Collateral Damage: A Sapphic Erotic Thriller Book:
Kindle -
Paperback -
Exceptional concept. A MFMC seeking revenge justice ends up with an unintended hostage, the FFMC. The intertwining of abuse survivors and romantic love progressed in a genuine, heartfelt, and natural way. The spice scenes were very well done, rather consensual, and steamy hot.
Disappointing Delivery. Three kindle pages of content warnings delivered only disappointment. The romance itself was essentially wholesome and not very dark at all despite the situation that caused the romance being very dark. Content warnings are a promise, and the author did not keep theirs.
The author states that it was difficult to write in American English (the setting is in the US), and that they would use British spellings. What the author did however was use a lot of British slang, expressions, and turns of phrase that completely detracted from the story. Even worse, there’s a court room scene where the judge states “I conclude that the crown has not established…” There is no crown authority in the US. The author didn’t even try. They set it in the US because they wanted to use pew pews in their story and couldn’t even be bothered to watch a couple episodes of Law and Order to have any idea of the criminal justice system.
The writing was also way more ‘tell’ than ‘show’. With two FMCs the author did not do a good enough job differentiating between the ‘shes’ and I had to reread several times. The writing was repetitive. At first, I thought it was to evoke a sense of being trapped and bored, (i.e. held hostage), but there were too many punction mistakes, and it just didn’t work.
The last portion of the book devolves into a (justifiable and valuable) political rant about how domestic violence is overlooked. This would have been better suited as an addendum than part of the story. It was too overdone to be part of the story.
Worst of all, the one content warning that really needed to be on the list wasn’t there. It’s a bit of a spoiler, so I will put it in the metrics near the end. I was absolutely blindsided by it.
With the help of an editor and a localizer this story could easily become 5 star+. I’m so angry with the author for not doing their story justice. Amazon doesn’t allow half stars, but I would rate this 3.5 stars.
The following are just amount metrics and etc. (Potential Spoilers!)
Spice - 4/5 (loss of 1 star for the now in the kitchen, now on the couch, repetition)
Romance – 5/5 (the characters do develop deep love for each other)
World – 1/5 (a localizer is needed)
Dark - 4/5 (child abuse survivor, murder)
Kink – 5/5 (Well developed, accurate, consensual)
HEA? Judgement call.
Stand alone? Yes.
Does the dog die? Yes. The dog dies of old age. There is no trigger warning for this, so let this be your warning.