I really struggle with how to numerically rate this book. I feel like I should warn you that this is one of those books where the rating doesn't matter as much as the review. Depending on how you feel about the way I describe the book from my perspective, you may either agree with my numerical rating or you may totally disagree.
The most objective thing I can tell you is that I didn't think the book lived up to its premise. The idea of the book is that Ella is a participant in this game where nothing is what it seems and for 7 days, she has to "win" challenges and not break any of the 5 game rules. As the book goes on, there are several indications that the point of the game is for Ella to learn some broader lessons than just surviving whatever the particular challenge is. I'm really walking a tight rope here so that I don't give too much away but basically the game seems like it's about sex when in fact, there's sort of more to it.
The most objective issue with this book is that at the end of the book, I really didn't understand the damn game. Not only did I somehow miss the purpose of the game but I felt like Ella missed it too. And I was very confused by how she sorta won and sorta lost...I mean, really, I'm still confused. There were even sub-themes to each day which Ella appeared to fail but neither she nor I seemed to know why. There are two days in the game, day 3 and day 6, for which I am absolutely without a clue. Especially day 6....like what the HELL was that??
There are three other players in the game and I'm also totally not clear about what their roles were. I am most unclear about Preston and the character referred to as "Three." And I won't tell you the who but some of the characters develop "feelings" for each other that I totally do not understand. This is not a short book and you get through the whole entire thing without ever learning anything about Tobias, Preston or Three. Not only do we not learn anything but Ella doesn't either. So, how anyone in this book develops feelings for anyone else is a total mystery to me.
Another objective issue for me was that the book is written 95% from Ella's POV and about 5% from Tobias' POV. To the extent that Ella is in the dark about a lot of things in the book, so are we. After about the 50% mark, I was just like 'oh for fucks sake' what is going on?' (a question which was never completely answered).
The last thing I can tell you is purely subjective and it's about the erotic content of the book: #Distewmuch---that was my first thought when I finished this book. I'm a hardcore erotic romance fan. Nobody can really outdo me in that department but even I found the sheer amount of sex in this book to be....a bit much (to put it mildly). I think what happened is that this book was originally several short installments. If you extracted the sex scenes and put them into installments, they might have been less overwhelming. But when you put those scenes back to back in one book, the effect is much different. And then, it's just like a free for all- M/F, F/F, M/M, M/F/M, M/M/F, it was everything but animals. It was just A LOT. And the sex starts so quickly that I almost lost interest in the book. Like, I'm all about loading up for the spank bank library but I like a little plot with my porn and it took awhile for the plot to develop in this book.
This is what I can tell you: If you are most interested in erotic content, your life won't be complete until you read this. If you were most intrigued by the story premise and hoping for some psychological thrill, you're going to be disappointed.
**ARC provided by Give Me Books Promotions**
