A review by jellystorm
Bound by Secrets by Mia Sian

dark emotional

2.0

First of all, let me say that while I get the author was trying to do a whole thing with the FMC’s family names, having all of the siblings (including the estranged little sister) and the mom start with the same letter and sound is just a wild choice for a book. And then adding another C character and K name with the same sound?? I was SO confused for the whole first part of the book. 

 

I also think the depictions of the main character’s assaults were unnecessarily explicit. Like. I get that it was traumatic for her (hell it was traumatic for me) and I get that the author seems to want to underline that trauma in red ink. 

 

But I just can’t see any good reason beyond pure prurient shock value as to why that scene should have been given just as much detail and attention as the love scenes. 

 

I’m just going to come out and say that the writing wasn’t very good. It wasn’t (by far unfortunately) the worst I’ve read, but by the third time the author used “slither” instead of “sliver” I was completely over it. 

 

And it wasn’t just errors, the writing was just not very good. The laptop scene felt almost like it should have involved a railroad and twirly mustache. It made no plot sense, the dad storyline felt like it was being made up as I read it, and the book ended like I was reading an unfinished draft and they just hadn’t gotten the last chapter in yet. 

 

There were several problematic parts as well, most notably was the line about one of the characters being a lesbian and, as such, perfectly happy to help a female character bathe after she’d been tortured and suffered an attempted SA that I felt was beyond tasteless. There was a disconcerting air of “no homo” with one of the guys too that (early on when I still had hope) I had assumed would be resolved. No such luck. 

 

All in all this book took me a week to finish what should have been done in a couple days. No idea why I didn't just DNF it.