Love Me in the Dark

CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

Title: Love Me in the Dark
Author: Mia Asher
Publication date: 05/09/2017
Publisher: Mia Asher, LLC
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Cliffhanger: No
Rating: 2 out of 5
 
Amazon blurb
Two strangers in Paris ...
One passionate, earth-shattering kiss.
He was the artist upstairs
with the tantalizing smile and laughing eyes.
He was the devil inviting me to sin,
seducing me to dance in the bright moonlight.
He was desire and need.
When he touched me, my body sang.
My soul came alive.
But I belonged to another man,
and he didn't want to let me go.

My Review
I did it again, folks. I made a half-assed buying decision based on a ridiculously hot cover dude. Even though he’s smoking in the picture (gross), I took one look at that face and those abs, saw that the book was on Kindle Unlimited, and damn near hurt myself one-clicking so fast. I’m sorry to say that the cover dude (whose name is Amadeo Leandro...not that I’m stalking him on Facebook or anything, ‘cause that would be weird and pervy) kinda misled me on this one.  
 
Judging by all the raving reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, I’m guessing I’m representing the Unpopular Opinion crew on this one again. That’s OK. I’m used to it. Come at me if you must. I’ll wait.

OK, now that that’s out of the way, on with the review.
 
What really irritates me about this is that the book is very well written. The style, the flow, the dialogue...it’s all really good. I mean, the fact that I didn’t like this book will not stop me from reading other books by this author, because I truly feel like she’s an awesome writer.
 
And I really liked Sebastian. He started off as your typical man-whore, tortured artist with a painful past type of dude, but I liked how he overcame that and didn’t ever hide or shy away from his feelings for Valentina.   
 
But…
 
Here’s the stuff that just irked the ever-lovin’ crap out of me:

• Valentina, the heroine, is a total doormat. Her husband cheats on her, she sticks around. She doesn’t really love him anymore, but is too afraid of what will become of her if she leaves him since she’s built her entire life around him. Gag. In a perfect world, there would be no doormat heroines in romance. Like, ever.​

• William, Valentina’s husband, is an asshat of the highest order. He also has some fairly gross family issues. (Issues that are somewhat of the Jaime and Cersei Lannister type, if you get my meaning) I find it hard to believe that a colossal twatwaffle like William could be sneaky enough to completely hide the biggest majority of his various infidelities from his wife of 12 years. (I mean, my husband can’t lie to me about eating the last Reese’s cup without me knowing, for God’s sake. Women just KNOW things about men they’ve been with for that long.) Which makes me wonder just how completely unobservant Valentina had been for the length of their marriage.
• William was pretty much over-the-top in his villany. I kind of expected him to tie Valentina to the train tracks while twirling his moustache, um, villainously. But even as laughably one-dimensional as he was, I wanted him to really get his comeuppance from karma, and that moment never really came. At least, not to my satisfaction. My preferred manner of comeuppance for William would’ve been more like this:

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• While we’re on the subject of the asshat twatwaffle of a husband...is the fact that he’s such a turd supposed to make me forget that Valentina is a cheater, too? Is Valentina’s cheating somehow more acceptable because her husband is a douche? I’m not one to get all philosophical in my book reviews, and the whole cheating thing didn’t bother me too much. (Hey, it’s fiction. I can handle a lot of crap in fiction.) But readers who hate reading about cheaters are probably not going to be OK with the kind of hypocrisy going on in this book.
• When Doormat—er, Valentina—decides to tuck her tail between her legs and follow the husband she no longer loves back to the states, she doesn’t bother letting the kindly older gentleman who gave her a job (EVEN THOUGH SHE DIDN’T SPEAK FRENCH) know that she was quitting. Rude and inconsiderate much?   
• I don’t want to give too much away, and I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that regular hand lotion shouldn’t be used as lube for anal sex. That seems really...wrong.
• Lots of sex between people who aren’t the main characters, lots of unprotected sex. It was...a bit much.
• Minor spoiler alert: I don’t think it should’ve been Sebastian who came after Valentina. I think she should’ve gone after him and GROVELED for his forgiveness.  

 
Long-story-short, this book gets one star for Sebastian who I adored, and one star for being well-written. It loses stars on, well, pretty much everything else.
 
And to the cover dude, I say only this:

Does this book contribute to or help crush the romance stigma?
Well, it’s well-written and  unique enough to avoid contributing to the romance stigma, but it’s not doing a damn thing to advance the movement for strong, independent, smart heroines. Yikes.    
 
Other reading suggestions
For a fun, emotional, sexy read about a hot artist, try Neighbor Dearest by Penelope Ward.

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