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Okay I was just going to let this one pass as I did not finish it but the more and more I think about it the dumber it is and I just have to get this out of my system. The entire PREMISE of this book is just so dumb I can't even handle it and I just have to share my thoughts about it. Thoughts that I'm certain will get me put on a watch list somewhere. Are you ready? Let's go.
So the book starts off with one of the main characters reciting all the rights he will have once he sells himself to some rich person to pay off his debts. OKAY! This is the first stupid thing that happens in this book. Rich people do not care about your rights! If you were going to sell yourself to them to pay off your millions in debts (and we'll get to that in a moment) they certainly wouldn't guarantee you more rights than you had as a citizen. Free healthcare? Right to housing and food? Right to decline the stupid drug which is the whole reason for this setup in the first place? I don't think so. And listen--these are all great rights to have on their own, and honestly I agree they should be human rights for everyone. But we don't have these as American citizens, mostly thanks to our own rich assholes who are running the country, so you're telling me that in this fictional society that doesn't even pretend that the rich guys aren't calling all the shots that these rights would be guaranteed? And that within just a few pages we'll see these rights not only being respected by rich assholes, but we then have to sit through a frankly outrageous scene where they'd rather take a personal hit to themselves rather than violate those rights? Absolutely not. I don't buy that for one fucking second and the only way ON EARTH I could imagine someone thinking that this would happen in real life is if they were a billionaire themselves (or underwritten by one--this whole thing smacks of being written to humanize the poor trillionaire, so misunderstood, so kind and gentle and why do all these smelly poor people hate them so much?).
Listen. Amazon workers can't even go to the bathroom without getting written up for missing their picking goals--their fucking employees drop dead at work and the warehouse workers get yelled at for not stepping over the bodies quickly enough--and you're telling me these super rich assholes are guaranteeing free health care to what basically amounts to their sex doll? No. Just no. Absolutely not.
Okay, so next. Our poor hero Elisha goes to sell himself so he can pay off his family's debt. Sure. Fine. That sounds reasonable (for this world). So he goes to some run down clinic that I imagine to look like the DMV and puts himself up for sale and they say he'll get more since he's over 18, which, like, doubtful. I think Jeffrey Epstein showed us what rich people are really spending their money on and it's not 18 year old farmers, but whatever. So he goes to a room and gets fondled by a bunch of rich people and then eventually decides to sell himself to the attractive trillionaire Alex. So, yeah. NEXT PROBLEM: Rich people would never go down to the DMV to pick up their sex workers. Like, can we agree on that? They would have people do that for them. They would make their potential employees come to them on THEIR timetable. They would make them DANCE for them, you understand? And people would do it. These people, who have nothing--they would do ANYTHING to get food and housing and healthcare, not to mention having their debts bought out from them--I don't understand WHY this author chose this way to go. One of the super rich dudes just comes down to look at our hero for manual labor purposes. Like, are you fucking kidding me? Are you telling me he doesn't have a person whose job it is to hire people to do manual labor? And you're going to pay 3 million to take on this kid to do this labor--including aforementioned rights like housing, food, healthcare, etc--instead of going down to the Home Depot and paying someone $20 under the table with no strings attached? WHHHHHHY? It doesn't make any sense!
(Okay, I'm wrapping this up, I swear, it's SO LONG and for a book that certainly doesn't deserve it). The last thing that pisses me off THE MOST is that this stupid motherfucker bought Elisha FOR LIFE. And now his sex doll doesn't want to take the Dociline (which, I'm sorry, that's a stupid fucking name) and HE'S STUCK WITH HIM FOREVER. You are trying to tell me that the people who came up with the at-will work state--where you can be fired at any time for any reason--also willingly lock themselves into a contract for 10, 20, 30 years or life because...of the goodness of their hearts? Like they wouldn't want a new plaything in two years after they get bored? And now they're locked in to taking care of this person forever because they're just so generous like that? Give me a fucking break. People like Elisha would be contract workers and you know it. They would be paid the absolute minimum amount of money possible and would have the promise of "extras" like fancy cuffs and jewelry and shit dangled in front of their faces, but their owners would get away with absolutely anything they wanted because there's no consequences for those kinds of people. Life time contract, please.
The lengths this book goes to to paint rich people as good is frankly astounding (and to be clear, these are not 'well off' people, these are fucking trillionaires, which is explicitly stated--they are on an entirely different level from anything any of us have ever experienced), and it makes me fucking mad because we didn't even get a good story out of it. Sure, Alex is rich but he's nice to the doorman! He doesn't rape Elisha because they have a safe word which Elisha doesn't use and Elisha secretly likes the sex anyway! He feels bad when he punishes Elisha for speaking out against him! Isn't he so great! God if I'm going to put up with this bullshit I could have at least gotten some good freaking power dynamic weirdness out of it instead of this play at dominance and submission (but with pains taken to ensure it's consensual, even though it's really not--like, just own up to it if you're going to do it) and shitty BDSM.
NO. I refuse to accept this book. It is flawed on a fundamental level that I have only scratched the surface of here. We are living in a capitalist dystopia that is a hundred times worse than the one pictured here with actual rich assholes (hi Jeff Bezos I'm sure you're reading this) who are real, huge problems to society and not just cute rich boys who need to be shown how to love. I hate this. It is terrible and problematic in a way that we should have seen coming with the explosion of shitty Billionaire Playboy romances that graced our bookstores in the past few years, but this one takes the cake. Insert shitty "let them eat cake" meme here. It seems apt, in the context of this story.
So the book starts off with one of the main characters reciting all the rights he will have once he sells himself to some rich person to pay off his debts. OKAY! This is the first stupid thing that happens in this book. Rich people do not care about your rights! If you were going to sell yourself to them to pay off your millions in debts (and we'll get to that in a moment) they certainly wouldn't guarantee you more rights than you had as a citizen. Free healthcare? Right to housing and food? Right to decline the stupid drug which is the whole reason for this setup in the first place? I don't think so. And listen--these are all great rights to have on their own, and honestly I agree they should be human rights for everyone. But we don't have these as American citizens, mostly thanks to our own rich assholes who are running the country, so you're telling me that in this fictional society that doesn't even pretend that the rich guys aren't calling all the shots that these rights would be guaranteed? And that within just a few pages we'll see these rights not only being respected by rich assholes, but we then have to sit through a frankly outrageous scene where they'd rather take a personal hit to themselves rather than violate those rights? Absolutely not. I don't buy that for one fucking second and the only way ON EARTH I could imagine someone thinking that this would happen in real life is if they were a billionaire themselves (or underwritten by one--this whole thing smacks of being written to humanize the poor trillionaire, so misunderstood, so kind and gentle and why do all these smelly poor people hate them so much?).
Listen. Amazon workers can't even go to the bathroom without getting written up for missing their picking goals--their fucking employees drop dead at work and the warehouse workers get yelled at for not stepping over the bodies quickly enough--and you're telling me these super rich assholes are guaranteeing free health care to what basically amounts to their sex doll? No. Just no. Absolutely not.
Okay, so next. Our poor hero Elisha goes to sell himself so he can pay off his family's debt. Sure. Fine. That sounds reasonable (for this world). So he goes to some run down clinic that I imagine to look like the DMV and puts himself up for sale and they say he'll get more since he's over 18, which, like, doubtful. I think Jeffrey Epstein showed us what rich people are really spending their money on and it's not 18 year old farmers, but whatever. So he goes to a room and gets fondled by a bunch of rich people and then eventually decides to sell himself to the attractive trillionaire Alex. So, yeah. NEXT PROBLEM: Rich people would never go down to the DMV to pick up their sex workers. Like, can we agree on that? They would have people do that for them. They would make their potential employees come to them on THEIR timetable. They would make them DANCE for them, you understand? And people would do it. These people, who have nothing--they would do ANYTHING to get food and housing and healthcare, not to mention having their debts bought out from them--I don't understand WHY this author chose this way to go. One of the super rich dudes just comes down to look at our hero for manual labor purposes. Like, are you fucking kidding me? Are you telling me he doesn't have a person whose job it is to hire people to do manual labor? And you're going to pay 3 million to take on this kid to do this labor--including aforementioned rights like housing, food, healthcare, etc--instead of going down to the Home Depot and paying someone $20 under the table with no strings attached? WHHHHHHY? It doesn't make any sense!
(Okay, I'm wrapping this up, I swear, it's SO LONG and for a book that certainly doesn't deserve it). The last thing that pisses me off THE MOST is that this stupid motherfucker bought Elisha FOR LIFE. And now his sex doll doesn't want to take the Dociline (which, I'm sorry, that's a stupid fucking name) and HE'S STUCK WITH HIM FOREVER. You are trying to tell me that the people who came up with the at-will work state--where you can be fired at any time for any reason--also willingly lock themselves into a contract for 10, 20, 30 years or life because...of the goodness of their hearts? Like they wouldn't want a new plaything in two years after they get bored? And now they're locked in to taking care of this person forever because they're just so generous like that? Give me a fucking break. People like Elisha would be contract workers and you know it. They would be paid the absolute minimum amount of money possible and would have the promise of "extras" like fancy cuffs and jewelry and shit dangled in front of their faces, but their owners would get away with absolutely anything they wanted because there's no consequences for those kinds of people. Life time contract, please.
The lengths this book goes to to paint rich people as good is frankly astounding (and to be clear, these are not 'well off' people, these are fucking trillionaires, which is explicitly stated--they are on an entirely different level from anything any of us have ever experienced), and it makes me fucking mad because we didn't even get a good story out of it. Sure, Alex is rich but he's nice to the doorman! He doesn't rape Elisha because they have a safe word which Elisha doesn't use and Elisha secretly likes the sex anyway! He feels bad when he punishes Elisha for speaking out against him! Isn't he so great! God if I'm going to put up with this bullshit I could have at least gotten some good freaking power dynamic weirdness out of it instead of this play at dominance and submission (but with pains taken to ensure it's consensual, even though it's really not--like, just own up to it if you're going to do it) and shitty BDSM.
NO. I refuse to accept this book. It is flawed on a fundamental level that I have only scratched the surface of here. We are living in a capitalist dystopia that is a hundred times worse than the one pictured here with actual rich assholes (hi Jeff Bezos I'm sure you're reading this) who are real, huge problems to society and not just cute rich boys who need to be shown how to love. I hate this. It is terrible and problematic in a way that we should have seen coming with the explosion of shitty Billionaire Playboy romances that graced our bookstores in the past few years, but this one takes the cake. Insert shitty "let them eat cake" meme here. It seems apt, in the context of this story.