A review by 831bookworm
Taboo: A Dark Romance Collection by Stasia Black

dark emotional funny inspiring reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Virgin & The Beast  
A retelling of Beauty and the Beast story but he wants a baby, and maybe some other things along the way. Will she fall in love with the Beast and let him be her Master?

The first act is mostly the setup and her accepting the deal, where the heroine lead’s personality is “set”. That feels weird because of what happens in Act 2, where it seems like almost all original personality is replaced by regular sub-space mentality and Stockholm syndrome like redundancies. 
 
In the middle act she basically makes a 180 on how to approach the situation,
after being kept in a pig pen for several days
and basically quickly falls under the physical manipulation of her captor and settles in. 
 
The backstory of the Beast (Xavier) comes out in the final few chapters along with meeting his father. Along with several time jumps with verbal declarations/internal realizations that kinda make it feel like the majority of the plot is in the third act. 
 
It was well written in itself, but I did not like the way Xavier treated Mel during the beginning of the story, and there was too much resistance in her mind (he gave no context) to make me think she was actually enjoying the dom/sub dynamics vs the actual physical pleasure of what he was doing. Then when she changes her mind and there is just some *warning warning* lights before she submits to falling in love with him, despite still having thoughts about how the power dynamics between them need to change… it doesnt paint Xavier in a good light and distances me from him and what he is doing to Mel. That with the followup of horse scenes where Mel accurately surmises that he is treating her like breaking in a mare made me totally disengage from Xavier by the “imprisonment” scene I mentioned earlier. 
 
Also maybe some slight “virgin blindness” from Melanie as she was a virgin when she left him and he was so large but she was able to take him with little pain and just some soreness the next day….? I am not convinced. her personality was dampened by the sex and she did not push back until she was pregnant and then given some “publicly shown market value” back, i.e. being able to feed herself. 

Daddy’s Sweet Girl 
Stepdad is a predator to his son and his new stepdaughter, perhaps in spite of this the stepson and stepdaughter fall in love and the father is ousted as an abusive kinky asshole.
 
Paul Winters = stepdad #3, blonde with grey at temples, viking-like, mid 40s, 6’3, head of oncology, beard, green eyes, 
Dominick = stepbrother, 24 yo, looks like dad, doctor, clean shaven, hazel eyes, 
Sarah = daughter, part of Boston old families, 19 yo, dark brunette, 
 
Things that stick out: 
- Paul asks her to call him “Dad” if she is comfortable with it, she is 
- Dominick seems to really have feelings for her, while Paul seems to be only in it for the kink 
- Dom and Paul have some sort of agreement about Sarah, she has heard of it but isn’t investigating anything until the third act when she learns that Paul paid Sarah’s mom to marry her and “give Sarah to him”. 
- Paul is the original crush but he is the predator, but Dominick is the true love that she returns to. After he finally stands up to his dad about his abuse. 

Hurts so Good
A man with a dark past who likes it rough meets a woman with her own dark past, and together they find the pleasure within all the pain.

The grittiness of this story really makes it seem like a cathartic memoir-ish story, there is an abusive powerful ex, physiological changes on both sides that cant be undone, and familial trauma which spiders out effecting everyone in the family. I really appreciated the realism within the story, but it did not sufficiently "answer" all the questions or add the context I wanted I had once the author had gone deeper in those areas; what was the dynamic between the father and mother, where exactly did Darren's proclivities come from, why was Dylan "into" his kinks (Miranda was explained but not him), etc. With such a deeply emotive and sensitive story, it seemed like these bits would add more texture to the characters and the underlying representation/messaging of "kinky/rough/pain-pleasure relations". I don't think the author was trying to tropify the things that happened to the characters, but without the individual context it does seem a little like "insert here" plot devices with a story of this nature.

Another thing I have noticed with this author is that they have great plot/world lay down and character building in the first 2 acts, but it all kinda speeds off the edge of the cliff to abruptly end in the final chapters of the [rushed] third act. i.e. the way that Dylan deals with Darren and his actions is a little rushed, there is some slight conversation, but it was over too quickly for me/my evaluation of Darren as a character. And then there is a
marriage proposal
at the end which seems to come from left field, lobbed from Chloe "off page". Its elements like this, quickly in the final two chapters, that makes it seem like the train suddenly loses steam once the major character/relationship snag is handled.

Without remorse 
An agoraphobic cam girl and a Russian gangster trying to move up the ranks meet and 
 
There is some great unexpected plot details and pivots that kept the drama and tension high throughout the first and second act. Sometimes the final act is sped through or patched up enough to end, but this one was pretty high tension throughout until the very end. Which, reading quite a few novellas now, is such a welcome ending to a short read - the crescendo is ridden out until the end with a satisfying fade into black. And despite having very trope-y elements of a mafia story, I found the characters to be rounded fun people that distracted you from the fact that if this were a movie, there were maybe 3-4 different backdrops in the entire story. To me, this illustrates how much of the read was carried by the characters themselves and their relationships to each other. 
 
Something to note, I had never read a story with a protagonist that is agoraphobic and the author did a great job of [realistically] including this disorder into the romance, in fact it was the catalyst for Sloane and Nicholas. That coupled with the counterintuitive virgin [cam girl] status when they do finally really touch, their connection immediate and intense. It also took the kinky steamy scenes and gave them another layer of meaning, to Sloane and Nicholas as well as the underlying plot. 
 
Nicholas is a good from-Russia-to-America man with a hard life backstory, thus why he’s associated with Papa and his gang, and it’s interesting to see how this affects Sloane. She is an American born and bred girl who lost her parents young and has a debilitating phobia/anxiety but other than that, she has had a very good life in comparison to his. As she is brought into his world and the sagely Babulya shares her immigrant story, Sloane starts to reevaluate the way that she sees things, specifically that Nicholas did not take her freedom - perhaps she did. 
 
*Im noticing a lot more cats being included in the romance books, perhaps because of the perfect physical and metaphorical companion to a female lead. Ramona the cat serves a reminder of the golden rule “if the kitty likes him, he’s passed the pu*sy test”. But it also serves as a vehicle for the male lead to show his softer side, by securing her cat (creatures notorious for their escape/hiding skills) he’s showing he cares to spend the time and effort to take care of something that is important to her. 
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