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Sunday, November 27, 2016

Review: Echo by A. Zavarelli

 The Blurb:
 
 How far would you go to save someone you love? Would you give up your body? Your mind? Your heart?

I did and it cost me everything.

He says he owns me. And it’s true.

I’ve signed over complete control of my body and life for six months to a man I don’t know. Five years he’s been planning this. They say revenge is a dish best served cold. But my blackmailer serves it up white hot. He’s addicted to my innocence, and I’m addicted to him.

He likes to hurt me. I love to let him. He brings me to life. He sets me free. He makes my heart feel things it shouldn’t.

But he also scares me. He holds the fate of my brother’s life in his hands. A life behind bars for crimes I know he didn’t commit. My blackmailer can’t give up his revenge on my family, and I can’t be with him if he doesn’t. But I’m nothing more than a butterfly caught in his net. Do I really have a choice?


 
First of all, I dug right into this because I absolutely LOVED Zavarelli’s Boston Underworld series. That series was AMAZEBALLS. So I went in expecting to absolutely love this one as well.

Wellll….I didn’t hate it. The premise was complex and there was a helluva lot to follow when it came to relevant people, places, and things. The protagonist, Brighton, is 16 years old and depressed because her brother is about to go to prison for a hit and run that killed some people. At his going away party, she meets a nameless Ryland who is clearly older than her, and though she has no idea who he is or his relationship to her brother, she knows he’s one sexy sonofabitch. Fair. Ryland comes onto her, then makes sort of a weird “to be continued” exit.



Fast forward to 5 years later. Brighton begins conveniently interning for a billion-dollar tech corporation, courtesy of some random girl she met in the park. Okay. Random girl even invites Brighton to come live with her in her swanky loft apartment in downtown San Francisco. I mean, I gotta get out more apparently.



Lo and behold, Mr. Nameless is none other than Ryland Bennett, CEO of the company and swoon-worthy creeper that she met when she was 16. He doesn’t appear to remember her, though. S’okay, girlfriend. We’ve all been there?

But Brighton can’t let go of her obsession with Ryland. Until she is met with a rather random distraction-someone is trying to blackmail her in exchange for evidence that could get her brother out of prison. What does the blackmailer want? Only for her to be his sex slave for the next 6 months.


Pictured above: potential blackmailer, in my mind.

Hey, I don’t have an older brother…but this is one of those scenarios where I feel like the older brother would have absolutely, without a doubt, said NO NO NO to this. And as the younger sis, I’d be leaning heavily towards OK OK OK. But anyways, as you might’ve guessed, that’s not what Brighton does. Girl jumps right in.

So she begins sleeping with this stranger, who keeps her blindfolded at all times at the beginning. Dude’s into heavy BDSM, and (fortunately, I guess?) for Brighton, she digs it. From there, things get really complicated. The plot is set up to be more of a suspense, I think, and in that regard there is a lot of potential. But what lost me was the point where Brighton begins putting some of the pieces together and still forges on. There were several places where I think it would have been more believable for Brighton to walk away. Instead, she falls in love with her captor, who the book makes no bones about illustrating as fucking psychotic. But that's okay, because Brighton knows that somewhere, deep down, he's :::sniffle:::more than a monster. Ugh.



The ending at least explains how everyone knows each other, and the reasons for the blackmail, etc. Ends on a cliffy. I was intrigued enough to start checking out the sequel, but admittedly not enough to finish it.

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