The Dark Romance Series Part 1
This book had so many great reviews on GoodReads and Amazon that I could not wait to get reading.
What a disappointment. I could easily have given up before ten percent but I kept going because, with all those five stars, surely it must get better. Unfortunately, it did not.
Blaire has been manipulated and conditioned, since childhood, to serve her master, Maksim, without question. She’s skilled fighter, bodyguard, and computer hacker. Her master loans her to the head of a Mexican cartel to pay off a debt, and she has no choice but to obey.
Charlie Decena wanted Blaire from the first moment and jumps at the chance to have her. His reputation as head of the most feared cartel in Mexico means he always gets what he wants.
Oh dear, where to begin.
Firstly, this should not be labelled as a dark romance. With the exception of their first night together, the romance element is an old-fashioned, sweet, wooing, slow burner between Blaire and Charlie. The darkness comes from her history and her relationship with her master. Nothing I would consider dark happened between Blaire and Charlie.
As soon as I started, I was taken aback by the authors jarring style. The pace is fast but the style is very vague. I kept having to re-read sections. I thought I had missed something because the action was jumpy. There’s also some strange word choices on the part of the author, as though they used a thesaurus but chose a word that doesn’t quite mean what they want to say. For example, “I try to walk past him so I can get out of his ozone.” Ozone, really?
The characters are also contradictory. Blaire is disgusted by her own behaviour, such as killing desperate people for stealing from her master. Yet she doesn’t bat an eyelid when Charlie tells her he butchered his parents. While Charlie, a supposedly feared and deadly gang lord, is so nice and pleasant for the majority of the story. The author tries to suggest he’s a man of conscience, with his stance against child sex trafficking, and how he looks after his men and their families by paying for their kid’s education. Who would have thought it? A Mexican cartel leader who wants to right the world’s wrongs, yet admits to committing terrorist attacks on behalf of foreign governments so they can blame minority groups. Yeah, real conscientious. These are just two examples of many contradictions.
I will admit that the one sex scene I read was hot and steamy, even if it wasn’t dark. I also thought the fight scenes were written with conviction.
So, if you are able to overlook the things mentioned above and like an angst and guilt ridden love story then you may enjoy this book. Unfortunately for me, these things made it impossible to immerse myself in the story, and despite my best efforts I could not continue.
Plot: ⭐️
Feels: ⭐️
Heat: ⭐️⭐️
Overall: ⭐️
