shelbanuadh's review
1.0
First off, I loved the first book in this series.... though I didn't realize it was going to be a series at the time, since the ending seemed quite conclusive for me. As soon as I saw that there was going to be a second book, I knew I would read it. I didn't even bother reading the blurb, figuring it would most likely be just as enjoyable as the first.
Boy, was I wrong.
If it wasn't for the fact that this was the sequel to a book I quite enjoyed, I would have stopped reading this before even finishing the first chapter. As it was, I almost decided to mark it as a DNF by the time I got to the end of Chapter 4.
The "new administration" mentioned in the blurb is obviously non-other than Trump. There's mentions of MAGA (Make America Great Again) red hats, Charlottesville, Russian trolls, Nazis, white supremacists, White Nationalis, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Milo Yiannopolous, 4chan.... all before Chapter 5. There's further mention of doxing, "Russia crap", Stuxnet, presidential tweets, Republicans, etc. I hate politics. Even in Canada, you can't turn on a news station without reading some new nonsense the current POTUS is spouting. So I definitely don't want to pick up a book, hoping for some leisurely escapism, only to be reading the same things you get slammed with everyday in the news.
As for the hacking stuff, there were a few things in the first book that I didn't really understand what Hunter was talking about, not being overly tech savvy, but this one had a few more moments where my eyes just glazed over while Hunter goes on about TOR browers, ISP sniffing, deep dives, etc.
Moving on to antagonists for this book.... I would have rather Chad not be involved in this book at all. I didn't like him in the first book, not just because he is a rapist, but because he was not an interesting character. I suppose Hunter had to have a way to deal with unresolved issues/feelings, so writing Chad in as a bad guy... but he is still just as uninteresting in this book as the first. As for the puppet master pulling Chad's strings, it was pretty obvious right from the start. After all, everyone knows dogs are an excellent judge of character.
The plot was predictable. With all the political and tech talk being thrown around, it made for a long read. It took me almost 4 days to wade through this. And the ending was anything but conclusive, which leads me to believe there will be a third book.... which I definitely won't be reading.
I have to say, the biggest disappointment in this book, for me, was Hunter and Cal. The push/pull relationship and the UST of the first book wasn't there... which, seeing as they are now living in domestic bliss, I guess shouldn't come as a surprise. But things were just too smooth sailing with them. Having little disagreements leading to spankings, which then led to sex scenes just didn't work for me. Even though there was twice the smut in this book compared to the first (3 of which are even before the halfway mark, which I found made things a little unbalanced), it wasn't half as good as what the first book delivered. I felt like the smut was relying more on kink than chemistry. Throwing in some Daddy kink, spanking, DP with a dildo, bondage, etc. doesn't automatically make for good smut. I actually found myself skimming over the last scene. None of the scenes packed half the punch of the last sex scene in the first book.... or even the first scene in the first book.
One last thing, the paragraph formatting for this book is odd. I would almost say that this book was co-written by having each other write a paragraph and then hand it over to the other person. It does make it somewhat difficult to follow who is speaking at times. Like, you'll often have one character's dialogue split up into two paragraphs needlessly, and you don't realize until the third paragraph that the second paragraph was still the first character talking and the third paragraph was the second character responding. It was something that I noticed in the first book, but didn't mind because I was enjoying other elements of the book too much. But, seeing as I didn't enjoy any element of this book, that formatting just was jarring.
I'm really disappointed that this book didn't work for me. I loved the first book, and this just didn't even feel like I was reading about the same characters from the same authors.
Boy, was I wrong.
If it wasn't for the fact that this was the sequel to a book I quite enjoyed, I would have stopped reading this before even finishing the first chapter. As it was, I almost decided to mark it as a DNF by the time I got to the end of Chapter 4.
The "new administration" mentioned in the blurb is obviously non-other than Trump. There's mentions of MAGA (Make America Great Again) red hats, Charlottesville, Russian trolls, Nazis, white supremacists, White Nationalis, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Milo Yiannopolous, 4chan.... all before Chapter 5. There's further mention of doxing, "Russia crap", Stuxnet, presidential tweets, Republicans, etc. I hate politics. Even in Canada, you can't turn on a news station without reading some new nonsense the current POTUS is spouting. So I definitely don't want to pick up a book, hoping for some leisurely escapism, only to be reading the same things you get slammed with everyday in the news.
As for the hacking stuff, there were a few things in the first book that I didn't really understand what Hunter was talking about, not being overly tech savvy, but this one had a few more moments where my eyes just glazed over while Hunter goes on about TOR browers, ISP sniffing, deep dives, etc.
Moving on to antagonists for this book.... I would have rather Chad not be involved in this book at all. I didn't like him in the first book, not just because he is a rapist, but because he was not an interesting character. I suppose Hunter had to have a way to deal with unresolved issues/feelings, so writing Chad in as a bad guy... but he is still just as uninteresting in this book as the first. As for the puppet master pulling Chad's strings, it was pretty obvious right from the start. After all, everyone knows dogs are an excellent judge of character.
The plot was predictable. With all the political and tech talk being thrown around, it made for a long read. It took me almost 4 days to wade through this. And the ending was anything but conclusive, which leads me to believe there will be a third book.... which I definitely won't be reading.
I have to say, the biggest disappointment in this book, for me, was Hunter and Cal. The push/pull relationship and the UST of the first book wasn't there... which, seeing as they are now living in domestic bliss, I guess shouldn't come as a surprise. But things were just too smooth sailing with them. Having little disagreements leading to spankings, which then led to sex scenes just didn't work for me. Even though there was twice the smut in this book compared to the first (3 of which are even before the halfway mark, which I found made things a little unbalanced), it wasn't half as good as what the first book delivered. I felt like the smut was relying more on kink than chemistry. Throwing in some Daddy kink, spanking, DP with a dildo, bondage, etc. doesn't automatically make for good smut. I actually found myself skimming over the last scene. None of the scenes packed half the punch of the last sex scene in the first book.... or even the first scene in the first book.
One last thing, the paragraph formatting for this book is odd. I would almost say that this book was co-written by having each other write a paragraph and then hand it over to the other person. It does make it somewhat difficult to follow who is speaking at times. Like, you'll often have one character's dialogue split up into two paragraphs needlessly, and you don't realize until the third paragraph that the second paragraph was still the first character talking and the third paragraph was the second character responding. It was something that I noticed in the first book, but didn't mind because I was enjoying other elements of the book too much. But, seeing as I didn't enjoy any element of this book, that formatting just was jarring.
I'm really disappointed that this book didn't work for me. I loved the first book, and this just didn't even feel like I was reading about the same characters from the same authors.
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