I'm trying hard not to take offense as this ghastly novel trivialises beyond good taste the pernicious issue of sex-trafficking.
Another problem is that the characters are just horrible. From the heroine and her friend who sexually humiliate an unconscious man, the hero, and then laugh it off as a joke. To the whole of the UN peace-keeping force who are, on the one hand, portrayed as being responsible for the practise in the first place. And then the reader is expected to empathise with the fact that the head of the service does nothing because of the intricacies of international politics.
The heroine is also initially portrayed as someone with dubious loyalties who sells information to anyone, including the chief baddie, for money. I'm not a person who ever admired Mata Hari. Also. The hero may bleat how he loathes being the good buddy of the sex-trafficking baddie but as an outsider looking in, I would probably consider the hero as big a thug as his boss. I don't like the setting, Central Europe either. From the beginning of the novel there is entirely too much about the motivations and actions of unsympathetic secondary characters.
In the end. This novel ended up in the trash. Because around page 95 all the lurid descriptions of young women being raped and generally sexually brutalised kick in. Which of course is the true purpose of the story.
But oh. All those nasty things don't happen to the main couple so that makes it all right. Not in my book it don't.
imo. the author is worse than a pimp. (Not that I know any pimps I hasten to add.)
My advice. Don't buy. Don't read.
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