Believe the blurb that this isn’t an antihero… ie bad man who does bad shit for understandable reasoning. No. This fucker is straight up serial killer with a soft spot for ONE human, and by soft spot… I mean she’s the only person he doesn’t want to kill. Think Woody in Natural Born Killers meets Alicia in Clueless.
What’s The What?
I have no f’ing clue WTF is happening, but when a man wakes up remembering NOTHING but you and says this….
“There are no ‘buts’ where you and I are concerned. It’s black or white. Yes or no. Always or never…and you said always. You can’t take that back. I refuse to let you.”
…. Well, does it matter that he may be a psychopath?
At that ^ moment, no. As this shit progresses, ah, yeah. It matters a hella lot. We will get to that in a minute.
Until the first on-page murder, this author is magic. At 40%, I still have no f’ing clue wtf is going on, and I’m wager verses frustrated. No clue. Read the blurb, and that’s still no more than I know. Yet, I’m satiated as I devour every word. The reader wants to know what makes this dude tick. What happened in the woods? How the hell did he wind up getting bashed in the head with an axe? What did her loved ones do to Lucy that was so bad for a psycho to want to protect her.
Lucy’s voice is pure innocence. She’s as clueless as I am as a reader. Not TSTL or weak… it’s more like a little bird transfixed by the cozy interior that it beats itself against the glass barrier keeping it out and pays no mind that said interior is teeming with lions. She’s the epitome of head in the sand. Her character NEVER grows, though. She’s the same at start to finish other than sexually, and even that doesn’t change other than going from virgin to screwed. Flat character doesn’t even begin to label it.
Boston… sweet baby biscuits in butter. He’s pure seduction…. AT FIRST.
So where does this book go wrong? STOP READING IF YOU DONT WANT SPOILERS
The first turn to shitsville is that the MMC kills the FMC’s mom for no fucking reason. She wasn’t a bad mom. Hell, she wasn’t even really interfering in their relationship. He just didn’t want to share the FMC.
Second is the killing of some random woman that the MMC forced someone else to do. The plot leads you to assume he kills “men” who hurt women. It’s his MO. So, it’s completely off for him to force the brutal murder of some innocent woman. That’s not dark… it’s like trying to romanticize Bundy simply because he proclaimed he loved and wouldn’t hurt his girlfriend.
I won’t even get into the MMC killing her brother because it was too convoluted to GAF.
^^ The first two acts take the MMC from pitch black to ash. He’s burned for anyone who doesn’t fantasize about sending love letters to Bundy. The MMC goes on and on about his love for her, but let’s just be clear that this isn’t love … this is pure obsession and narcissistic need to fulfill his own desire.
Lastly is that a teenage MMC thinks it’s okay to touch, smell, and look at a CHILD’s private parts while she’s asleep. SHE IS SIX YEARS YOUNGER. So at his 17… she’s 11. The FMC finds out some of that, and she sweeps it under the rug. Bam. It disappears from the storyline like it doesn’t matter.
Darkness Is Not The Only Problem….
He gets chopped in the head with an axe… learns to walk again within a week and was running sprints and shit by the next week? Ah, okay.
A vasectomy “years ago” and this dude hasn’t even finished college and was a virgin until now.
How does he get money… so mommy and daddy are what… giving him an allowance in his mid-twenties?
Why are he and his father estranged? Why hasn’t he killed his own parents?
Why did he kill all the men? Will he continue this serial killer bit now that he has his HEA?
Does his mom know he’s a fucking serial killer? Does the creepy therapist know and wtf was all the training?
Her father has another family… and the point was? I dont know?
There’s this big buildup of mystery surrounding the murdered girl at the cabin. Did it happen? Who did it? Why? The explanation never made sense. The FMC’s brother was “mean” to her and “hurt” her… or so we are told. Yet, beyond some bitching about babysitting her and pushing her down as a child…. We get NOTHING. No revelation of abuse. The FMC doesn’t hate him. The brother does his damn best to save her multiple times and never by force or coercion. If the brother was supposed to be painted as a villain for anything other than being forced to rape and kill some random chick, the author failed.
Almost every single facet ends up failing like that. It’s like dangling carrots in front of the reader and yanking them away to pretend they never existed. MASSIVE chunks of this story are MIA. The author hints to shit and then never follows it through or gives it purpose and meaning. That’s not mystery. That’s a fucking outline of a story without filling in the gaps.
Bam. Just like that we cut to a HEA out of nowhere. It’s like the author just got tired of writing and said fuck it. The FMC never learns of anything he’s done and thinks she’s won the boyfriend lottery. Clueless.
Overall…
This book had something addictive that held you in place. Something that made you turn the pages to finish it. Maybe, it was hope that all the puzzle pieces would fit together for some justification. Sadly, it was nothing but a Catfish. Painted bits and pieces that led nowhere. What little did get exposed was simply too ugly and vile for anything to justify, redeem, or even quantify it. The HEA was more smoke and mirrors, leaving you to wonder if he will kill her, abuse her, or just smoother her until she wishes she was dead - draw your own conclusion.
I won’t rate the darkness of this book because the author warning was suffice for me to go in with open eyes that this wasn’t just an antihero dark. What I will rate is that this story had too many rabbit holes leading nowhere. The writing itself … texture and fluidity of it was superb -four stars. The overall low rating is because it was all for nothing. A story that told me little more than I began knowing - one star.
Queen Val… I hope you read this. Love or hate… I need to see you review this mofo lol.