The whole time reading this I just felt conflicted and extremely annoyed, it does have compelling writing though. I enjoyed the mysterious vibe of the very beginning but the story became very tedious moving forward and I found myself specially skimming the smut just to get to the end and asking myself what the point was of me finishing this book if it ends in a cliffhanger anyway. Admittedly I had never read a CNC before and I'm not sure I'm a fan, that first spicy scene between the main characters is definitely shocking and not for the faint of heart, absolutely for the advanced smut readers so keep that in mind. 

The juxtaposition between the stalking and what the MMC does for a living is just absurd and incongruent, I would understand it if he likes some heavy kinky shit but the level of stalking and violence, and how constant it is! come on! And I'm a sucker for the "bad guy", I love some morally ambiguous love interest but in this case it's so irrational that I can't get behind any of it. 

Still... the one who annoyed me the most was the FMC. If you get turned on by some crazy fucking shit just accept it and fucking get over it!! I had like a 100 pages left and was soooo sick of her enjoying being ravished by Zade and then immediately feeling ashamed afterwards... girl, it's like the sixth time this happens!! I'd be like just call me Harley Quinn and he's my puddin'. I also don't get why she's the "manipulator", we never see ANY sign that she even succeeds in that regard, I would've liked some deep darkness from her as well, now that's interesting to me. 

Anyway... I'm not sure if I'll read the second book or not. I don't know if I need a pallate cleanser before or if I should just get it over with in the case I choose to finish the series either. 

It's interesting to me the amount of hype it has on booktok because this book is so not for everyone, I also thought it would be a bit more terrifying, not sure what that says about me hahaha