Long review incoming!

I started this as an exercise in letting myself relax with a dark romance/erotica novel to unwind before completing a reading challenge. About 20% of the way through it became just an exercise.

This was an incredibly strange read overall. I understand Pen (can I call them Pen? I feel like we're close enough) wanted to have their cake, and eat it too. I understand this is meant to be a taboo read, but you cannot have the convention and the taboo, you can't have a 40 something yr old man (who legally is our MC's uncle) flirt with her only to turn around and act well, like her uncle. 

A lot of this novel was just very off-putting in a way that wasn't pleasant. The actual scenario presented in this novel is gross but almost nothing in the novel goes against the narrative that it's titillating or that you're meant to do anything but enjoy it.

I found all three men in this book deeply deeply annoying at points and I particularly didn't enjoy any of their unique flavours of misogyny. Kaleb in particular gets away with far too much and is rewarded by being the person our MC picks when he actively assaulted her and degraded her over the course of the book, even when he was meant to be in love with her.

I also felt like our MC's turn towards Kaleb was very out of nowhere as almost nothing indicated that she actually liked him until 70% of the way through when she just decides she does.

I did like our MC however and I thought her trauma was well done (and makes the "romance" more insidious as she's more vulnerable to being manipulated.)

Technically this wasn't a badly written novel, and the smut, if divorced from the surrounding material, is pretty well done, however everything surrounding it was either a slog, an exercise in disgust, or a boring hodge podge of whatever the author thought was an acceptable way for men to act. For these reasons, 1 star is all I'm willing to give it.