Afternoon readers, hope you’re all well and wonderful. I’ve been slowly, slowly whizzing my way through all the emails in my blogging inbox. It really is a mess in there but I’m trying to take it one review at a time and keep ploughing through them. I’m not sure whether fellow book bloggers feel this way but sometimes I wish I could just absorb books into my system through osmosis. There are just too many books to sit down and read and so many more waiting out there to discover. Today’s review is my first critical one for a little while now which is a little bit of a shame, it just wasn’t quite my cup of tea, but without further delay onto the review.

 Photographer CJ Parker is a woman who has literally not gone outside for the past six months. She’s been hiding from the world, and from life, ever since an unimaginable tragedy forced her into seclusion. On the one day where she decides to finally venture outside, she meets the mysterious billionaire, Asher Sloane. Dark-headed, magnetic, and gorgeous, Asher drips sex and animal magnetism. He draws CJ out of her shell and into the world, while showing her things that she never knew existed. What CJ doesn’t know is that Asher has a dangerous past. Behind his beautiful blue eyes and confident demeanour lies dark secrets that, if they are brought to light, could mean the end of CJ and Asher’s relationship.

 As a reviewer, even now after two years or so blogging, receiving books makes me so incredibly happy. I really appreciate the time that authors and publishers spend publicising their books, and being gifted with a copy is a really wonderful thing but I have to be honest. 

Firstly, the blurb sounds wonderful; alpha dominant guy, a steamy romance, and CJ Parker a delicate female lured out by the racy billionaire. After a couple of weeks reading fantasy books almost exclusively, this really appealed but it doesn’t deliver; firstly the writing style is a little off kilter. It doesn’t flow and instead is quite stiff and robotic. This meant that it didn’t quite sit with me as a reader throughout. It’s technically correct in terms of grammar and spelling but the conversation doesn’t surge and give but instead feels forced. Additionally some of the writing is a little curious. It’s just a little badly written and quite pornographic in nature. It didn’t feel like the author meant it and it therefore didn’t feel like the characters meant it either. Their dialogue is also a little immature, it is rocky and at time vulgar which left me feeling a little stunned.

 Another issue was the relationship between CJ and Asher was unrealistic and confusing. At one point she’s spending large amounts of his money but refusing to let him know where she is? It made my feminist blood boil a little and not in a good way. I just didn’t get it and compared to the blurb on the back I felt a little let down. I think that the characters were the main problem for this book; they weren’t described strongly enough and given enough characteristics to make me want them to get together. I actually felt a lot of the time the two were using each other and that the connection between them was purely physical; for some readers they might enjoy this but for me it didn’t sit right and the constant almost bare to the bone account of their sexual relationship became tedious incredibly quickly. This created other issues including why Asher was fascinated in helping CJ in the very beginning and the fact that his character profile was a little abhorrent. His emotions reminded me of that of an adolescent teenage boy, a stud who wanted to use the main female character. Just, no. As many reviews have also included, the sentence that included the comment ‘I want to squirt between your legs,’ made me cringe and put the book down. I’m done from this point on. 

 Overall this book feels rushed and pushed to be finished. It lacks development of the characters, which leads to an underdevelopment of their relationship with one another. I have had a little look into the author and seen that she has written a number of books and I’m sure there are readers who will really enjoy this; I for one struggled to finish it.