Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Bared to You

Oof I’m not usually one to hate on a book, but I have never read a book that is as problematic as this one. I’d give it a negative rating if I could- it’s that bad. The relationship dynamic is horribly toxic between the two main characters and the author casually drops mentions of questionable consent throughout the book like that is a normal part of relationships. The only redeeming quality is the causally included LGBTQ characters but even then that’s only one of the LGBTQ couples in the book - the other is really relies on harmful outdated stereotypes. I only managed to finish this book because I was on a plane without WiFi and finished the other two books I had downloaded for my trip. This book isn’t worth anyone’s time unless you want to read something smutty and don’t mind an author describing sexual assault as if it’s romantic. 🙄

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lapetitetulipe's review against another edition

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challenging funny reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.25

Content Warnings

rushxsoubi's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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bootsmom3's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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naaytaashreads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

“It's probably best for me to work off some energy before I get you naked. I'm sure you'd like to be able to walk tomorrow.”

OMG, I LOVE THIS READ.
It took me a day to finish this.
Once I start, I couldn't stop.
The read sends me on an adrenaline rush with curiosity, love, sex had character development.

Slyvia Day knows how to write a romance to make us fall in love, tear us apart, make us cry, laugh and also read on about important issues.

Find me, Gideon, because I want to hug him, love him and he can make me his.
I am so curious about his childhood, history, trauma and character development.
The secrets he keeps definitely kept us and Eva on our toes but at the same time, we all just want him to feel love.

Eva was such a queen.
I love she is not really a docile female character that just falls in love and needs saving.
Her back story of her history, abuse and trust was a good balance with Gideon.
She is a badass, feisty independent queen, although sometimes I tire of her running away every time but I get it.
I need to see more of her character development and for her to take charge or her jealousy.

“I have one type: Eva Lauren Tramell. That’s it.” I rolled my eyes.
“Okay. Whatever.”

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alekatja's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

0.25

I honestly can’t put into words how much I disliked this book. I almost DNF multiple times – so props to Sylvia Day for invoking such strong emotions within me. The only good thing I can say about this book is that there were LGBTQ+ characters without their sexuality being their only reason for existence and maybe that the writing wasn’t riddled with mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, the writing was still pretty obnoxious and quite infuriating at times (like seriously does Eva need to describe every single fucking detail no matter how small, how unimportant or how often she’s already described it?). "I looked at him in his civilized, urbane, outrageously expensive suit and thought of raw, primal, sheet-clawing fucking."

At least it was grammatically correct, with sensible sentence structure and no spelling mistakes.
The prose was still terrible: "I wasn't surprised by my roommate's emphatic pronouncement."

Just purple prose that takes you out of the story, but it was pretty funny at times. Well now that that’s out of the way let’s get to the actual issues:

1. The Plot.
There was virtually no plot, no conflict that the main pairing has to work through together, definitely no conclusion (I get it’s part of a series but this felt like it ended mid chapter) and their relationship had no build up. I typically like more medium to slow paced books and a slow-burn romance – so the exact opposite of this book. Well, can you call it fast paced if nothing happens? Anyways I don’t gravitate towards insta-lust. I like when the characters are attracted to each other, of course, but not when the main character gets so hot and bothered she can’t formulate a sentence, can only think about fucking him and can’t stop thinking about him even though they’ve met once. And I especially don’t like when the love interest’s (if you can call him that) approach to starting a relationship, even just a sexual one, is “because I want to fuck you, Eva. I need to know what’s standing in my way, if anything” during their second meeting.

2. The Characters.
None of the character were likable and not in the sense of anti-hero or morally gray characters, no they were all just assholes with no redeeming qualities. At least they were hot. There was not one unattractive person in this book, everyone was a model, from the people working in the office, to the personal trainers, to probably the fucking doorman. Also the relationships lacked any semblance of chemistry, I have no idea why they liked each other besides that they’re hot and she has a „tight cunt” and he has a „heavy, thickly-veined length”.

Eva isn’t all that bad … in the beginning. Besides her penchant for describing everything in excruciating detail, she seemed like a likable, driven character, with already set and stable relationships with friends and family and a job, that would hinder her life revolving about the dude when she met him, but no. As soon as they meet every waking thought seems to be about him (Gideon) and to make matters worse they work in the same building so there goes any semblance of a private life outside of the relationship. Well after the first three chapters any likability Eva had went out the window. She has no backbone. She says one thing and is convinced to do the exact opposite in the next two sentences and it’s all downhill from there. Eva gets jealous, that’s fine, everyone gets jealous sometimes. She gets irrationally jealous often and doesn’t know how to properly deal with it, that would also be fine IF it lead to character development in any sense (spoiler: it doesn’t). For all her talk of therapy, she has terrible coping mechanisms and no idea how to handle any issues that arise. We see her go to therapy once, but not for her, for her mother (another unbelievably unlikable character that I’m not going to go into further detail to. Short version: gold digger, trophy wife with control issues and she's a stalker). Eva should be going to therapy twice a week. I haven’t been violently sexually assaulted as a child for multiple years

raped for four years by her stepbrother from age 10 and it only being discovered because she has a violent miscarriage

so I have no authority on how a person should deal with it, but she has been going to therapy for at least 8 years, she should have something to show for it and not just deal with her problems by running away. Because that all she does, as soon as there’s a problem (most of the time Gideon does something borderline psychotic) she runs without confronting the issue. The issue also never gets resolved because both Eva and Gideon seem to be of the opinion that sex solves all their problems (problems often caused by something revolving around sex). So they ‘fight’/ Eva sees something she doesn’t like, Eva runs, Gideon chases after her, they fuck, rinse and repeat. And while Gideon is a thousand times worse, it doesn’t mean that Eva isn’t emotionally manipulative and borderline toxic.

I think my favorite scene to explain how fucked up Eva’s priorities are is when she tells Gideon about her trauma. This is supposed to be an emotional scene, to develop a deeper connection and maybe we can finally understand why these two like each other besides them being attractive. Nothing of that sort happens of course, the emotions fall flat because you have no investment in the characters. When Gideon has the gall to pity her and not have an erection (the only sensible thing he’s ever done) Eva goes off. "“I don’t think you know how your desire makes me feel.” My arms wrapped around me, covering my breasts. I suddenly felt naked in the worst way. “It makes me feel beautiful. It makes me feel strong and alive. I—I can’t bear to be with you if you don’t feel that way about me anymore.”" Sorry that this man has one decent bone in his body (I was shocked as well) and doesn’t want to fuck you seconds after you told him about your rape. "I loosened the sash of my robe and shrugged the whole garment off me. “Look at me, Gideon. Look at my body. It’s the same one you couldn’t get enough of last night. The same one you were so desperate to get into that you took me to that damn hotel room. If you don’t want this anymore…if you don’t get hard looking at it—”
“Is this hard enough for you?” He broke the drawstring of his pants pushing them down to expose the heavy, thickly-veined length of his erection." Ah fuck, nevermind.

Well let’s get to undoubtedly the worst character in the book – Gideon Cross. He’s hot and controlling, that’s about all there is too him. No interests (besides fucking Eva), no hobbies, no friends, nothing. And I can’t lie I like the hot, brooding, damaged, often times toxic bad boy (I blame all the fanfiction I’ve read) but this was too much even for me. Gideon wasn’t protective or controlling he was abusive, creepy, kind of rapey, oh and sexist. Ignoring the obvious workplace harassment (he owns the building she works at) he repeatedly propositions her even after she’s said no. Actually 'no' , 'stop' and any of their synonyms have no meaning to Gideon Cross.

I’m pretty sure he’s been sexually assaulted as well so this makes no sense

When Eva tells him ‘no’ or ‘stop’ or ‘don’t kiss me’ does he do it? No, in fact he just continues

even after he knows about her rape, not that it was okay before he knew, but holy shit

. He stalks her, continually.

Knows where she lives (he owns her building and just looks it up, can someone say illegal) ‘sets up’ a meeting by somehow getting her to a club he owns to proposition her again, has her followed, knows everything about her friend and her Krav Maga trainer, makes a copy of her keys, steals her phone, takes pictures without her consent, knows (and owns) all of her makeup items by brand and shade and ah yes CREATES AN EXACT REPLICA OF HER ROOM IN HIS APARTMENT IN FOUR DAYS

Honestly I can’t remember all the awful things he’s done and I just finished this book a few hours ago, there were just too many. When I say he’s controlling, I mean he’s controlling.

Literally a day after their no-strings-attached-sex arrangement was made, he tells her „But to avoid any doubts, I’ll be clear and say there won’t be any other men for you, Eva.” and „Sharing you would bother me. It’s not an option. Your body belongs to me, Eva”.

He often says he wants to „mark” her and „possess” her. I literally wanted to hit him, or Eva for staying with this psycho.

I don’t know where to put this, but he tries to rape her in his sleep and while she’s scared out of her mind she still tries to fuck him afterwards and he just does. His sexually deviant nightmares are just one of the things that he should have gone to therapy for, but whatever.

Gideon is an emotionally abusive, sexist bastard but he’s hot so everything he does is totally accepted by everyone.

I just remembered something else and I’m going to mention FSOG later but it fits better here. After he shows her the creepy room he tells her that he thinks she’s submissive, she’s violently opposed to the idea and he just doesn’t care and still ‘makes her submit’. Oh and gives her a ring that they describe as ‘a collar’.

All in all, these are two deeply traumatized people, trying to navigate an incredibly unhealthy relationship and that back firing (no shit) and making them both worse. They have no reason to like each other, let alone love each other but they confuse their (almost magical) lust for each other as love. Also this has that whole ‘fixing your partner’ thing going on. Neither of these people can be ‘fixed’ and especially not by the other.

3. The Smut.

It was very clear from the beginning that this was just an excuse to write erotica, there was no need for the lack luster romance (if you can call it that). I’m going to put this here because I don’t know where else this should go: A lot of people have compared this to Fifty Shades of Gray. I have only ever skimmed FSOG but yeah I can see it: Inexplicably rich 28 yo with issues, 22 yo collage graduate with a job she has no reason or qualifications to have, a toxic relationship, dubious consent, etc. I can’t actually say if it is similar but what I can say is that even though FSOG was bad it at least had something new (for the mainstream) in it’s smut. Yes FSOG didn’t portray the BDSM community in a good way but at least it had something. In Bared to You, there was a lot of sex but never anything interesting, (oh wow a blow job how ground breaking) I’m not asking for knife play but just something other than missionary. And when we get something different, it’s wildly inappropriate for the characters.

At some point they start having sex at his parents house, the place where Gideon was sexually assaulted. The sentence could end there, but no. Both Eva and Gideon express how they don’t do butt play, two seconds later Eva asks him to finger her ass ‘because she thinks it will heal her’ tf? And he does it?! The writing in this scene is ridiculous, which is probably for the best:
"When the tip of his middle finger slid gossamer-soft over the pucker of my anus"
"He put the slightest pressure against my sensitive rosette, barely pressing.”
„His finger rimmed my anus over and over, pushing his semen into the puckered hole, a soft growl escaping him as it flexed in a silent plea for more. The next time he pressed against the ring, I pushed out and he slipped his fingertip inside me. The feeling of penetration was shockingly intense." And then she drips cum on his parents hardwood floors and it’s apparently the hottest thing he’s ever seen.

Honestly I can’t say I’ve ever regretted a purchase as much as this, I wasted my time and money and all I got was mad and disgusted. I can’t recommend this book to anyone, it has nothing going for it.

TLDR: The plot is nearly non-existent and so is the romance and the smut was pretty boring, the characters are awful and have no redeeming qualities or notable character development where you could say that there is hope for them. This book sucked.

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