Jonathan Maberry is real hit or miss for me. I like the Joe Ledger series even though I generally hate his writing style. But I still keep giving him a chance. This book won the Bram Stoker Award so I thought I was in for something good here. If this is what they honor, then I don't actually get what the BSA is about.

Once again Maberry has about fifty million characters and we have to jump to all of their POVs. It didn't feel like there was any sort of cohesive story just random vignettes that pull together separately. It was all slow as hell. There were hints at horror elements, but not enough for there to be anything called horror, really. There was more of the human crime element.

Even the people that were obviously supposed to be the good protagonists weren't in my opinion. Everyone knew this guy Vic is beating on his 14-year-old stepson but no one does anything about it because Vic is friends with cops or some such nonsense. Our "hero" Crowe calls himself doing something by befriending the kid, Mike. On this night Mike had already gotten into an accident and was injured and Crowe knew that sending him home with his stepfather was a bad, dangerous idea but did it anyway because the Mayor told him to. When he leaves the kid to do the job he was tasked with and comes back to be told by a witness that Vic came to get Mike and full on punched him in the gut before tossing him in the car, Crowe was pissed. And that was about it. We're then treated to a very extended and graphic scene of Vic beating the ever-loving shit out of Mike. It was horrific and supposed to somehow be ameliorated because Mike realizes that Vic is nothing more than human during the beating? What the?

Back to Crowe and the very next thing he's thinking about getting home to his girlfriend and the meal she cooked him. That's when I was done with this book. There are no good guys in this story if they just let something like that go on and do nothing. He didn't even bother to go check on the kid! Then he realized said girlfriend was probably in trouble and that's all that mattered. Speaking of the girlfriend, the topper on my DNF was her running back to the farm where the killer who had kidnapped her and her family was instead of trying to get any sort of help.

I don't care about these characters at all. Except Mike and since he isn't getting help I can't stand to read/listen to more. I don't care about what's coming, if anything is coming because the whole thing has been boring as hell. And long as hell. I actually groaned out loud when I was halfway through because there was still another seven hours left! I tried, but it's not worth my time. I'm super disappointed. I was hoping to have a fun creepy/scary trilogy to get me through the rest of October.

ETA: I forgot to mention that the narrator was pretty awful as well. I actually ended up getting used to him eventually, but he was in no way good.

Ah, dammit. This was so promising. Even with all the tell and no show. I was a fan of the hero, Chase, trying to get the heroine, Amanda, to date him. Even though it was semi-stalkery his staking out her restaurant and kind of being a pest. But he's a famous baseball player! I was a fan of her apparently being a double digit size and not going on about being fat. It was barely mentioned! I was a definite fan of them going out on a first date and doing nothing more than a kiss at the end. Then they went out for a few weeks before sex happened! WHA–THAT'S LIKE PERFECT ROMANCE FOR ME!

And then Stephanie Evanovich had to ruin it.

I knew the BDSM kink was coming because, like I said in a previous post, it was introduced in Chase's POV really early. I was not looking forward to that, but because of all the stuff I was liking above I was willing to power through because the story had earned that chance. I do not understand what in the hell Evanovich was thinking here . . .

Chase believes he has found the perfect woman in Amanda, but he doesn't want to scare her off with his spanking kink. So he doesn't say anything and it builds up in him until he's an insufferable crankypants and she calls him on it. She gets so pissed off at his attitude she curses at him and he grabs her and starts spanking her. Just like that.

Er, I say again, NOPE.

That is not how you start that kind of relationship. You don't just grab someone and start hitting them with no prior conversation or consent. That's not kink, or BDSM. That's assault. That's domestic violence. After grabbing her and smacking her on the ass once, then dragging her off to his bedroom to keep going, he says something like, 'you can stay or call the cops after but this is happening.' I . . . what the fuck? That's so . . . not okay. Not at all. He doesn't stop until she starts crying and then I don't even know.

And of course she stays and fucks him instead of calling the goddamn cops!

The next morning is he apologetic? Is he contrite at his behaviour? Does he sit her down to try and talk through what he did and why and would she like to do it again? Try to come to an agreement on this lifestyle? No, of course not. He's smug as shit about it because he got what he wanted and she stayed. He has a total cavalier douche attitude about the whole thing. Even when she starts to cry. He acts like any concern on her part is ridiculous. She's the one who has to start the discussion about what happened, and he's doesn't really feel like it's something that needs to be discussed. Turns out he likes to spank, sometimes as a sex-thing but not necessarily all the time. He will turn her over his knee at his discretion when he believes she's been "naughty". And his belief is that his woman should act like a lady. I shit you not. He says this. So if she does anything unladylike, especially uses profanity, he'll spank her. And apparently if she's too disobedient? I didn't get that part. She can argue with him up until a point and then he'll spank her if she goes too far? And she is not given any choice in the matter if she stays. What the shit kind of relationship is that? None of this is okay! Safe. Consensual. Sane. Say it with me, people! It's really not that hard a concept to understand.

Then Amanda starts acting like that chick from Secretary and baiting him to spank her because, just as he said she would, she likes it and wants to get him to do it. Sigh. Then, as he wanted her to do initially as a weird excuse to get around the spank!kink, she hires a manager for her restaurant so she can trail him around the country. Because she's a spineless weenine and I fucking nope on out of this story at this point. I would have earlier, after the morning after, had I not been in the shower. I looked up some spoilers of the rest of the book and just thank God I have the wherewithal to ditch this mess because the rest of it sounds terrible. Most of it about the damn spanking, and then some stupid occurrence later on.

Screw this book.

Screw these characters.

Screw the goddamn kink bandwagon. Why is it something showing up in what is supposed to be romance and not erotic romance??

You can do better than this, Evanovich.