2.5 stars
"This place fucks with our heads and our emotions. There is no taboo in prison”
What the quote and the book name are trying to show is.... it's an MM father-son incest prison romance.
It wasn't bad per se, rather it was SWEET😬 ...and that wasn't what I was expecting from prison and incest tropes.
I have read some of S.L Davies' books before and she can write some reallllly fucked up shit, which I love, so I was hoping Forbidden Bound could give me that too but it didn't.
The story was good admittedly. Gage (who's 18 yrs old) kills his stepfather who was an abusive asshole and used to beat Gage's mum bloody. He gets sent to prison for murder where he meets and gets bunked up with his biological father, Holden. But they are both surprised to find out that they feel something for each other and it's not at all a familial bond and then, the romance starts.
What I didn't love were the character depictions. Individually, Gage and Holden were strong, deep and properly fleshed out characters. However, when it came to the two of them together, it felt superficial.
As if Gage, who was a virgin, was just horny and needed somebody to get him off....so what if it was his father?! Gage had, what I like to call....a foot stomping attitude. He pouted and metaphorically stomped his foot to get what he wanted like a 7 yr old rather than thinking about the consequences of his actions.
On the other hand, Holden was in jail for 18 years and he admitted that no one had touched him during that time. I felt as if Holden's thoughts went kind of like this...... "I need less bluer balls so why not fuck my feminine looking son, ...brings a whole new meaning to kinky and wild". 🤷
It was too insta and too sweet. For me.
But if you see yourself reading a prison incest trope, I think you should give it a try.
People don’t look kindly to this sort of relationship. We know that we aren’t doing anything wrong because we are all consenting adults. Society doesn’t see it the same.