A review by smoothunicorn
Dirty Love by Ainsley Booth

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

2.75

Didn’t love it. I found the characters a little too hard to care about and the overarching plot (white nationalist group + presidential election + gambling + kidnapping + human trafficking + whatever the hell else was doing on) to be overly complex for the length of the novel. The balance between that part of the plot and the romance part was okay, but it was really hard to get fully into either of them. The pace moved very quickly, and while I liked the idea of the secret affair as the beginning of their romance, I guess I was expecting Wilson to be more…dangerous? But instead he was kind of a cinnamon roll. Not a problem for me usually but in this case he had a bit more golden retriever energy than I was expecting. Not that he’s a golden retriever - but he’s not really a Doberman either. 

Anyway, spice level is very high, everyone is very tragically fucked up, and the book never lets you forget it because each of their POVs talk about how fucked up they are in the internal dialogue but then neither of them does anything really fucked up.