So there with things I liked & things I did not. In the most part though, it was a nice story that was well written (aka non fluffy) which I appreciated.
SPOILERS – WARNING!
Backstory first:
Davis (aka Thomas) is 27 yrs old. He lives isolated on a mountain and rarely interacts with people – unless he has to for his work. He has one best friend & is very close to heroine’s parents who he considers as family and is rich.
Rae is 22 yrs old and an only child but has a BFF (Nora) that she considers as her sister. These two are very close and a hoot (BTW, I can’t wait for Nora’s story with Davis friend Colton! Those two together are something else!)….
From the time that Rae was 16 to 18, she had a major crush on Davis. She followed him everywhere and tried to befriend but he always ignored her. She tried leaving him letters & notes but he considered it stalking. So when she finally turned 18 she thought he would notice her because in her head she thought the reason he always ignored her was because of her age. Finally though she thinks she got her wish as someone close to her gave her a letter from him that requested they meet & talk.
So all excited she goes to meet him and gets her heart crushed when she walks in to find him having sex with OW! She leaves town and goes to NY to attend college.
Davis, while in the midst having sex, looks up and sees the kid that had been stalking him and freezes with guilt at the devastated look. Four years go by and in the present, Rae comes back home to help her parents as they are struggling with their business but to her shock she finds Davis is now a close member of her family!
At first, they don’t get along because Rae is still dealing with the hurt of not only seeing him with the OW but what she believes he did by being cruel to send her a note to meet him just to crush her heart (only he never did!). Davis doesn’t recognize Rae as his former stalker and he has had a slight crush on this girl for 4 years after hearing so much stories from her parents and couldn’t wait to meet her. But when he realizes that she hates him and is always being cruel to him by words & wanting nothing to do him, he feels rejected and hurt.
They eventually start a friendship/relationship and there is a lot of sex that turns to love for both them. However, as with all stories, there has to be some drama and that happens towards the end of the story when he finally learns who she really is. On top of that, he has to deal with a heartbreaking other thing with his family so he had it rough for a while but eventually they get their HEA and it was sweet.
Now for some things that I didn’t like:
- First of, I will say this until I’m blue in the face. WHY do we constantly have to have scenes with Heroes who f**k OP and especially having heroine see them do the deed? In this case, that scene was not needed at all. He could have easily just kissed the OW and have heroine see it and leave it there. Showing us how they can easily get turned on & f**k OP the way they did with each other is the fastest way to lose me as a reader! It means there is nothing special between the two that they couldn’t get from someone else! Also, it annoys me that heroine never remembers that scene when she herself is having sex with him – often in the same reenacted act! Come on! In RL, if you saw your man having sex with someone else, wouldn’t you at the very least want to punch him in his little dinky donk? I would - even if we had not been together then! The memory would have me gagging and not wanting him to touch me at all in case of cooties!!!! Oh well….
- The sex. They were constantly F*****g and sometimes it was kinky/hardcore which I for one don’t enjoy at all! It was as if the Author was trying to fill up pages so off she went with one sex scene after another and not much relationship development!
- The angst/drama at the end when he finally learns who she is was a letdown. Maybe it’s me, but the cruel words he used and the way he said that he never saw her as anything more than an aggravating kid annoyed me to bits! First of all, she was 18. Not a little girl and he was only 23 so not much of an age difference!
- Secondly, he could have been written as having feelings for her too but ignored them because of not feeling worthy or some other shite that everyone uses these days. The fact that he was not attracted to the old Rae at all (especially as she was described as wearing braces & having acne), tells me that he is a douche. In one instance, he states that she was the only person in his life then who loved & gave a f**k for him, so why wasn’t there any warm feelings & attraction to her?
- Thirdly, he states that he stopped the sex with the OW after seeing Rae’s devastated face and that he felt “guilty” for years because he was afraid she may have done something to harm herself. Well, that didn’t make sense because he still f****d around for 4 yrs with OP and he never tried to find out anything concrete about his “stalker” until she came back into the picture. But even then, he made a half ass attempt to do so. So it did not make me believe he regretted anything and at the end, it was wasted because it could have been a really sweet scene if he realized just how important she had always been in his life and how stupid & cruel he had been to not see her beauty & how special she was and the years they wasted! THAT is what I had hoped for in that scene – not the one where he called her pathetic and saw an ugly kid hounding him! I wanted him to suffer a thousand deaths but heroine let it go! Ugh!!!
- Lastly, I hate when writers leave plot points hanging without explanation or conclusion. For example, we never really got an answer why Carl was so ambivalent towards Davis. Why did he hate him so much to the point he kept lying over & over again? I thought initially he was some psycho or something, but no. Then there was the drama with his parents. What happened there? Also, what happened to the double date he was supposed to go on with his BFF? Did he go? He had agreed to go and then it was never mentioned again! Grrrr!
So all in all, it was not a bad read. I did enjoy a lot of it, I just wished that Author had taken the time to make it worthy. Sometimes I feel they cater to a select group of readers who get their books for free and ignore those of us who actually pay for it. How the hell does that even make sense!!!??? *sigh”
Safety:
Safe in the most part, discounting the scene at the start when he is with OW before anything happens with heroine, but No OW/OM Drama in the present. Heroine does goes on a double blind date with her BFF but she doesn’t even like the guy.
No virgins. Heroine was saving herself for the Hero until she sees him with OW. She said she lost her virginity in college during her freshman year so I was happy she was not frozen. She had two sexual partners but she describes the sex as just okay. Hero has been celibate for a year but had lots of hook ups before then.
No condoms used and that bothered me because in the scene with him & the OW, he wasn’t described as wearing one and that made me think he went commando every time he had sex! Yuck!