Book Review - DNF: The Bliss King: 1. Captive by AA Paton

I knew going into this book that it was a risk for me. I'm a fan of Stockholm syndrome books. I thought the premise sounded good. But immediately when I started the book it was nothing but a drag for me. I got to 16% before I had to admit defeat. Which for a book of just over 100 pages says something in and of itself.

I hate head hopping (where the voice is switch from one person to another). It is gimmicky and rarely works. In this case it totally did not work for me. Both characters were barely distinguishable from the other. Overly long time spent in there heads with not much dialog.

Character names were just randomly flung at you leaving you to say, "Wait..what who is this person they are talking about". There is little actual world building. You are given names of places and leadership but little to no explination of how this world works. Oh and speaking of character names the only "normal" name was Rebecca who changed her name to something like Rattana or some such name.

The main female character is established as smart but basically a horny slut who has no problem with getting drunk and sleeping with random married men. There is insta-lust between the FMC and the MMC. The male main character is portrayed as someone with no scruples. He has no problem killing etc....but the one odd moral he seems to have is he wont kick a puppy. So murdering humans is ok but kicking a puppy is waaay over the line of evil (note I am an animal lover and don't condone violence to animals. I just find it funny this guy's set of morals).

Also there were some weird awkward turns of phrase that had me scratching my head and saying, "huh". For instance I still don't understand this one - "like the ground pepper of ash".

The one positive thing I can say is that I love the cover of the book.

This is 1 star out of 5 stars.

*I recieved a free copy of this ebook from Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion