Warning: This review contains discussion of explicit adult content.
TW// mentions of drugging, human sex trafficking, kidnapping, incest, violence, mentions of death (uncle, father), sexual assault, fatphobia
This book literally takes sex trafficking and tries to make it look sexy. It’s disgusting. I had thought that maybe Finn would rescue Lily before getting sexual with her, but he decides to get extremely sexual with her before he even reveals his plan to save her. Then she falls hopelessly in love with him (again before she even knows he’s going to save her). It’s horrific and I’m surprised that anyone would find this a topic worth writing about. Truthfully I downloaded this book on BookFunnel a while ago and that’s the only reason I read this. If I had known what this book would be about before I picked it up, I would’ve never touched the book with a six foot pole.
The way that viriginity is dealt with in this novel is terrible for two reasons. First of all, Finn is aggresively interested in knowing about Lily’s sexual history. Then he wants to verify that she’s a virgin, so he reaches in to see if she’s in tact. It’s super uncomfortable to read about and this whole plotline where Finn is eager to be with a sexually innocent and naive partner is gross. He wants to be this dominant guy over her to the point of wanting to violate her body just to check that she’s a virgin. It’s giving toxic masculinity and red flags. Also, there’s a line where he justifies checking that she’s in tact by saying “I had to be sure they hadn’t harmed her; had to see with my own eyes there wasn’t any lasting damage.” Repeat it with me: You are not damaged if you are not a virgin no matter how or when you lost your virginity. My other issue with the virginity plotline is that Lily isn’t technically a virgin. She’s done oral before, so she’s lost her virginity. If oral doesn’t count, then technically a lot of queer people will remain virgins for the rest of their lives. I always find it odd that some straight people deem that only one way is truly sex when that’s not exactly the case.
There’s an unsettling dynamic in this book that I hate that involves one partner being older and the other being younger. This is reinforced throughout the story by Lily being compared to Finn’s younger sister and Lily only calling Finn ‘sir.’ The dynamic of one person playing as old and the other playing as a super young person is not for me.
I’ve seen other people point this out in their reviews, but Finn has this annoying trait of making rules then not following his own rules. He says that they need to be honest with each other in their relationship, so he gets angry at Lily for lying over silly things. Meanwhile he’s hiding his true identity from Lily, which is an extremely huge deal since they knew each other before he started getting sexual with her. He tries to claim that he isn’t lying, but lies of omission are still lies. Speaking of standards he puts on Lily but doesn’t keep for himself: he forces Lily to taste herself then refuses later to taste himself because he thinks it’s gross. What in the double standards is this man. Red flag after red flag after red flag for Finn.
There are a ton of bath and showers taken in this book. It’s excessive. This book is only 188 pages long and it takes place over one night yet they do not stop freaking bathing. They take a shower then they take a bath then they take a shower and on and on it goes. How did they not have raisin fingers by the end of the night??
This book has a couple fatphobic moments that rub me the wrong way. It’s not cool to bash on people’s weight. There’s also this odd thing that borders on homophobia that isn’t quite homophobia that this author chose to include. Lily thinks Finn may be gay then she makes a big deal later out of realizing that he isn’t gay. Straight romance authors need to stop with anything along these lines because it borders on homophobic.
Harry Potter is mentioned in Uncovering Lily and I literally burst out laughing because it’s not just a cute reference… Lily tries to insist she’s not sexually naive or clueless because she’s read Harry Potter fanfiction. I have no words.
One last note: the acknowledgements calls the male lead ‘Xavier’ instead of Finn, but I have no freaking clue who Xavier is. I went to check the summaries of the sequels to see if I missed something, but those summaries refer to him as Finn… Did I skip over a chapter of the book or something? Who the heck is Xavier?
This book was two hours of my life that I’ll never get back and I wouldn’t wish this read upon my worst enemy.