DNF @ 50% (skimmed to the end for Tracker)
Full disclosure: I'm not polite about my dislike with this book so don't read it if you enjoyed it. This is obviously my opinion and feelings.
Um, yikes. I wasn't expecting too much from this book but I was looking forward to it a little because of Scott/Spec being the hero. But um, yeah. Total disappointment. 😬
I don't know where to start explaining all the ways this was bad. It was incredibly juvenile with the dialogue and actions. The plot was sorta decent but you could tell it wasn't very thought out.
The heroine Olivia had potential but given the authors writing style she never achieved any of it. Twenty-five years old and daughter of a wealthy businessman, honestly I couldn't remember. She was spoiled but it wasn't any fault of her own. And ordinarily I'd be happy to see a woman expand her horizons and find the life she wants after being molded and hand fed the type of life her father wanted for her. But there were so many ways this didn't work for me.
Not to mention everyone, and I mean everyone, had no imagination when it came to a nickname for her. It was always "princess" whether it was an endearment but more specifically as an insult. Olivia hated it and so did I.
The focus of the writing and the authors choice for her characters thoughts and way of thinking was immature, unimaginative and boring. I could hardly believe these were the inner thoughts of a grown man such as Scott half the time. It felt very juvenile. Never more so than every other chapter having either one or both of the MCs thinking about the other and claiming they're "sexy as fuck" or "hot as fuck" or "sexy _insert here_" 🙄
Let me tell you, that got old real damn fast. I don't remember Curly's thoughts being that limited tbh. 🤷🏻♀️
What might have ruined the entire book for me besides the lusting inner thoughts of who's sexy and hot as fuck within the first three seconds of meeting...was the hero Scott.
I absolutely hated how the author wrote him. Scott was the perfect example of mishandling a character IMO.
I refused to excuse his behavior towards Olivia. Because from the moment she showed up at the club he was a massive...and I can't stess this enough, a massive asshole! He was outright rude and insulting and even lunged at her physically and screamed in her face! That was their first meeting too.
And then he throws tantrum after tantrum because Brooke convinced Olivia to stick around a little while because she could sense she needed a friend. And he might've lost it on Brooke if she wasn't Curly's woman and if she hadn't guilted him about it.
Honestly his actions and his need to lash out and be cruel to her was so childish and undeserving. It wasn't done in a way that felt as if it was because of his guilt over his best friend's (her brother) death. It was absolutely inexcusable and the fact the author had this behavior continue till 30% and beyond and not have Olivia put him in his place was ridiculous.
Olivia shouldn't have just accepted his behavior and the shit he said to her about her brother. She especially...and my god why do authors do this... should have especially not excused his behavior once she started noticing his PTSD triggers and issues. Because the second she did she went into the "must heal the cruel wounded man" mode and all hope was lost. All of it. Just gone. Everything he did was excusable then. All of his shitty behavior and all of his lashing out perfectly okay and acceptable. As long as he doesn't truly hate me then I can fix him!!
It was disgusting to watch that be so easily excused and brushed aside.
But ya know, even now thinking about this book I still find myself annoyed at how unimaginative the author was with the character Scott. From my guess he was late thirties and tbh you'd have never thought that. His actions and more specifically his words and thoughts were so immature. He acted like a child who needed to be taught how to control their emotions and how to treat other human beings. None of it was excusable, regardless of his past. It just wasn't.
And worse, which tbh idk how it could get worse, were his baseless assumptions about Olivia when she first showed up. That particularly was mind boggling for me. Imagine every snap judgement you can think of for someone who grew up in a well off family and never lacked for money and was considered spoiled. Now multiply that by a thousand and you got Scott spitting his insults and thinking the absolute worst about Olivia when he'd never met her. All baseless unimaginative assumptions that showed how little maturity Scott had and how limited his intelligence must be to think those things. Scott was a terrible hero. Period.
But of course despite the loathing he felt for her from his first glimpse it was all "my dick is hard" and "her tits this and her ass that" like come on! I don't even think Curly was that bad with his over sexualized thoughts about Brooke in his book.
And for the heroine to begin thinking the same type of crap with all the thoughts of how sexy he was etc I wanted to scream. It was so out of the blue. Literally nothing at all to attract one another. Because as much as others might want to claim it was this absolutely was not one of those enemies to lovers type of situations where the tension is just simmering between the MCs the entire time. No, the animosity coming from Scott from the jump was legit. Nothing was presented to setup a sexual attraction or connection between the two. Instead the author has the MCs begin word vomiting all the over sexualized thoughts about one another and I'm supposed to buy that there's some deep hidden attraction between them? Nah. Nope. It wasn't there.
Scott was a big man child with major issues, survivor's guilt, PTSD, trauma and anger issues...shit you name it. And Olivia didn't know what a healthy relationship would look like if it smacked her in the face. She literally ate up his dislike of her like catnip and let it fuel her erotic dreams. Like, how could she claim she was "attracted to the jerk" even when he continued to ignore her, treat her coldly and glare at her all the fucking time?
I mean, at 45% after Olivia was (predictably) attacked by one of the bad guys and nearly sexually assaulted (a hot button trigger for Scott btw) Scott (predictably) rescues her by beating the hell out of the guy. And a cop happens to show up and arrest him. So, Olivia loses her mind because he's being taken in when he only protected her and also because she knows being locked up will mess with his PTSD.
Now, for me this was problematic because Olivia doesn't know Scott. Like, at all. They've not spoke one on one except when he had one nice moment and told her stories about her brother. That's it. It'd supposedly been a couple weeks since she's been staying with them and yet still no actual progression on their relationship. Which, obviously was no surprise to me at this point. But, we see Olivia clucking around and pitching a fit over Scott being locked in a cell because "she knows" him so well. Apparently one little moment where she saw his reaction to being locked in a dark pantry told her everything she needed to know about his trauma and hang ups from being a prisoner of war. *cue headache inducing eye roll*
Having Olivia miraculously become "all-knowing" and "perceptive" of Scott and his obvious issues was straight up hilarious. Completely unbelievable. Utter crap. Because again, they hadn't even spent any time together or had a real conversation.
And of course... OF COURSE Olivia acts as if she knows about what running from trauma is like. If she had anything truly traumatic happen (which I doubt) the author didn't enlighten us.
And oh gee once again Scott goes on the defensive and lashes out at her. Wow, I was so surprised (totally wasn't) that he'd be so mean to her when she's already clearly half in love with him from just breathing in his pheromones! *swoon* isn't he just the best hero???
Seriously? That shithead sat in his cell and nearly popped another boner over how relaxed and naturally beautiful Olivia looked without her makeup on while arguing with the cop to let him out and then randomly begins fantasizing about how he could finger her while she's against the bars (because that was totally necessary) and then snaps out of it and gets angry she's "seeing so much" with his panic attack. And so of course he lashed out again and insults her over and over.
My god, enough. No, there's no way to excuse his shitty behavior. Even up to 45% in the book.
Scott was a piece of shit who deserved his guilt even if only for his shitty behavior to everyone and acting like a macho dick about his issues. And Olivia needed a smack to the face and a reality check. She was a pathetic woman who should have kept her distance from a clearly mentally ill man instead of acting like she could fix him. And the author should be ashamed for creating such a scenario where a man like Scott who clearly needed mental help for his trauma and guilt ends up in violent situations and pushing him at a woman who didn't know any better and was too young and didn't have enough life experience to understand she could do better.
So no, I didn't enjoy this at all. Which sucked because Curly was a pretty decent hero who I liked and Scott was actually interesting in book one. The opening of the book with the death of his friend Deke was probably the most interesting scene in the whole book tbh.
PS: To the surprise of no one Olivia never told anyone about why she was running from her fiancé. Or that she was hiding from anyone. Not once. 70% of book she says absolutely nothing. And true, the guys to Brooke never asked or pushed her for more information so that's on them. But little miss Olivia would sit and worry about putting these people in danger that she'd come to care about and yet...AND YET the dumbass still never spoke up and confessed. Even after the ex starts texting her new cell number proving he's closing in on her.
How incredibly stupid did that entire crazy ex plot have to be? Because having her never confess her real reason for running and yet still having the nerve to worry about the safety of everyone if her ex does find her...just wow. Extremely shortsighted and poorly thought out and executed terribly in the grand scheme of the entire book. Dumb dumb dumb.