Rating: 3.5
Steam: 3
PoV: dual, 1st person
Series: Jared & Kieran #2
Genre: contemporary romance, BDSM, MM
Tropes / tags: age gap, Daddy kink, past abuse
“I’ve learned a long time ago that happiness is at the end of our fingertips. It won’t come to us; we have to reach for it and grab it, or close our hand and deny ourselves. Everything I have—even Marco—is because I refused to close my hand.”
This review may contain spoilers.
While I had a lot of conflicted feelings about Jared’s Evolution (see my review here), I still felt invested in Jared’s character development and I was curious about his HEA.
Most of my thoughts and suspicions that I had about Kieran from the first book proved to be right, and the dual PoV helped a lot with getting to know him and understanding his actions. Their dynamic still felt off to me, and while I understand that Kieran thought he was protecting Jared, Jared still ended up being hurt.
I loved Jared’s character development, and I really enjoyed seeing him explore his submission and find some inner peace. His determination was impressive and I liked that he stood his ground for what he deserved. It was tough though to see him feeling lost and seeking out other Doms while he and Kieran were apart, even if the break up was needed for them to find the way back to each other. His need for structure, routine and schedules became very apparent, and even if he did his best to provide those things for himself, it just wasn’t the same.
This duet was overall well written, with some interesting notes on BDSM and society, but sadly the dynamic between the characters never fully worked for me. The character development was great though, and I really enjoyed the freedom and peace that Jared found in his submission.
I wanted to feel possessed by him, owned by him. Wanted him to claim my body as his. To hurt me in the best possible way and make me lose my mind because there was so much freedom in that.
Book links:
Amazon | Goodreads | BookBub | StoryGraph
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