After reading Corrupt and Hideaway, I couldn't imagine how Penelope would get me to like Damon. He was just such a menace and more like morally black than morally grey. But somehow, she did it. Guess that's a testament to good writing. Reading this installment, he felt so lonely and misunderstood, not to mention traumatized. Winter is a great match for him. Can't wait to read the last novel in the series.

the pacing seemed off in this one. there was a lot of build up and tension between winter and damon and it resolved, at least for winter, seemingly overnight and after one monologue from damon.

still, very good.

Upon rereading I’m not seeing the magic I saw the first time, and I have to disagree with the fan consensus that this is the most well written book in the series. I’m actually kind of surprised by how less-good the relationship development is compared to Hideaway.

I can put aside all the problematic content and unrealistic depictions of mayoral candidacy. I am looking at this from a pure character progression standpoint.

I do not buy this relationship.

The narrative justification for the entire relationship is predicated on a single afternoon spent together as children that was so impactful it left Winter permanently disabled and Damon psychosexually fixated on her for the rest of his adult life. The pattern of their relationship is a brief meeting of a few hours at most once or twice every few years, all of which somehow end up leaving Winter irreparably damaged in some way be it physically, socially, or emotionally, until they are adults and Damon has made it his life’s sole purpose to fuck her up even more.

The pivotal childhood meeting does a lot to carry the emotional progression of their relationship throughout the book. I think people think the redemption arc is so impressive because the book is told non-chronologically, so at the point in the present timeline when major changes are supposed to occur in how Winter is supposed to feel about Damon, there are flashback chapters to do the work of carrying emotional beats. Very little happens in the present between the fight where Damon trashes Winter’s bedroom in a rage before crying about his sad backstory after she says some really fucked up things about his mother, and Winter and Damon independently coming to the conclusion that they are in love with eachother, except we finally get the flashback to the the accident that the whole book has been building up to and we learn that it wasn’t actually Damon’s fault and it’s time to forgive him now.

It was also strange to me how in some ways, the book did the work of analysing its own parallels, but didn’t really do anything with them afterward. I don’t have to make the connection that Damon’s father grooming and raping his young teen ballerina mother mirrors Damon grooming and sleeping with teen ballerina Winter under false pretenses, because Damon makes the connection himself early in the book during an attack of conscience. Of course, he immediately reassures himself that he is not his father and Winter is not his mother, and “no one has been where we were. This is special… We’re alone in the universe. No one was us.” And yeah, I guess you are unique in that no one else probably faked their identity to break into the home of the girl they blinded as a child, then ended up accidently sleeping with her because it turns out she’s aroused by home invasion. That’s just you, no one else. But maybe let’s also think about the other thing too though.

The parallel with Damon’s parents is brought up again by Rika after Damon has accepted that he is in love with Winter, and Rika tells him in order to not become his parents he needs to work to earn Winter’s respect. He does this by secretly learning carpentry and using his skills to recreate iconic fixtures from their single meeting as children, effectively prolonging the half an hour they actually liked each other in childhood into forever.

I understand that this is an intentional narrative choice, but I do not like this narrative choice. I do not believe that half an hour spent as an eight or eleven year old should go on to be the basis for how you define yourself and all your major life choices for the rest of your adult life. Maybe Damon is choosing to fixate on this memory because it is a happy memory of Winter for him, but it is also his only memory of Winter from before things got bad (and Winter doesn't even remember the conversation she had with Damon that day that imprinted on him so intensely). They have nothing else to base their relationship on.

I did not care for Rika and Michael as a couple (Michael is the worst horseboy hands down, yes worse than Damon I will not hear otherwise), and they also have a weird psychosexual fixation that starts in early childhood that I do not like, but at least with Rika and Michael we know they saw each other a lot on a consistent basis as kids. It makes it more believable that there would be an emotional attachment formed out of familiarity that might make one more tolerant of Michael’s unlovable traits. Winter and Damon met once and were completely no contact for years of their lives.

Also, I simply must complain about the threesome scene. Don’t get me wrong, I think people who complain about the existence of threesomes in Penelope Douglas novels are huge pussies. You are reading the codependent swinger friend group series. You should not be shocked when you encounter a threesome. My problem is how incongruent the actual threesome was compared to the lead up to it.

Damon and Will have an intense relationship. They were best friends/had a codependent situationship thing going on, and Damon also almost succeeded in murdering Will in one of the most traumatic ways a person can be murdered. Damon is also emotionally incompetent and believes trauma can and should be fixed via application of his penis. When Will is having a complete meltdown after almost drowning because of Damon (Again) and Winter and Damon are trying to calm him down, it makes sense for the characters in question that they would attempt to solve this conundrum with group sex.

It’s very weird to me then that the scene is entirely focused on Winter and Damon’s sexual pleasure in each other. It is told from Winter’s POV, and Will is just sort of there laying on the bed next to them as Winter and Damon fuck aggressively in his proximity. While I get the Winter focus is because this is supposed to be a sexually gratifying fantasy for the presumed female reader, and I get the Damon focus because this is his book, but it feel so bizarre that the entire set up for this scene in the first place is that Will is having a meltdown due to PTSD over his unresolved issues with Damon. We are told that the emotional centerpiece of the scene is supposed to be Will and his relationship with the leads, and yet he’s barely involved at all. I genuinely don’t understand what the point of having him there was if he was just going to make out with Winter as Damon fucks her like he normally does and nothing else. It’s not like the series hasn’t already confirmed that Damon and Will have canonically had sex multiple times off page, and it’s not like Penelope is afraid of having someone other than the male love interest have sex with heroine because we literally have that in the way more equal threesome scene between Michael, Kai, and Rika in Corrupt.
Why was this like this. Why even involve Will. Nobody is entitled to sex, but considering this threesome is supposed to be reparations for trying to drown him with cinder blocks in the Atlantic ocean and then almost drowning him again, I feel like the least you could do is give the guy a hand job. Anything other than “hey man want to watch me have sex with my girlfriend a bunch”.

Damon is such a cutie