2022 Reread:

It's so funny to see how bright eyed and very, very fucking drunk I was reviewing these oh my god. What a mess. Anyway! Now that the series is over I thought it would be fun to reread them all and see what I notice now.

This still really holds up. One of the things I really appreciate about Merikan's work is that it's fast paced. There's no lollygagging here. Right from the first page shit is going down and you're dragged in by the hair so you might as well get used to rolling with the punches.

The characters are a bit of a mixed bag. Seth is whiny, horny, and unforgivably stupid. Everything the man does shows that he has exactly one brain cell and it's dedicated to chickens or something because it's clearly not dedicated to survival. Everything bad happens to him and because he's so exhausting I didn't feel the need to feel empathy towards him. Domenico is... a very bad person. He's got all the hypocritical machismo you could want and if there's an ism he's probably got it on lock. I refer to his rants as 'old man yells at cloud' time because that's exactly what it feels like. He's also a rapist. You can paint it in pretty words but at the end of the day that's just kinda his journey right now. Despite that he's so compelling. He's good at everything, all the best lines go to him, he manages to pull off anything he wants and look cool doing it. It's harder to condemn him for his shit than you'd think and I'm troubled by what that says about me.

My favorite aspect of this series is the humor element. It's not relied on too heavily so when there's moments of levity they're always a delight. The fight about curry has lived in my mind rent free for almost a year now for being so ludicrous.

I can see why people, even people who generally quite enjoy dark romance, might struggle with this book and I'm here to say that this isn't the best indicator of the series. It comes across very much like a pilot almost. The writing has more of a 'self pub' vibe to it, the characters haven't yet found their voice, the overall tone is much less romance than dark erotica. Anyone on the fence I encourage to read on to the second book before you really make up your mind. The characters are always developing, but it's really there that I think things start to fall into place.

I have a hard time deciding who to suggest this one to because you have to learn to be cool with so many things at once. Like do you enjoy awful people doing really bad things? Do you want your romances to stop pussyfooting around and get to the fucking before the 10% mark? Do you also somehow want to explore the ongoing cycle of abuse/trauma? Are you comfortable with your love stories being set among a background of deeply triggering things? Do you like reading very long sex scenes with all kinds of pretty intense kinks? Great news! This is the series for you.

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Original review:

This was the worst thing I’ve ever read. It deserves no less than 10 stars out of 5.

And like okay. It’s problematic. Oh my god name an ism and it probably has like six examples of it. And the dub con! And literally nobody has ever mentioned a certain aspect of the main characters in all the reviews I’ve read which is blowing my mind??? Does that mean something or are y’all just not bothered??? I don’t know! Dom is basically if a mean feral cat was human but with more slut shaming and Seth is the whiniest little brat I’ve ever fucking seen.

But this was the most fun I’ve had reading in months. I don’t think I ever went more than a chapter without taking a quote to send to my friends and I never, ever had time to get bored.

If you want a fun drinking game take a sip of wine every time foreskin is mentioned. I was absolutely fucking blitzed like a Midwestern mother of 5 at a Pure Romance party and I think the book is way more fun that way.