This is a spoiler-free review! Please read trigger warnings - reader discretion advised. You can read my review of Corrupt on my blog, here.
I kicked myself in the shin the second I requested this on Libby - considering how much I wanted to pull my hair out while reading Corrupt, I do not even know why I did this to myself again. I had much lower expectations going into this second installment, and yet somehow it disappointed me even more than Corrupt. The "twist" was so obvious I could see it coming from the beginning, and the constant going back and forth between six years ago and present day felt redundant - there was only so much we could learn from the past before there was no more content. I will say the last 15% of this book finally had me locked in - it finally felt as though some major plot moves were happening and it was not riddled with constant recalls to the past.
Rika this, Rika that... enough is enough!! I literally do not care about that girl a single bit. Yet she seems to be the apple of everyone's eye - I thought we were completely over her after the first book. Yet she continues to be the driving force of the narrative, even when she is no longer the female lead. That being said, Banks as a lead was interesting only for her relationship to Damon - she was certainly an improvement compared to Rika, but she still just did not have that factor that i was looking for in a dark romance. And of course, where there is Rika, there is Michael. While his appearances were few and scattered, I still rolled my eyes every single time he manifested on page and ran around saying how Rika will always come before his "best friends," even though up until how many months ago was he actively ruining her life???
Kai as the male lead in this installment was an improvement to Michael, but only marginally so. I still felt some distrust towards him considering the way he acted in Corrupt, but he definitely improved now that he was not chasing down Rika and trying to ruin her life at every chance he got. That being said... we get it, he went to jail. Yes, he beat up someone, but it was an abusive cop, so I say we let it go and move on. It felt like every single chapter in Kai's perspective, he was either moping about the fact that him going to jail was the biggest shame his family experienced, or him trying to stalk around town following Banks. Honestly, I was starting to wish that Kai acted more unhinged at some points because at least the plot would have felt like it was moving or had some excitement.
Banks felt like her whole characterization was meant to make readers start to feel sympathetic towards Damon... obviously I hate what he went through as a child, but good grief the man is running around actively trying to kill his "friends" and go way too far with Rika. Banks providing all of this lore on him as he grew up and honestly how he was in the present could have been much more played up if Banks had an actual personality other than being held hostage and crying that she loves Damon. She had more guts than Rika, I will give her that. The fact that she actually was actively aware of her surroundings was an improvement beyond comprehension compared to... whatever Rika was doing in Corrupt.
This needed to be juicier, crazier, and frankly, freakier. I needed the wildness that Corrupt gave us with Michael and Rika but cranked up hundred times, and instead we got a few little smutty chapters that cut much shorter than they should have. If Douglas did not spend so much time having the characters not use their braincells, then things would have wrapped up much quicker and maybe we would have been treated to some debauchery instead of lackluster problem-solving.
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