Lots of crude physical humor
The book isn’t funny. The author uses every sexual euphemism she can think of, constantly, to the detriment of the plot, character development, and world building. Her commitment to this theme is so complete that it gets in the way of what she is trying to illustrate about what the heroine thinks or feels, to the point that it reads like the heroine has a mental illness because she can’t think clearly.
The premise is just a background screen for normalizing emotional and physical abuse in romantic relationships as well as an unhealthy focus on seeking sexual discomfort, pretending things about sex are enjoyable that are not, and writing non-sexy, uncomfortable, unsought soft-core porn. This book feels like false advertising because it isn’t a comedy, despite numerous sexual euphemisms, innuendos, pretending hurtful words are flirting, and graphic and unrealistic descriptions of sexual attitudes and responses. Some of the things the author presents as arousing are pretty disgusting, so the sex scenes were not only undesired, they were also really off-putting. If she had more empathy then she could probably write better sex scenes. However, she eschews empathy and builds the sex scenes around frustration, which is the emotion most often confused with arousal. Frustration is not sexy, romantic, or fun to read about.
There is no romance, there is no relationship building, and only a handful of paragraphs actually advance the plot.
I don’t recommend this book to anyone, but the one about Violet in this series was really sweet.