I received an ARC in exchange of an honest opinion.
I had such high hopes for this book because the previous one really worked for me. This one? Unfortunately not that much.
First of all, Anna told us in our Facebook Group that she had issues writing this novel and, to be honest, i get what she meant. During the reading we were able to notice many moments in which the characters kind of felt uncomfortable around each other, even when they were doing something intimate, which brings us to another subject that didn’t work for me during this book: the sex scenes.
I really think this is my problem, a timing problem. Perhaps i read this book in a wrong moment because i felt that there were many sex scenes during the entire novel. This feeling only got stronger when i realized they didn’t have moments in which they only talked and got to know each other better.
Lydia is a character with an amazing and interesting background and i felt that i didn’t see her understanding her feeling towards Kat because of Kat; i mean, i didn’t feel she knew Kat well enough to understand she deserved a restart, a new life because she was falling for what Kat is as a person.
In addition, i didn’t see them having an actual conversation about limits and boundaries. At one moment they were talking about what soft and hard limits are and at the other they were going through these limits... it just felt too much for me, since Kat was a “newborn” in submissive’s world. I think Lydia was kinda irresponsible with Kat by pushing her through her limits without having an actual conversation about that.
Another thing that really bothered me also because BDSM was new to Kat, was that Lydia didn’t explain at all about sub space, and more than that, we didn’t see Kat going deep into her sub space even after her limits have been pushed till the edge.
All these things made difficult for me to buy their romance, mostly due to Lydia’s background being so little explored.
Kat, on the other hand, could’ve been a great character for me if in the beginning i didn’t had the feeling that she was too pushy. I felt she didn’t respect Lydia’s worries about her job. I felt that she didn’t think about what she truly wanted from Lydia.
The best part of her is her roommate.
All in all, despite of my high expectations being kind of frustrated, i’ll still look forward to Anna’s next works.
Tangled Vows still is my favorite book so far but i had fun reading Ensnared Hearts and i appreciate the opportunity of receiving it’s ARC.
By the way, warmed my heart seeing Yvonne and Lydia’s friendship. I want more of that.