Rating: ★★★| 338 Pages | Self-Published; Berkley| Erotic Romance | 4/2/2012
When you think of an East Coast New York billionaire from a prominent family with his name on a building you of course think of…Gideon Cross.
At least Eva Trammell does. She justmoved across the country to start a new job in The Big Apple when a chance encounter with the enigmatic Gideon Cross leads her down a a path of explosive passion and high emotions.
I’m sort of on a mission to read formative romance novels that have, at various points, defined the genre and since I couldn’t finish 50 Shades I decided to give this a try because it’s close second. And yes, I know this is erotica and not romance but it was popular so. . .
Bared To You was soapy and over the top as I expected. The super dark parts of this novel were unexpected and made me cringe in the way Law and Order SVU does when they say stuff you think they can’t say on NBC, while other parts made me laugh like when Gideon builds a perfect replica of Eva’s room in his apartment to help her feel safe … I mean I get it but also the fact that he can do that should make you run.
Speaking of Eva feeling safe, Eva has a lot of trust and anxiety issues because of her abusive childhood. I liked that she was upfront about this and how she owns it. But honestly everyone in this book is in therapy and boy do they need it. Even down to Eva’s self-destructive roommate Cary whose story-line makes me want to read the next books. Cary could have easily fallen into the gay (well, bi) best friend trope and I like that Day flipped that trope on it’s head. Cary is complex and he needs Eva possibly more than she needs him.
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Do I understand why this book was such a big deal ? Well . . .I’m not sure. I mean it was more readable to me than Shades. It’s purely escapist but the dark abusive parts always caused me to put the book down, and while I don’t usually focus on the writing part Day has this amazing way of barley using “said” and “says”.
I’m pretty sure I have book five somewhere around here. . . but if I’ll ever get to it ? I don’t know.
