ARC: Sweet Captivity, By Julia Sykes

I received an advanced copy of "Sweet Captivity", in exchange for an honest review.

In general these are my thoughts of the overall book: I did not like this, at all. I hate when I have to do it, but this one will be a “DNF” for me (around the 60% mark.) It was very cringey at most points, and just seemed like both MCs were extremely delusional on their own, and it just seemed to romanticize rape and sexual assault. I love a good dark romance, but this went beyond romance, and was just dark. I often felt like I was reading the backstory to a true crime story and what lead up to something tragic. And I did not get this from the blurb. 

I will say, the writing was well done. Meaning it flowed, it was consistent; If I had assigned my students a paper- without taking into consideration the actual storyline, but the technicalities of the paper, it would be a passing grade. But considering the storyline and elements of the plot- I didn’t care for it. There’s no way I’m going to like a character who’s just willingly assaulting a woman and mentally manipulating her, and trying to pass it off as love. No thank you.

For this remainder of this review, I'm going to break down my thoughts every quarter of the way through the book. It's a dark BDSM; I've read a large deal of dark romances, so I'm familiar with the various sub-genres. 

**The following below does contain some spoilers.

25% - so far, I'm not too keen on the book anymore. It started off pretty good, with Samantha being captured by Cristian, and then being handed off to Andres. I initially was thinking Andres was going to be rough in general, but still calm when it came to her. His level of BDSM is not my cup of tea at all. And he's basically psychologically manipulating her into sexual experiences. And confusing her natural biological responses, to her wanting to be touched (non-consensual, is non-consensual, no matter what her body is saying.) She keeps asking him not to touch her or rape her, and he still keeps going... And then he's saying he will be her Master, and she will be his "slave." A hard pass for me. I've read a lot of BDSM books, and they've never been to this level, toeing the line of rape. I've even read books with themes of "non-consensual consent." This is not that. And his obliviousness has me often questioning if he's mentally unstable, and not in an "hot, unhinged way," but literally suffering from some type of mental disability... And I'm pretty confused with Samantha; she's supposed to be this FBI agent, but I'm just getting 'freelance hacker' vibes from her. No type of fight or anything. And then we quickly dusted over the fact that she stalks her bestfriend Dex. In short- it's a lot to unpack in this first quarter. And at this point, I'm not impressed, unfortunately.

50%- still super cringe feelings towards this book. it's coming across as glorifying rape, and trying to romanticize this and sexual assault. not something that I would consciously read with no qualms. it's one thing if it happens to one of the main characters, as a part of their side or backstories, but for it to be happening between the FMC and MMC who are supposed to be "falling for each other" at some point, is super ill and makes zero sense. This girl is acting under duress, and trying to surviving- and they're both, at this point, confusing that, with her actually naturally falling in love with him. 

60%- I’ve passed the halfway mark and I’m still not into this storyline. I’ve really tried with this book, but I cannot see myself finishing this one up- at least not right now. If I do decided to finish- I’ll update here.