3.5 stars ⭐️ whew. Guys what is it about Pepper Winters? Her stories are BEYOND addicting, even when I usually get annoyed with the heroine and love the anti hero. There’s always this bit of a cheesy quality to everything but at the same time I DEVOUR these?! I enjoyed this and after that cliffhanger I am onnnn to the next! Please check TW for this though, captive romances are not everyone’s cup of tea.

me @ pepper winters when i pick up a fourth book of hers that features the same godawful topic of sex trafficking where to begin with this review phew.. i love dark romance as a genre and i know that in a lot of books the topic of trafficking is usually present but how the fuck can i get behind the characters' relationship when it's the actual hero that takes part in such a disgusting practice?? but wait a minute because not everything is bad, sully the supposed H, is a VEGETARIAN! yes you got that right, in some twisted fucked up logic of his, he thinks that what he does to all these women, the dealing and buying and forcing them drugs and basically having them get raped by his clients who pay him thousands of dollars IS OKAY because animals get treated way worse. THAT'S THIS MANS LOGIC, MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!! if humans treat animals so bad, he's allowed to treat women like they are nothing but livestock or a commodity. LMAOOOO i swear the nerve of this dude. i guess the author thinks that because the man is an animal lover and protector, all is good and we can turn a blind eye on his extracurricular activities of owning an epsteinesque tropical island where he has sex slaves. you know who else was a vegetarian? HITLER. i guess we all have to see past the awful shit they did because they DoN't eAt MeAt. sully literally gets angry at the fact that our heroine is ALSO a vegetarian, saying "how dare she be a vegetarian?" as if thinking now he has to treat her right because she also doesn't eat meat. I WAS ABOUT TO LOSE MY SHIT WHEN I READ THAT I COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING. and that's not all of it.. sully not only is a vegetarian but he's also working with scientists TO FIND A CURE FOR CANCER HAHAHAHAHHA jesus f christ i swear i cannot make this shit up. he was literally the poster child for the nobel peace prize, greenpeace and PETA with only the minor detail that HE IS A SEX TRAFFICKER. JUST A TINY DETAIL! another thing that i could not stand was the author's purple prose. it didn't fit the tone of the book nor the content of it. it's a book about the heroine being sex trafficked and now has to fuck 4 dudes a month for 4 years to gain her freedom back, i think the poetic writing was just a bif off with what was actually going on, it was too much, too OTT and it wasn't particularly to my taste. the feeling i got was that it was somehow romanticizing the paradisiacal island the heroine was trapped in and making the whole experience sound like an idyllic dream instead of ya'know, the reality of being a sex slave. i'm usually all for purple prose but not this time. regardless of how i felt about the hero, this book took a turn at the end that *almost* saved the book for me. so here's where my confusion comes into play. in this book the women captured and bought by sully are force-fed a drug that makes them compliant and overly sexualized so that they could not say no to any advances made at them by the clients. once drugged they are prepared to enter 'euphoria' which from the sound of it, it felt like it's a virtual reality program designed by sully where the clients can live out their fantasies. here's my dilemma: does the fantasy happen in virtual reality or do they actually physically have sex with the goddesses?? the concept reminded me of that scene in demolition man (1993) but is it actually like this or nah? because regardless of how bad this whole ordeal is, it would be ten times worse and impossible for me to get behind the hero if the clients actually raped the women. i need someone to confirm me if the clients indeed have sex with the women because if that's the case, then i'm out and will not be continuing with the rest of the series. ps: there's another female character that literally equates being forced to have sex with the clients to not wanting to go to the office in any normal job but still going (!!!) and i could not take this book seriously AT ALL after the author has characters spilling the most shitty and dumb opinions ever. the h does try to refute that statement but ends up mentally chanting to herself that she has to enjoy this so as not to suffer. n e ways this book was trash.

This is a dark romance. It's not for everyone. Please don't pick this book up if any of those trigger warnings will trigger you! Pepper Winters is by far my favorite romance author. She writes mostly dark romances, so these books are not for everyone. Tears Of Tess was my introduction to this dark world and I've been obsessed since reading that series. Speaking of Tess, I really like how Pepper's other books are integrated in this one. We meet Tess very early in this book and we also know that Sullivan does business with Jethro from the Indebted series. I think this series is going to be insane. Eleanor Grace is abducted as she is travelling with her boyfriend Scott. She's sold to Sullivan who runs an island where people can pay a huge sum of money to have their sexual fantasies brought to life. Sullivan has made an elixir that will make your body.... extremely turned on? I'm honestly not entirely sure how to say it. Basically, for a few hours you're going to be extremely horny. He gives this elixir to his Goddesses. The Goddesses are the women he's bought from slavers. He has them all sign a contract where they will work for him for four years and then he sets them free. All the Goddesses love it on the island after they adjust. Eleanor is the exception. She wants nothing to do with this island. She doesn't want anything to do with this elixir. She hates it. She hates Sullivan... or does she? This is obviously like an enemies to lovers romance. As both Sullivan and Eleanor highly dislike each other for different reasons. This book was addicting. This book is extremely steamy. I didn't want to put it down. I made sure I finished it before June was over so I could include it in my monthly wrap up. I cannot wait to see what awaits Eleanor and Sullivan in the next book!

What did I just read........??? I have no idea what this dark, weird story is about and I don’t care to know. But I finished it so I guess that’s on me.