Spoilery stuff ahead. Trigger warnings galore.

Half the logic in this book simply doesn't track. It just doesn't. Even small things. Adeline doesn't have a mailbox bc her house is too far from the road? So the mail carrier has to trek up the mile long driveway and back everyday to yeet her mail on the porch? That's dumb. Get a mailbox at the end of the driveway. There's stuff that's just common fuckin sense that gets completely ignored for the sake of the plot.

daya buries the box of hands when there's a cliff dropping into the ocean 50 fucking feet from Adeline's house. Why not yeet the hands? Bc then the gang dudes can't find it later as evidence to use against Adeline in arch's disappearance. That's why.

The fact that Zade is a rapist and understands it makes him a hypocrite bc of the work he does, but doesn't care and continues assaulting her anyway, is unforgivable. What's most obnoxious about the sexual stuff is that if it was cnc or even just fully consensual, the smut would've been good. And the banter over text, too. But it just felt too gross knowing she really didn't want any of it. The gun scene was foul, jfc it was horrible. I'd heard about it but it was so much worse than I'd thought it could be. 

The writing itself is .... not great. The characters aren't well thought out, mostly in that they're good at everything. Perfect and skilled and talented, actually. Besides their bonkers bullshit personalities, they're perfect and so are their lives. Everyone, literally everyone, is living the dream. Adeline and Zade are both so great in bed that every partner they've ever had comes crawling back, weeping and begging for more on their knees. They're incredibly wealthy, despite Adeline being an indie author who self publishes her own books. She has enough money to somehow get an entire three story victorian manor renovated in under a month. How? Fucking how???? They have their dream careers, perfect bodies with ZERO insecurities, great sex, loads of money, and on and on and on. There is nothing they aren't perfect at. At one point zade literally says "Nothing is impossible for me." Yeah and that's BORING. 

The endless metaphors. Not everything needs to be compared to something else for what you're saying to make sense. This isn't "explain like I'm 5" ffs, have faith in your readers and cool it with the metaphors. We know what storm clouds look like.

The over-militarization of Zade is just bonkers to me. Maybe it's bc those guys aren't my type but good hell, it was nauseating. The over-inflated ego, the "I can take down a warehouse of bad guys on my own and not get myself or anyone innocent hurt" attitude, all of it. Mr "I'm the best of the best" but in a gross way and not a sexy way. The mustang comes off like he spent his military signing bonus as soon as he cashed the check - it actually made me laugh out loud. The amount of times he talked about all of his technology and "other illegal shit" is just like, okay so you have a bunch of buttons and don't know what any of them do, and/or the author didn't do any research into what kind of illegal technology someone like Zade would have access to. It was all very "good guy with a gun" fetishized and idolized to the point of trying to make it the way Zade is a "redeemable" character, but it was actually just worse bc he worked to save rape and trafficking victims and then turned around and raped Adeline repeatedly. Fucking yikes, dude. That's not redemption, it just made everything worse. The hypocrisy was over the line and out of pocket. He's also just blatantly a fucking misogynist????? Barf. 

The writing doesn't make sense. The characters are bland besides one being an outright moron and the other being an obsessive rapist. If the kinky stuff literally ever becomes consensual that's great but I was never gonna make it that far. 

Idk how booktok managed to hype this up so much when this is just a thinly veiled self-insert rape fantasy about a militaristic pig with a god complex. Fuck this lmao