Scan barcode
A review by thereadingwren
Voyeur by Fiona Cole
1.0
1.5/5
I'm so annoyed with this. I had such high expectations and at the beginning it was promising, a little boring but promising. Then it crashed and burned.
The Voyeur part of it was super cool and I wish they'd spent more time at the bar, it was the most fascinating part of the whole story.
Cal was great at first then turned into a huge dickhead. His jealousy, lack of communication, and instinct to say hateful things was freaking awful and honestly veering on abusive. He was the biggest hypocrite towards Oaklyn working at Voyeur when that's where he first met her and a place he frequents. Some of his behaviour could be explained by the fact that he's an alcoholic but that doesn't excuse any of it.
Oaklyn was also not great. She didn't have much of a personality and constantly caved to whatever Cal wanted. He didn't want her to work at Voyeur, so she suddenly starts feeling uncomfortable working there. She never wanted to borrow money from people but when Cal breaks up with her after offering the money she suddenly flips her morals and wants the money.
Both of their worlds revolved around each other and it made for uninteresting characters.
Now my biggest annoyance with this was the sexual assault and PTSD rep. As a sexual assault survivor I can guarantee that when I had a flashback to my trauma while with someone I never wanted have sex a few minutes later. TRAUMA IS TRAUMATISING, it's not something you can brush off that easily and go right back to the activity that triggered you. Every time Cal was triggered they paused their sexy time, talked for a second, then went right on having sex. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME! It was honestly hard to read that over and over again. It actually feels like it was minimalizing trauma.
This book makes me mad. I wanted it to be so good but it's probably going to end up on my Worst of 2021 list.
There's a slim chance I'll read the next book because it focuses on Jackson, and I'm always down to read bisexual characters.
I'm so annoyed with this. I had such high expectations and at the beginning it was promising, a little boring but promising. Then it crashed and burned.
The Voyeur part of it was super cool and I wish they'd spent more time at the bar, it was the most fascinating part of the whole story.
Cal was great at first then turned into a huge dickhead. His jealousy, lack of communication, and instinct to say hateful things was freaking awful and honestly veering on abusive. He was the biggest hypocrite towards Oaklyn working at Voyeur when that's where he first met her and a place he frequents. Some of his behaviour could be explained by the fact that he's an alcoholic but that doesn't excuse any of it.
Oaklyn was also not great. She didn't have much of a personality and constantly caved to whatever Cal wanted. He didn't want her to work at Voyeur, so she suddenly starts feeling uncomfortable working there. She never wanted to borrow money from people but when Cal breaks up with her after offering the money she suddenly flips her morals and wants the money.
Both of their worlds revolved around each other and it made for uninteresting characters.
Now my biggest annoyance with this was the sexual assault and PTSD rep. As a sexual assault survivor I can guarantee that when I had a flashback to my trauma while with someone I never wanted have sex a few minutes later. TRAUMA IS TRAUMATISING, it's not something you can brush off that easily and go right back to the activity that triggered you. Every time Cal was triggered they paused their sexy time, talked for a second, then went right on having sex. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME! It was honestly hard to read that over and over again. It actually feels like it was minimalizing trauma.
This book makes me mad. I wanted it to be so good but it's probably going to end up on my Worst of 2021 list.
There's a slim chance I'll read the next book because it focuses on Jackson, and I'm always down to read bisexual characters.