**ranty review … spoiler alert**

I will admit that since the writing and editing of this book is fine, it almost certainly deserves more than one star. But I just plain hated the thing so much I can’t bring myself to give it anymore. This book, no, not the book, the book is fine, this story is horrible. H.O.R.R.R.I.B.L.E! It’s basically porn with a very weak attempt at a plot, which can be fun sometimes. But this was not one of those times.

The plot is essentially that a violent, drug-addicted, murdering mafioso goes into a strip joint and hires a dancer to take home for a night of meaningless debauchery. First off, while erotic dancing and prostitution are admittedly both part of the sex trade, I’m fairly sure ‘pole dancer’ and ‘whore’ aren’t actually the same profession. But hey, apparently, I’m wrong.

Said mafioso treats said dancer just like a hooker. He does his deed and dismisses the dancer before the poor guys even peeled himself off the shower stall wall. It was literally, “I’m done, get out.” But for some inexplicable reason that isn’t explained he then suddenly starts having all these wants and feelings that he’s never had before. Suddenly the dancer isn’t just a whore. He’s something more. Wha…what? Why?

Meanwhile, the dancer is convinced he’s falling in love with the man who just used and discarded him—the man who he never spoke to, who made him wear a blindfold to his house, provided no foreplay, and was basically just a dick to him. The next night, the drugged-up man shows up and buys the dancer again. Treating him so badly that he injures him quite severely without noticing, throws money at him, and leaves. (‘Cause that’s the obvious thing to do to the man you’ve just spent 24 hours fantasising about.)

And you know what the dancer did then? You wanna know? He fell in love with the man and spent the next third of the book pining for him and obsessing over whether he was just a whore to that ‘mystery lover.’ WTF? Seriously? What in the previous occurrences would suggest he could expect to be anything else? I haven’t left anything out, either. The two of them had no actual conversation, didn’t exchange names, never showed any kindness toward one another. NOTHING. So, the whole ‘romance’ was completely baseless and made no sense at all.

I could really go on and on and on about how much I hated these two characters and their ridiculous ‘love.’ (I’m throwing out some mean air quotes on that word too.) But I won’t. I’ll just say that I hated everything about them, their relationship (or lack thereof), their unnatural progression from strangers to ‘most important person in my life,’ their weird attempts to change each other while simultaneously saying they accept them as they are, their hospitalisations, their ‘move in with me, you’ve met me two whole times and I only tore your rectum the once, you don’t even know my name and I obviously live the sort of life that sees me almost assassinated but I’ll treat you right’ buuuullllshiiiitttttt.

I generally like a good mob boss character. But the damaged millionaire being saved by the prostitute with the golden heart has been done so many times already, and I can’t say I’m particularly fond of the trope to start with. Then there was Dorian’s ridiculous speech patterns and Jansen’s wishy-washy ‘I’m submissive, now I’m accreting myself, now I’m submitting’ schtick…oh, and the history of rape (’cause Jansen apparently wasn’t filling enough heroine tropes already)…ugh. Just no. I have nothing good to say about this book other than that the writing is perfectly readable, so a different reader might not hate it as much as me.