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A review by femmefatale808
Man's Weakness by Smauggy
3.0
Okay, so I initially rated this book at 4 stars in my head but things took a really irritating turn for me somewhere towards the latter half of the midpoint. Hence why I rated it a 3.
As someone who enjoys being able to read Black female characters as damsels, as women who are allowed to tap into their womanhood and fully rest in it much like their white counterparts, there is a limit. It goes against all those mainstream tropes where Black women are never allowed to be saved and cherished enough to warrant that type of consideration. I loved that part, but again, there is a limit. Gabrielle jumped from damsel in distress to reckless idiot in no time at all. I liked her and I enjoyed her but she was the only one in this story to work every last nerve I had. The guys irritated me in the first 2 books but all of my irritation was dedicated to Gabrielle in this one. Holy cow! She had no sense of self-preservation.
Gabrielle made choices in this book that made me wonder how she managed to survive this long. Coupled with the trauma she experienced in the past and her age, you would think she would know better than to literally run off with the bad guys. Like, she became the innocent little kid willingly getting into the van with the stranger who promised her candy. That's what she did. She made a less than smart decision to track down a human trafficking victim and she truly believed that quite literally everyone could be trusted. Why? Honestly, I'm just glad this entire ordeal made her wake up and smell the coffee. Because I tend to stay away from stories that deal with plots like that. Not because of how heavy the subject matter is, but because I know how unrealistic it is for anyone to successfully save a victim of such a thing and it usually just agitates me to think about. Let alone read about.
She wanted to save the world but she got hit with reality and I was happy to see that. Because she was acting as if she had no streets smarts or common sense, which was a disappointment to me. I almost DNFed it. Luckily, she came to her senses because I spent the entire last half of this book cursing her name. Which is not how I felt going into this series. But this book was far more interesting than the first 2 because there seemed to be a lot more going on. I just could have done without the human trafficking plot. This book would have been almost perfect had that not been a part of this story.
As someone who enjoys being able to read Black female characters as damsels, as women who are allowed to tap into their womanhood and fully rest in it much like their white counterparts, there is a limit. It goes against all those mainstream tropes where Black women are never allowed to be saved and cherished enough to warrant that type of consideration. I loved that part, but again, there is a limit. Gabrielle jumped from damsel in distress to reckless idiot in no time at all. I liked her and I enjoyed her but she was the only one in this story to work every last nerve I had. The guys irritated me in the first 2 books but all of my irritation was dedicated to Gabrielle in this one. Holy cow! She had no sense of self-preservation.
Gabrielle made choices in this book that made me wonder how she managed to survive this long. Coupled with the trauma she experienced in the past and her age, you would think she would know better than to literally run off with the bad guys. Like, she became the innocent little kid willingly getting into the van with the stranger who promised her candy. That's what she did. She made a less than smart decision to track down a human trafficking victim and she truly believed that quite literally everyone could be trusted. Why? Honestly, I'm just glad this entire ordeal made her wake up and smell the coffee. Because I tend to stay away from stories that deal with plots like that. Not because of how heavy the subject matter is, but because I know how unrealistic it is for anyone to successfully save a victim of such a thing and it usually just agitates me to think about. Let alone read about.
She wanted to save the world but she got hit with reality and I was happy to see that. Because she was acting as if she had no streets smarts or common sense, which was a disappointment to me. I almost DNFed it. Luckily, she came to her senses because I spent the entire last half of this book cursing her name. Which is not how I felt going into this series. But this book was far more interesting than the first 2 because there seemed to be a lot more going on. I just could have done without the human trafficking plot. This book would have been almost perfect had that not been a part of this story.