Cruel.

Love Tests

Rarely do I ever give a book a rating under 4 stars. I just don’t feel qualified to parse apart the reads that have merit whether they are to my taste or liking. I do not fancy myself a critic; simply a reader/reviewer. There are many reasons why this particular short read has earned a three-star rating from me the least of which is that this read is definitely not “my cuppa”.

After joining a new reader’s group on Goodreads, several books were recommended to me. I am always up for recommendations, so I thought I would give this short read a go between some of the longer reads I had planned for this week. Even though this was somewhat of a fail for me, nevertheless I will continue to be open to book recommendations and suggestions always.

The story involves a poor little rich girl, Elle Anderton, who is tired of being burned by scoundrel boyfriends who just want to be with her for her monetary assets. Her last boyfriend bilked her out of $100,000 and cheated on her with her best friend. The boyfriend she has been with for about a year, Darren Phillips knows her as Elle Anderson. He happens to discover her real name and that she has a one-billion-dollar trust fund. Furious…he leaves her for about two weeks and then returns to her still a little angry about her lying to him for over a year.

While he was away and certain that he would come back, her cousin Leah convinces her to engage in humiliation games as part of her sex life with Darren. These are tests designed to see if Darren wants her for who she is alone and not just the money. Leah claims that since she has been incorporating them in her sex life, she is certain of her lover’s fidelity; and, he secretly enjoys the spice in their sex lives.

I find the aforementioned premise very weak. People will endure a great deal of discomfort for a f-ton of money. Still and all…it’s fiction so I am “sorta” half-way on board at this point. The actual humiliation of Darren put into practice by Elle during their intimate scenes was in a word “silly”. Elle did not act like a true Dominatrix because most of the scenes were set up to make her feel good not so much sexually, but emotionally, with Darren’s feelings an afterthought. It was never made clear if Darren had any submissive tendencies.

When she switched from Dominatrix to Cuckolder…should she not have discussed this with Darren before it occurred? Also, if Darren was so disturbed at this scene why did he not simply say his supposed safe word?

So clearly what happened in this book is not for me and much of it made little sense to me. Another consideration for me would be…is it sexy beyond the kink? My answer to this question is that the writing was not sexy at all. The language overall was staid and wooden. The sex scenes were described in the most perfunctory of terms. I never felt heat between our two main characters or any sexual tension leading up to their sexual encounters.

Nothing moved for me…not my emotions, my mind, my heart or my body. Nothing. I’m not sure if I need to write off the whole woman humiliating man, cuckoldry, hot wife tropes because this book was not very good, and I did not read a very good example of these tropes. I suspect it is not my jam. The fact that it is not my jam had very little to do with how I evaluated the book. The writing was in and of itself lacking in color, heat, thematic content…and oh…where was my beloved romance?

“You’re so sweet to me, Darren. I hope I didn’t hurt you too much with those tomatoes.”