A review by sarahesterman
Quid Pro Quo by Nenia Campbell

4.0

Ah yes, your classic romance plot. Boy meets girl when her mom marries his dad. Boy blackmails her into having sex with him when he’s 19 and she’s 23. After she leaves for 9 years, boy tracks girl down and blackmails her again. 

I’ve read four other books by Nenia Campbell at this point, and despite having read Rent Girl (Dom is terrifying), Nick is still the MMC I struggled the most with. What he had going for him—and also against him, in some regard— is that his father was a Grade A Creep Asshole who I wanted to personally kill the second he leered at 14-year-old Jay in such a suggestive way. Fucking gross. In comparison, Nick definitely seemed like the safer person in the home. But 19-year-old Nick blackmailing Jay with a video he took of her pleasuring herself in her room so that she’d sleep with him? Felt way too much like his father for my taste. 

It was a relief when, at 28, he’d grown up and become a bit more of his own person, less hellishly entitled overall. Though he still seemed to think he was entitled to Jay, considering he pulled the same exact stunt he did when he was 19. 

Jay, though, I loved. On the surface, she could be seen as a bit of a pushover, but I think her character is more nuanced than that. Like yes, she didn’t negotiate the details when Nick blackmails her at 23, nor when he did it again when she’s 32, but why would she have when she didn’t know it was an option? The neglect she experienced as a child, along with her mother’s consistent critical remarks, made Jay shrink so much she didn’t know her own agency. 

The cover of the book shows a birdcage, which is hugely symbolic because Nick calls her “Blue Jay” and “Little Bird.” You could read that as Nick caging her, but my interpretation is the opposite. I think she’s caged already when we first meet her in 2017 because while she thinks she may be free, her life is relatively small, she keeps everyone at arm’s length and even pushes a lot of people away, and she doesn’t know how to live (as opposed to survive). While I don’t personally think Nick is responsible for setting her free, I think she starts to learn how to open the unlocked door of her own cage as the book progresses. 

Do I think she gets there fully in Quid Pro Quo? No. Did I need a much bigger come-to-Jesus moment for Nick, and a much bigger grovel to make up for his atrocious behavior? Absolutely. But I know Campbell is working on the sequel, Sine Non Qua, and I’m hoping these things are addressed (because I will certainly be reading it). 

(This is a mildly shortened version of my review. Read the full one: https://www.sarahesterman.com/posts/book-review-quid-pro-quo-by-nenia-campbell.)