This book reminded me of a darker and adult version of The Selection series.
The h along with 6 other girls arrive at the H’s mansion to be selected to be his bride. But its all a ruse, the H’s father has already selected the richest girl out of the lot and so the H has no say.
The H initially disliked the h and the h, who was starry eyed, began to realise how cruel the H was and so she disliked him at the beginning.
However, they were sexually attracted and soon met in secret and also had sex which was against the rules.
The h is pretty stupid to be honest, she blurts out things that are not supposed to be said and gets herself and the H in big trouble.
She doesn’t understand a lot of things which makes her look more stupid than naive.
The H is intelligent and knows exactly what he is dealing with in their world especially in regards to his evil father (Andrew).
I really liked the H (Lucas). His personality and his behaviour made sense. He obviously loved the h (Ella) to death. But Ella was so stupid that at some point I really thought she wanted to get herself killed, I started getting a headache from rolling my eyes every time she got in trouble.
We don’t really get a lot of info and I am not sure what kind of committee or cult they are in. Seems like a futuristic government organisation. How the girls were selected and how come the h was raised from birth to be the H’s bride and how come she didn’t go to school while some of the other girls like Hannah (h’s friend) went to school—- are all questions that were not answered.
We don’t get a lot of info regarding this world. We don’t get many answers either even in the second book.
It was an interesting read but I wish it had more depth and more information regarding their whole process and committee and what not.
Trigger for me: One thing I really didn’t understand was how did Henry, the H’s older brother become an evil person ? He was also described to be mentally unstable but also had great love for his lovers, it was a bit weird. At the end, I felt sorry for Henry because maybe he was just always misunderstood. It didn’t sit well with me that Henry was to be punished for being gay. Henry was a very strange character, he was described to be a very mean guy, who got off by hurting people. So he had all the “ill qualities” — he hunched, he had a cruel face, he was “addle brained”, he understood yet he was “mentally unstable”, and then he was gay (this is not an ill quality but the book made it sound that way). The author made it sound like a bad thing and that made me feel really uncomfortable. Anyways, its fiction and he is one of the evil characters, however maybe he should have just been described as a guy and then evil. It left a bad taste with how prejudiced all his characteristics were. Mental health and things dealing with minority and race are triggers for me, but if we remove such triggers, I would have rated it higher.
Throughout the book, so many of the characters were surprised or shocked to realise that Henry was gay, it made it really hard for me to read and remember it as fiction, already the LGBTQ comminity is facing so much discrimination and hate that we don’t need that in fictional novels.
Safety: H is h’s only lover, no cheating.
3 solid ⭐️ for the suspense and the H, he was marvelous. This means it was an okay read but not something I would go back to again and again.