Oh boy, this book. Where do I even start.
OK, so two things.
The first thing, rape fantasy is NOT uncommon. At all. It serves a function, especially for people who are raised in a culture where sexuality is not always treated in a healthy manner. (In other words, all of us.) Fantasizing about rape absolutely does not mean that a person wants to be raped or would enjoy being raped, it’s strictly fantasy and therefore harmless.
The second thing, bodies are weird and mindless, so arousal and climax during rape is not particularly unusual.
I read all the content warnings before starting this book, so what I expected was basically a rape fantasy. And that’s what I got. Except…
I feel like Carlton spent too much time trying to make excuses for what Zade is doing? The whole story line about him getting emotionally affected by seeing abused women and children absolutely does not land when he is terrorizing somebody himself. I could see it if he was doing what he was doing because of an impartial sense of right of wrong. Or if his emotional investment was in winning over his opponents. But the empathy aspect doesn’t work for me.
It is also suggested that there is something wrong with Addie because she likes to be scared. Also horseshit. Lots of people like scary things and enjoy experiencing fear in what they know is ultimately a safe environment. Being stalked is not a safe environment. It’s also flat out stated that Addie wanted to believe her great-grandmother was killed by her stalker as an excuse to see Zand as dangerous. Zand is dangerous! He rapes her! He holds a gun on her! A woman being killed by her stalker is an entirely logical conclusion. It happens a lot. But the thing is – all this twisting to make him feel like a good guy is wholly unnecessary. Being forced to enjoy something against one’s will is very much an integral part of rape fantasy, Zand doesn’t have to be a good guy to make that part of it work.
I might have been able to gloss over all that if the rest of the story held up but… it really didn’t. Zand was just completely overblown as a character. Also the plot point that Addie and Daya were targeted was just not believable. Women with middle-class jobs and families rarely get trafficked. Sex workers and indigenous women do, because they are devalued in our culture and so nobody goes looking for them. Immigrants who signed up for jobs that turned out to be too good to be true. All those kids that disappeared from immigrant “holding” cages. They get trafficked. Not professional white women.
And I guarantee that of all those people on the Epstein list, none of them were walking around at carnivals and picking out the victims themselves.
I also winced at the revival of the Satanic Panic as a bad guy. But the absolute final throw-book-across-the-room while yelling OH COME ON deal-breaker moment for me? When Daya, supposed hacker extraordinaire, tells her best mate that she works for a black-ops company with an international bounty on them – and does this OVER HER PHONE. I know bugger all about infosec, and even I know never to do that. I don’t care how good your hacker skills are. Just, no.
So yeah, this one didn’t work for me. The book ends on a cliffhanger, but I won’t be picking up the sequel.