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A review by desiree_mcl
Hold Me by Dima Zales, Anna Zaires
4.0
3.5 stars.
Tropes: Captor/Captive, bad guy/good girl, older man/younger woman, and super jealous/possessive alpha.
TW/CW: Violence, torture of a main character, sexual assault of a secondary character, Stockholm syndrome, attempted sexual assault, non-consensual sex both fantasy and not fantasy. A lot of questionable consent, and a miscarriage.
Pretty sure I would have rated this higher if the aftermath of Julian's torture had been dealt with better/differently. Ok, so I mentioned in my review of Keep Me (Book 2) that with the ending of that book and the trauma specifically Julian had to deal with, that I was looking forward to see what would come of that and how it would affect them individually and as a couple. And I was disappointed that it didn't end up affecting them much at all.
At the end of Book 2, Julian had been tortured, heavily tortured. And one of the bigger injuries that could have affected his skills was his eye had been plucked out. He also had scars on his face and just a lot of torture injuries. So I was interested in seeing how Julian coped with not only his physical scars but how he felt about losing his eye, how he dealt with that with what he does for a living, etc. But as I mentioned there wasn't an issue at all. He got a prosthetic eye and he stated that he compensated and figured things out fairly quickly, there was only a couple sentences dealing with it. And the scars, Julian had worried, briefly, how Nora would react to him, if she'd still be attracted to him but after they had sex in his hospital room there was nothing else said about it (that I remember) or if there was it was a fleeting comment.
Despite that issue, I really enjoyed this last installment in the trilogy. I'm looking forward to listening to the next trilogy and then finishing up the Tormentor Mine series.
Tropes: Captor/Captive, bad guy/good girl, older man/younger woman, and super jealous/possessive alpha.
TW/CW: Violence, torture of a main character, sexual assault of a secondary character, Stockholm syndrome, attempted sexual assault, non-consensual sex both fantasy and not fantasy. A lot of questionable consent, and a miscarriage.
Pretty sure I would have rated this higher if the aftermath of Julian's torture had been dealt with better/differently. Ok, so I mentioned in my review of Keep Me (Book 2) that with the ending of that book and the trauma specifically Julian had to deal with, that I was looking forward to see what would come of that and how it would affect them individually and as a couple. And I was disappointed that it didn't end up affecting them much at all.
At the end of Book 2, Julian had been tortured, heavily tortured. And one of the bigger injuries that could have affected his skills was his eye had been plucked out. He also had scars on his face and just a lot of torture injuries. So I was interested in seeing how Julian coped with not only his physical scars but how he felt about losing his eye, how he dealt with that with what he does for a living, etc. But as I mentioned there wasn't an issue at all. He got a prosthetic eye and he stated that he compensated and figured things out fairly quickly, there was only a couple sentences dealing with it. And the scars, Julian had worried, briefly, how Nora would react to him, if she'd still be attracted to him but after they had sex in his hospital room there was nothing else said about it (that I remember) or if there was it was a fleeting comment.
Despite that issue, I really enjoyed this last installment in the trilogy. I'm looking forward to listening to the next trilogy and then finishing up the Tormentor Mine series.