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Nestled in a Book

I love Romance, New Adult, and Erotica books. I love sharing the books and authors that I love with people who have that in common or others who might not have ever known about them.

Alpha

Alpha - Jasinda Wilder Review originally posted on my blog here.

Let me try to explain something before I start this review. I love books, I love authors, I love the book and blogging community. I can only imagine how hard it must be to pour yourself into writing a book and then put it out there for the entire world to read and either love or pick apart. I would never endeavor to be cruel. I like Jasinda Wilder. Although I do not personally know her, in all her interactions I've seen online, she seems like a genuinely nice person. I read and thoroughly enjoyed her book Stripped.

With that said, I'm not doing my job as a reviewer and blogger if I only gush about the books I love. Why would you ever believe anything I say? Why take my word for it? Why would my opinion matter if I seemingly liked every single thing I read? That's disingenuous.

So I'm about to write my first negative review. I am going to attempt to remain as respectful as possible, and I know that a true professional can take criticism and use it to better themselves. Or they can choose to not believe that my opinion matters and continue to write how they want. Which is totally fine too, considering it's obvious that Jasinda Wilder has a pretty sizable audience, and maybe I'm just not it.

Alright, deep breath.... here we go....

1 STAR.

I'm going to begin by vaguely talking about my issues with this book so as not to spoil anything. I'll make it very obvious when you should stop reading to avoid spoilers.

When I first read the synopsis for this book, I got so excited! The premise sounded fantastic and I love a good dominating billionaire alpha once in a while. I got even more excited when I started seeing all of the raving 5 star reviews. And maybe that's why I've had such a strong reaction to it, because I expected so much more and I was greatly disappointed.

The dialogue was hollow and so exceedingly flowery at times that it was ridiculous, unbelievable, and laughable. The characters were vapid and I didn't connect with a single one. The story line was basically non-existent. The synopsis is a couple paragraphs shy of making up the whole beginning of the book. The middle, 80% of the book, is either talking about sex, teasing sex, thinking about sex, or actual sex. And not very good sex. Then the story picks back up for the last 20 or so pages of the book. It's somehow both predictable and completely unrealistic. There were so many plot holes and contradictions.

The main male character (I won't spoil his name yet since that's part of the "magic") is your everyday tall, wealthy, so-handsome-he-must-be-a-god, dominating, alpha male. He's arrogant and cocky, though God only knows why. I didn't find a single redeeming quality in this guy. He's pushy, domineering, oh yeah, and a kidnapper, apparently. The way he talks made me laugh out loud at times.

"Kyrie...Kyrie...so gentle, so responsive. Do you feel that? I know you do, my sweetest thing. I know you feel it... It's lightning, isn't it? Pure lightning, arcing between us."


Who talks like that? It's not unique and sexy, it's bizarre and nauseating.

The main female character, Kyrie is quite frankly an asshole. She was wholly unlikeable. She goes on an internal rant for two and a half pages about how annoying most men are because they show an interest in sports or the gym (god forbid they take care of themselves?), or something she doesn't believe one could possibly be interested in. How dare they!

I'd been on dozens of first dates in my life that had never gone anywhere, simply because I wasn't interested in inane babble...Shut up about the stupid football game. I couldn't care less about fucking football...If the conversation doesn't interest me, I'm out. Like, done, right now, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, do not finish the date. I've stood up in the middle of a meal and said, "Thanks for the effort, but this isn't working out." I'd rather eat alone and in silence than make idle small talk.


A man has asked you out on a date, shown interest in you, paid for you to have a meal with him in an effort for you to get to know one another, and you don't even have the decency to finish eating with him? You can't deign to sit with a smile on your face, say "thanks for the evening" and then just not go out with him again? That's just common courtesy!

I wasn't impressed by guys who had muscles on muscles...If a guy was that beefed up, he'd obviously spent hours and hours in the gym...Good for them, sure great, go for it...I'm still not impressed by how much you can bench. Can you carry me to bed? Can you last long enough to make me come? Those are the important things. Get me to bed, get me off. If you can manage those things, I'll be impressed. This was why, at twenty-six, I was still single.


No dear, you're wrong. You're twenty-six and still single because you are a complete asshole. Just because a man takes care of his body and cares to look good doesn't mean that he's an imbecile. All you care about is your orgasm and he's the problem?

SportsmoviesIworkoutlookatmymusclesI'msobuff. Shut up, I DO NOT CARE. Use the muscle in your skull, and then the one in your pants...Figure out what makes me moan, and do that until I come.


Aren't main characters, especially those that are the voice of the book, supposed to be likable? Certain parts of that little inner monologue are missing, because as I said it's two and half pages of that self-absorbed, narrow-minded assholery, but I promise the full thing only serves to further my point. I don't understand why anyone would actually like this person!

Random things that bothered me:

He was still naked, and I couldn't take my eyes off his body, couldn't look away from his cock, which was still impressive, even flaccid.


I have news for you, Kyrie. The size of a man's penis while flaccid has no correlation to the size of the same penis when erect. Sorry to take you to health class, but I felt you must know.

I slid my fingers over his asshole, all ten fingers brushing the tight knot of muscle and back up.


Um, all ten? Including your thumbs? While you're in front of him, giving him a blow job? How does that work exactly? Because in my mind that's awkward as hell....

And then, of course, there's the matter of them having unprotected sex after just a couple of days. Forget pregnancy, let's pretend for a moment that they talked about it (spoiler: they didn't!) and she's on birth control. But diseases just aren't an issue? Neither of you know where the other one's genitals have been! And how very inconsiderate and stupid of both of you to not even talk about it.

"Are you drunk?" He sounded amused.
I nodded sloppily. "I'm kind of a lightweight."


She's kind of a lightweight? She had four beers. She "got blitzed" on EIGHT beers in the first chapter with her best friend, Layla.

And now, the one that I am most upset about.

I saw my come squirt out to coat his throbbing length, and then he drove into me and my eyes squeezed shut. His cock was tall and painfully hard, wet with my grool, bobbing as he moved.


I thought to myself "what the hell is grool?", my mind immediately going to one of my all-time favorite movies, Mean Girls. That's the only 'grool' I knew. Well, thanks to this book and Urban Dictionary, that has been effectively ruined.

DO NOT READ BELOW THIS IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS! SPOILERS INCOMING!

I mentioned previously that I was not a fan of the billionaire's name. It takes him a while but he finally reveals his last name to her, so she at least has something to call him. So for a while she just calls him "Roth". Which is all fine and well. I take no issues with this. But then he finally reveals to her that his name is.... Valentine. Are you kidding me? I've known one person named Valentine in my entire life. She's a woman.

But he's so perfect! So perfect that he can make her have an orgasm in the middle of a restaurant in front of his friend who owns said restaurant. And then this unconvincing thing happened. Cue the public orgasm.

I couldn't stop a muffled squeak from escaping.
"Signora? Are you okay?" Marco gave me an odd look.
I nodded, fighting to draw breath. "Yeah--" I coughed to cover another gasp. "Yeah, I just...ahem. Got some salad...in the wrong...down the wrong tube." I lifted the half-eaten piece of bread in my hand as evidence, then realized my gaffe. "Bread. I meant bread. It's--good. Oh...so good." The last phrase came out with shocking intensity, as yet another wave rocked through me, and now Marco was staring at me as if I'd sprouted a second head.
"She's just overwhelmed," Roth put in. "It's her first time in Little Italy."


Valentine also has a penchant for dirty talk, but horribly disturbing dirty talk that is trying so hard to be sexy and so over the top that it is decidedly unsexy. Some of their interactions are just ridiculous.

"I have to taste your beauty."


"So perfect, Kyrie. Your pussy is like a flower, pink and pretty and begging for me to open its petals."


"I won't fuck you. I hate that word as a term for sex. At least, where it concerns you. You are the most precious thing in my life, Kyrie. You deserve far, far more than a mere fucking. So try that again."


I'm sorry, am I mistaken, or haven't you only known her for a couple of days?

"Jesus, Valentine, I haven't even had coffee yet."
"You don't need coffee, babe. You just need to take this vibrator up your ass for me."


With lines like that, how can she not fall in love? And of course she does. In a matter of days, even though she knows nothing about him except for his name and what he can do to her with his penis. But in case you thought love would make her more likable, you only need to keep reading when she starts listing the things she wants with him, starting with all of the material ones.

I wanted him. I wanted this life. I wanted to go with him to Turks and Caicos and England and France and Italy.


A couple of days ago you couldn't afford rent, electricity, or food.

So anyway, he eventually reveals the big secret. He asks her if she recognizes him, she says she kind of did at first but couldn't place him, and then all he says is...

"I knew your father. You and I...we met before. Briefly. Seven years ago."


Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't remember someone that I saw one time seven years ago. And I have a pretty good memory. But what he said was all it took for it to "hit her like a ton of bricks".

"My freshman year of college. I was visiting Daddy at his office. I always just walked into his office when I went to see him... Daddy was standing behind his desk, facing the window. And...you. You were there. In a suit and tie. You both looked upset."


Not only does she remember him now, but she remembers everything about that day including where her dad was standing, the clothes that were worn, and the looks on their faces. Really?

Then he tells her he helped pay things off.

He'd "smoothed things out". And I'd never realized it. The cars. Jesus. He'd paid off the cars and I hadn't put it together. I'd had car payments, three of them.


I can buy her reason of being preoccupied with the funeral for a while, but she never thought about her three car payments at any time over the next seven years?

"I thought about just making them give you a job, but that would only have fixed things temporarily. So I sent you the first check. I hoped...stupidly, perhaps, that you would just...somehow be okay."


How does that make any sense? He only originally planned on sending one check because she was struggling, so his original message was just "You"? That message wasn't going to lead anywhere?

"But you weren't. Things were piling too high, and you couldn't ever seem to get ahead. And even if you ever did accomplish your career goals, it wouldn't solve your financial problems. So I kept sending checks."


Right. The next check with the message "belong" followed by another that said "to me". He didn't have that pre-planned? It wasn't planned that he would send her $10,000 every month for a year, then show up at her door a year to the day later to "collect" on her "debt"? Oh, and that date just so happened to be seven years to the day since that first day he saw her?

Right.

I'm sorry, I wanted so badly to like this book. I fully expected to. This book has a target audience and it's possible I'm just not it. As I mentioned in the beginning, there are heaps of raving 5 star reviews. Obviously there was a disconnect for me, where others couldn't get enough. The good news is we don't all have to love and hate the same things. Whereas it was a complete miss for me, it could be an all-time favorite for you.

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