did. In Praise when Eden was wjth Charlotte, it was treated with care and respect. This felt sloppy. Especially considering Eden’s experience in the field.
-Let’s just talk about Jade for a minute and the ridiculous timeline of this book. You’re telling me that Clay and Eden were fully in love with each other essentially 6 months ago after being in a relationship for 9 months, and now Clay has been dating (in secret) a 23 year old who still lives with her dad, and he’s so in love that when Eden reappears, he holds both women in the same esteem. I call bullshit. If this had been any other situation in SPC, he would have called it off with Jade to explore a relationship with Eden.
-While we are talking about Jade and Eden… Eden being a switch makes sense. Rarely is someone 100% any role in BDSM. The idea that as an established dominatrix she immediately wanted to sub for an inexperienced 23 year old when we don’t really see a history of this feels underdeveloped.
-Complete disrespect for Eden’s role as a mother. Both Clay and Jade immediately expect full access to Eden’s son. This gave me the creeps. We’ve had children introduced before, but the way this is handled feels like Clay and Jade were looking for an instant family.
-Flashbacks to Eden with Clay butted up to scenes of Clay with Jade gives that sinking stomach feeling that he’s cheating. He’s not, he’s with his current girlfriend. But the structure and pacing doesn’t make the reader feel anything for Jade and sets her up as a floozy that likes to give her age gap boyfriend head down the hall from her “daddy”. Jade is so immature, her development gave me whiplash.
-The drama that goes on in this book feels almost teetering on a dark romance/angst genre, not generic romance genre like the rest of this series.
All in all, I don’t know if Sara Cate had a new editor, a ghost writer, or just typed characters into Chat GPT, but this felt supremely subpar compared to previous works. Whatever it is, I hope she finds her magic again. It’s frustrating that we’ve seen the triad relationship before in Give Me More, we’ve seen secret dating in Eyes on me, we’ve seen sexual awakening of an age gap character in Praise, and we know the characters, and this misses the mark so greatly. I’m still collecting the new discreet covers, but I’m just going to pretend this book doesn’t exist.
I’m giving this 1.5 ⭐️ rounded up to two. This may be my biggest dud of a read this year, and my count for the year so far is 180+.