Sweet Cruelty by Zoe Blake

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was an innocent mistake.
She knocked on the wrong door. 
Mine. 

If I were a better man, I would’ve just let her go. 
But I’m not. 
I’m a cruel bastard. 

I ruthlessly claimed her virtue for my own.
It should have been enough. 
But it wasn’t. 
I needed more. 
Craved it. 

She became my obsession. 
Her sweetness and purity taunted my dark soul. 
The need to possess her nearly drove me mad. 

A Russian arms dealer had no business pursuing a naive librarian student. 
She didn’t belong in my world. 
I would bring her only pain. 
But it was too late…
She was mine and I was keeping her.

Sweet Cruelty

Derivative and not well written!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💚
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗
World building: 🌏🌍
Character development: 😟🙁
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

The heroine: Emma – with tuition due next week and her short on money, she had no choice but to beg for money if she wanted to finish her library sciences master’s program. She dressed up in her doc martin mary jane’s, pink sweater and plaid skirt and knocked on the door of what she thought was the home of Mr. Linus Fitzgerald III, elderly son of her former benefactor.

The Hero: Dimitri – he is Russian and is an international arms dealer. When he opens his door to an innocent looking young woman, he immediately claims her for the night. He thinks she was sent from an escort agency and when she says she is just there for the money, he knows how she can earn it.

The Story: From the very start this book got steamy. The language is overly flowery, and the situation is a bit too silly to be believed. Emma tries to fight Dimitri off and explain the mistake after first succumbing to his kisses, though he thinks she is an escort who is playing at being a shy virgin. She see-saws between being aroused and being afraid, but either way she doesn’t really try that hard to explain she went to the wrong house.

The writing wasn’t the best, the plot had a lot of holes, and the story was a bit far from believable, and there were famous quotes from literature at the start of every chapter which for me, didn’t do anything to elevate this one at all. Though it was good enough to keep listening to and I did want to see what happened next.

Though it was still a bit too much to be believed. In one scene Dimetri tracks Emma’s phone, finds out she is at a bar, takes a helicopter to the bar and gets there just in time to save her from an attacker who locked her in a storeroom with him. Then he punished her for the fact that she didn’t tell him she was going out that night.

The audiobook was told in multiple points of view via dual narration. It was narrated by Lauren Sweet and Tor Thom. I love Tor Thom’s deep voice and he is one of my go-to narrators. Lauren Sweet has a soft, feminine voice that is pleasing, though there is something about her voice that gets on my nerves a bit.

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