I borrowed this book off of my friend because everyone was talking about it and after reading it I'm left wondering why. I have personally read way better erotic fiction. It could be that I didn't like it because of the use of bondage, which doesn't do it for me at all. Or it could be that the main male character was a domineering jerk that tried to buy love. But these are personal feelings and someone who is into BDSM may enjoy it. The scenes where the girl was beating beaten for sexual pleasure made me angry, because she clearly wasn't liking it. Then afterward the guy showered her with gifts, making me feel bad for her, because he was treating her like a prostitute, no matter how much he said he wasn't.
The male character was not appealing to me at all, and I found it difficult to believe that someone like Anastasia could fall in love with him so easily. That fact that she actually fell in love with someone like him made it hard for me to relate to her as a character and I slowly became disinterested in her and what was going on in her life. I slowly came to see her as desperate and unintelligent and that turned me off of her character completely.
So at this point I have no attachment to either of the main characters. Christian is the type of controlling jerkbag that I loathe and could never see myself being with , therefore even the sex scenes weren't exciting. Like how I would imagine having sex with someone I wasn't interested in: mechanical and chore-like. I kept reading thinking that he would redeem himself somehow, but he just kept getting worse until the point near the end that he beats her so badly during sex that she breaks it off with him while sobbing in pain. The scene was like a bad domestic violence situation, a subject I'm very touchy with, but my anti-bondage stance is part of my personal opinion and may not be a deal breaker for another reader.
Now I'm not saying the sex has to be romantic and fluffy, but I would prefer some sort of mutual emotional connection between the characters and not just some "contract".
In the end, I'm glad I didn't pay for this book and I also won"t be reading the rest in the series. My time is better wasted in other ways.
