A review by stateofgrace
Powerless by Elsie Silver

2.75

Definitely a flop compared to the first two books in the series. I honestly didn’t like Sloane or Jasper — neither of them had any kind of charm on their own, and even when they were together they didn’t have much chemistry. They were both fairly passive protagonists for most of the book which made the experience of reading their story pretty boring. The circumstances keeping them apart were just kind of dumb (and by circumstances, I mean the stupid things that Jasper said and did), so it wasn’t particularly satisfying when they finally got together. 

This book wasn’t really a hockey romance and it wasn’t really a cowboy romance. The fact that Jasper plays professional hockey and grew up on a ranch are both about as important to the plot as the color of his hair.

Speaking of the plot… what was the plot? I thought that Beau’s disappearance would be of a source of conflict in the story, but it was resolved in a very anticlimactic manner. The actual conflict came from Sloane’s father, a character who was so cartoonishly villainous that it was hard to take him seriously. This is a real quote spoken by Sloane’s father:

“Sloane, move aside like a good girl. This doesn’t concern you. We’ll have plenty to discuss once I have taken the trash out.”

I can believe that Sloane’s father is a classist and misogynistic asshole who cares more about making money than his daughter happiness. What I can’t believe is that it took Sloane TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS and hearing her father tell her to be a “good girl” to realize this. 

Other things I didn’t like about this book: Sloane dancing for Jasper after he told her about his traumatic childhood — extremely weird and painfully cringeworthy. The cowboy hat as a metaphor for his childhood trauma — laughably stupid.

The smut is top tier though, so I guess it was worth the read.