I only made it about 20% in before knowing for sure this was not for me. I skimmed a bit farther ( maybe 50%) to see if it got better, but if anything, it seemed to be getting worse.

This is the most icky-squicky thing I've ever read. I knew the basic premise going in, so I should have been prepared, but I thought with all the five star squee reviews there must be something redeeming here. No. No, there isn't.

The publisher's blurb warns of "dubious" consent. Let's not sugarcoat this: consent in this story isn't doubtful, it's nonexistent. Caleb kidnapped Olivia with the intent to train her as a sex slave and sell her at auction to his worst enemy. I'm okay with BDSM, even pretty hardcore stuff involving total power exchange--so long as the sub agrees in advance to give up his/her (although it's almost always her, right?) agency. Livvie doesn't even get that initial choice. No, she is kidnapped from the bus stop as she waits to go to school (because she's a fucking high school student, as if things weren't squicky enough!!!), then controlled by violence, drugs, hunger, and sheer mindfuckery... And to me, nothing that happens in that context is sexy or entertaining or compelling. She's fucking terrified, and I don't find it arousing or interesting at all-- and the fact that so many people apparently do (note the five star squee) makes me fear for the future of humanity.

See, shit like this actually does happen to people. Little girls get stolen and imprisoned, and horrifying things happen to them--those poor girls in Cleveland, Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard, Colleen Stan, and the many, many more whose names we never know because they wind up dead. Books like this--that package that nightmare as entertainment and make it palatable by making the victim fall for the villain despite all reason, and make the villain gorgeous and sexy and damaged in a poor-tortured-baby way--do violence to those real victims' plight and memory. Sex trafficking is not entertainment, people! You've seen the men who do shit like this on the news: Ariel Castro, Phillip Garrido--these men are not sexy! They're monsters, and so is Caleb.

And then, don't even get me started on the crimes against grammar. Sentence fragments, inexplicable punctuation, your vs. you're (why is that so hard?!), using verb phrases that have nothing to do with speaking to set off dialogue ("He picked up his rum and coke, 'You will be.'") Small potatoes in light of my bigger, philosophical objections to this book, but still inexcusable.

Don't be sucked in by the hype!