Keaton Mara ran away from a life that had become a nightmare to live on the streets. While the location she now calls home is a dangerous place, she is protected by an unlikely friendship.
The streets provided her with the education she could’ve never earned from the prestigious university she attended. Regrettably, the term ‘educated fool’ becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Due to meeting a … meeting a man with whom she shares a captivating chemistry with, her judgement is clouded, resulting in a fateful decision.
The consequence of trusting the prepossessing stranger results in her being stolen away to a place unknown. Her deceptive new surroundings are just as beautiful as the people who reside there. She discovers that it’s a place where the culture of sex without limits or morals is their religion.
Keaton quickly begins to realize that the beautiful scenery serves to hide a very dark truth. The seductive and enigmatic man—who lured her there—desires to save her soul. His intentions are sinister, because saving her soul is synonymous with breaking her.
Because Keaton believes her soul was brutally stolen from her many years ago, she thinks he can’t save (or destroy) something she no longer has.
She…was…wrong.
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“It was twisted, tattered, and demented.”
The author warns from the outset of this book that this is”not a romance” and this is “not a love story.” She makes it clear that we should gather no “inspiration” for the topics contained within. This is a work of fiction containing dark and depraved themes. Should we believe her?
After all despite the fact that our heroine is never treated properly by her former psychopathic boyfriend nor her cold, judgmental and psychologically abusive fiancee, certainly there must be someone to love her madly, passionately just for herself? She is beautiful, wealthy, educated yet… she is damaged by the traumatic experiences her former boyfriend inflicted upon her, sodomy, stalking, attempted murder and murder of her fiance and his sister, (I might wish to add extremely bratty sister, but one should not speak ill of the dead.)
After their murders and the ex-boyfriend’s subsequent acquittal for the same, our heroine Keaton is terrified for her life so she runs and decides to live as a nameless and faceless homeless person. Her protector, Jeff, a homeless veteran and an intrinsically honorable man, has his own demons and as a result after not awakening fully from a violent dream, he stabs her quite severely.
She is then kidnapped by a weird and violent sex-oriented cult leader. Here she is tortured and extreme pain is inflicted upon her because she is not one to acquiesce to their demands. It is also here she meets the man, Noah who makes her feel the pain of brutal punishment and sexual desire. She know how to handle pain by disassociating from her body but she does not know how to handle this new craving…this new sensation that makes her loathe herself, the pleasure of passion.
The reader is trapped right along with our heroine, Keaton in this absurd world of a madman, Reven, who needed to be worshiped and sexually appeased by all. There are few clues to the purpose to all of the absurdity. Noah, an enforcer for Reven, creates a fierce longing in Keaton and he seems not too unaffected himself. He is jealous and takes from her what he feels is his right, even defying Reven, the leader. She is his alone. He dishes out grave punishments and caresses her body lovingly. He is both brutal and tender with her. Nothing adds up for Keaton nor does it for the reader. Is the author making good on her promise?
In a fast paced climax most of the answers and some surprising twists are revealed to the reader. Still, it does not all add up or even ring true at least for me. More than this, is the the lingering status of the relationship of Keaton and Noah. It is intimated that Noah loved Keaton…and his punishments were his way to help Keaton feel desire. More than this she now can only function with him in her life. She does not love him. Can this be really so? Will she ever? Noah burned down his whole world and made sure the creep who sodomized her was killed. Now, he cannot go without her, The thought of another man with her drives him to murder.
“Love is the pain of pleasure. Pain is the pleasure of love.”
Believe the author when she tells you this is not a romance, but something inside of me holds on to the hope that maybe, just maybe it is a “twisted, tattered and demented” love story.