Let’s get into the specifics, because the plot deserves its own dressing-down.

Misery spends the entire book harping on about how close she is to Serena, how they were basically joined at the hip when they were young girls, knew each other inside out, all of that. And she somehow doesn’t know that Serena is half-werewolf? Come on. I could just about digest her not knowing if Serena couldn’t physically shift, but apparently Serena can shift, conveniently, the moment the plot needs her to, and has been doing so on full moons. How do you miss that? How do you miss the extra strength, the keener eyesight, the heightened smell? It is just unfathomable that this is the twist the book hangs a major reveal on. Yes, I know we’re in a world of vampires and werewolves. That doesn’t mean the world also gets to be sans logic. It was one of those you’ve gotta be kidding me moments.

And then for the other twist, of course Misery’s father is the ultimate villain. Who could have possibly guessed? The cold-blooded, distant father, who is conspicuously the one obvious bad-coded character in the book, is in fact the bad guy. Groundbreaking. I genuinely don’t think the book makes any effort to misdirect on this one - it’s the most obvious choice imaginable, and the book commits to it with a straight face.

Then there’s Lowe. Lowe talks a big game about being able to sense when someone is deceiving him, when someone is lying to him, his whole supernatural read-the-room ability. And he completely fails to clock that Nick has been deceiving him, for that long. It’s so forced. You can’t set up a character’s defining ability and then turn it off whenever the plot needs a betrayal to land.

All of these plot points were questionable, but honestly, I could have digested all of it and written the book off as a fun, casual romance novel with some sloppy worldbuilding. That’s a perfectly acceptable type of book to exist. But ugghhhh… the explicit adult content. Why? And more importantly, why can’t the marketing be upfront about it? Fifty Shades doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. If this book wanted to be in that lane, that’s fine, but be honest about it. I just cannot get past the fact that this was sold as one thing and turned out to be another.