To paraphrase Maya Angelou - "When some shows you who they are, believe them." Unfortunately Alabama never had the opportunity to hear Ms. Angelou's words and feel that truth. Cause surely if she had she would have dumped this slime swiller bully to the curb like the road side trash he was.
Not that any of his manipulative, bullying friends were any better. Really I haven't seen such shameless pimping out of the h to the entirely inadequate H since the last Vintage HP I read.
There is also a saying that " I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a man by the way he handles these three things: a rainy holiday, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights."
We can add when the woman you supposedly love is accused of theft to that list as well. Clearly, our erstwhile idiot sewer slurper male lead blew that test of integrity and human decency to the black hole at the center of our galaxy and lost any value he had as a decent partner in the merciless crushing gravity there.
This book's ending has all the hallmarks of what will probably prove to be a most unequal and unsatisfying relationship ever seen in the vast legion of Navy Seal books out there. In fact, given this man's poor reaction to stress and dicey situations, are we sure he should even BE a Navy Seal. The odds are not looking good on that.
Overall tho, the biggest disappointment was how this particular male lead did a passive aggressive grovel at the end and essentially relied on his equally bullying, manipulative, biased buddies to get him back with the h.
Add to that a pathetic little story about how he should be forgiven cause his daddy lied to him and the plot manipulation that his little life trauma compared in any way shape or form to the abuse the h suffered for years is enough to make me vomit. Considering he knew all of the h's history and deliberately triggered this poor girl's deepest phobia anyways.
Then instead of acting suitably repentant and worm-like when he received her payback for his time and 'effort', he gets all irked and angry that she felt his rantings on how much he spent on her to be demeaning and sent him monetary redress to at least resolve that shameful behavior display he emoted at the top of his lungs.
(Tho a small smack with the skillet to the h here as well, she should have at least saved enough for her bus ticket out of town from her repayment of the H's skills in bed and money spent on her, she could have mailed him a money order for the remainder later. )
There should be no redemption or reward from such callous and cruel acts that this male lead perpetrated. Especially since his previous shag piece woman who caused all this drama lost her entire life and identity and he was the one who like her skills in bed so much he kept going on with her, even at the cost of his better judgment.
While it was nice to see a wrong doer punished, the H's manipulations for his ex's punishment were beyond extreme and in reality, the H's actions were worse, yet he manages to bully and manipulate until he gets what he wants and suffers no consequences for his arguably greater wrong.
I don't care so much that the h forgave him, she was that kind of girl, but I bitterly and fiercely resent that this h is now stuck with a sewer blob fish pustule for the remainder of this series and that even people who claimed to care about her were happy to keep her metaphorically in a dark closet and continue feeding her fertilizer.
I was NOT feeling the love on this one and that is probably a just punishment for not listening to my friends and rubbernecking this one anyway.