Selene's Reviews > Grievous

This story started off wonderfully strong, ambitious, and promising!! But it seems that this series has taken on a new direction and I approached this book in the wrong way. I expected some action, deliberations with the Tarasovs, romance, and I expected to see a gory Lucian Fane avenge his loved one's death! But this book wasn't even about all of that, so while I was disappointed and highly tempted to send this book to the DNF pile, I trudged along with this story because Lucian Fane's character has been a curiosity factor of mine for some time and I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. But when the story remained stagnant at the forty percent mark, I resigned myself to go with the flow and try to understand the author's voice, as well as the character's anguish. But really and truly? I got played...



In the prior book, Fane promised to show no mercy when he retrieved the murderer responsible for sending his life into a tailspin, but there was little showing and more telling of his actions. (view spoiler)[In this book, Fane spends his days and nights demoralizing a woman that he had drugged, kidnapped, and transported to another country. (hide spoiler)] Returning to his mother country, his intention is to drown his sorrows in the body of Yasmeen Michaels, a woman he'd become fixated on for two years. With her "consent," Fane submerges himself in sex to control the grief so capable of consuming him and driving him to absolute rage. (view spoiler)[Yes, there is some bondage included. (hide spoiler)] That storyline wasn't even what bothered me about this book, though. What bothered me to no end was the language used! I kept thinking: who talks like this, and how am I going to get through this long-@ss book if this is the way it's written?



I had difficulty enjoying this story because the dialogue was too distracting and pet names tend to irk me (unless used sparingly), made even worse in this book because Fane refers to Yasmeen as his "pet." Frequently. In his thoughts and aloud. That term (the singular form) is used 133 times in this book...



While Lucian Fane's dialogue aired on the formal side in the prior books, I didn't love it in this story. And although I had high hopes for Yasmeen's character, she seemed more appealing in the former book, but not in this one. She projected strength and substance at the start of this story, but once Fane began blowing her back out on a regular, her brain seemed to dissolve, never to regain common sense again. To some degree, she wanted to become his prisoner (under the reasoning that she was helping him grieve) and turned into a weak, easily manipulated, fragile woman who made excuses for his every breath. Essentially, she melted into a puddle of uselessness once the two became isolated.

What is this story about? Sex, harsh words exchanged, hidden feelings, emotional games, repeat. I thought this excerpt from the book summed up this story in a nutshell:

He saw her as an object to fuck. To tease. To control. To lead around and call pet. He saw himself above her. He considered himself her owner. He saw her as nothing but a release.
And, her, being the desperate, lonely girl who craved contact and just wanted to be wanted, had fallen irrevocably and utterly in love with every side of him he’d allowed her to see. The powerful billionaire. The unfeeling bastard. The madman. The erotic commander. The gentleman.

The last thirteen percent of this book is where I treasured the storyline! Fane begins to accept an emotional transition triggered by hearing his dead loved one speak into his thoughts, but then the story doesn't continue because there's a book two soon to be released next year...

I sincerely hope that other readers will enjoy reading this story! Although it wasn't my favorite in this series, I'm hoping the next book will SLAY me! Tis all.