Reviews

This was an interesting premise that was letdown by poor execution. The characters are so lacking in depth that they feel like cardboard cutouts, the plot involves mostly sitting around which is super boring, and occasionally the book will stop and drop mini PSAs about trafficking that totally break the immersion since they don’t happen organically. The audiobook narrator’s not doing the book any favors by speaking so slowly, my audiobook slump continues 🙃

friends2lovers's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

1.5

Now, forty minutes later, they walked into a packed dungeon with a new strategy, and Gray didn’t even have to pretend to be lost. Thankfully, he was more reenergized with determination than ever, but fuck if he wasn’t confused as shit.

You and me, both, Gray! This was a confusing read that, despite its dark themes, failed to be emotionally affecting in any way. The suspense/thriller plot is so poorly executed, I couldn't make sense of the sequence of events or the characters' actions. There's way too much telling instead of showing. The writing is non-descriptive and lacking in details which made the story difficult to follow or become immersed in. I kept getting distracted by the questions popping into my head...Does human trafficking really work like that? Aren't there supposed to be cameras in the room? Why aren't they acting like they're being watched? Where did that person come from? What is going on?

In the first quarter of the book, Gray is abducted by human traffickers and held captive, along with several other young men. He supposedly endures "roughly three months of torture and degradation" but the reader has to take the author's word for it, because none of it is shown on-page. It's all implied through references, not even flashbacks, that appear randomly in passing later on in the story. For example, in one scene there's mention of "an angry welt on Gray’s back" that has not been mentioned previously at all, and the reader is never told how it came to be there. I don't think lengthy, graphic scenes of rape and violence would have been necessary to convey Gray's trauma. But the reader shouldn't be so completely in the dark that they aren't even made aware of something as basic as what injuries Gray has.

The romance aspect was fine, I guess. I knew going into it that this was a long series with a slow developing romantic relationship, so the lack of romance was not surprising. I enjoyed some of their scenes together, but I wish we could have seen some of Darius's POV. Especially during or after the sex scene since he's presumably undergoing a bi-awakening. I am planning to continue the series for a few reasons: the next book, Stranded, features survival and being stranded on a deserted island and I can't resist those tropes; I'm curious about how the romance will continue to develop; we get Darius's POV in book 2; and Cara Dee has announced the Auctioned series will be removed from KU at the end of June, so I want to read it before then if I can.

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