Claire 's Reviews > Backstroke

No star rating, because I DNF’ed this about 20% in. I don’t always write reviews for books that I DNF, but I do it when a book has only great reviews, which made me feel misled. At the time that I'm writing this, this book ONLY has "it was amazing!" 5 star reviews, which is misleading.

This is not a horrible book. It might not even be bad, maybe it gets better after 20% in. I'm just not feeling it and I'm bored. It's college bully, and he's a swimmer -- I liked the idea of a hero who is an athlete that's not a hockey player, for once, I'm sick of the hockey trend. And, it's been a while since I've read MF bully, not RH.

All the reviews were like, "this author brings such depth to her characters!!!" No, she doesn't. That’s simply not true. These characters are so regular and surface-level, with nothing special about them. He gets obsessed with her after 1 interaction. I'm not against that if a book writes it in a way that convinces me and draws me in – like, Sovereign did “obsessed after 1 meeting” pretty well, in a way that worked. But here, it's not written in a way where I feel it. It has no depth, no flavor.

Also, there’s a dub con bj scene. I'm not offended by that type of scene being in fiction - I sometimes enjoy it. But it wasn't done well. A scene like that can't just be plopped down with no effort or skill. It needs to dig into the emotions and the psychology of it. If the heroine is just going along and letting him do that, why? How is she feeling about it? What's happening in her mind? Why is he doing that to her, what's happening in his mind? Sam Mariano books are good at digging into that. If she’s fighting back, is it physical, or more psychological, where she’s trying to manipulate the situation to mentally get the upper hand (like the great non con scene at the beginning of Dukes of Ruin)? A dub/non con scene can be interesting, tense, and emotionally complex if the author does it well. It can be fun or hot, if it leans into the hero being deliciously unhinged. None of that applies, here. In this book, it’s just There. It feels like author put it on her “trope checklist." There's no thought put into the scene; it's just checking off a box on a checklist. Maybe I sound ridiculous, waxing poetic about how to write a dub/non con scene. But there IS an artistry and craft to it, and this book doesn't have the juice.