Stella McCormick doesn't believe in love at first sight, but she believes in loathing it. From the moment Tyler Neumann walks into her tattoo parlor, she knows he's trouble. What she doesn't know yet is just how far he's willing to go. Tyler has spent years building toward a single goal: destroying the man who abandoned him. All he needs is a way in, and Stella is the door. Blackmailed into playing his fake girlfriend and dragged into her family's glittering social world, Stella starts to suspect Tyler's motives long before she stops being affected by him. Love and hate have always shared a thin line, and the closer they get, the harder it becomes to remember which side she's standing on.
My Review
The premise had real potential: a brooding, revenge-driven man infiltrating a wealthy family by forcing the daughter to play his fake girlfriend. Solid setup. The plot moved quickly enough to keep me turning pages, and I never hit a wall of boredom exactly, but it never reached that white-knuckle, heart-in-throat tension I wanted from a dark romance either. I don’t even understand why this book is considered a “dark” romance… Which parts exactly are dark?
Now, the real conversation: the kinks. Brat kink, humiliation kink, and a foot scene so committed it made me want to close the book and go for a walk. I am not the target audience for any of this, and I know that, but even setting personal taste aside, these elements took over in ways that derailed the romantic tension entirely. If you are actively into bratty MMCs and power exchange that flows the other way, you will probably rate this five stars. For me, it just wasn’t it.
Tyler is not a morally grey hero. He is simply rude. There is a difference between dark and compelling and a man who is just unpleasant to be around, and Tyler never crossed that line into the former. Stella, meanwhile, gets blackmailed and essentially shrugs. She needed so much more backbone. Her characterization leaned too heavily on her chronic illness and her attraction to Tyler, which is not a personality.
The AJ situation raised more questions than it answered. If you’re writing a throuple, write a throuple. Don’t introduce a third person and leave him with approximately two scenes of development.
The one bright spot: Fred the cat. Absolute scene-stealer. Best character in the book. Seeing the world through Fred’s fluffy, chaotic little head was the highlight of the entire experience.