Conflicted rating alert.

This book started out very promising. I was sure it was going to be a 5 star read and I was quite happy to end my 2017 lackluster reading year and begin my 2018 year in such a way. Good omen for the new reading year and all that. I was happy reading about polar travel and the few intrepid weirdos who made this their life's endeavor at the turn of the 20th century until I came to about the middle of the book.

Now, of course I knew there was going to be a love story involved and I was fine with that as long as the polar plot was the main storyline. I guess I was invisioning a star crossed side line or something more chaste like the love story in [b:Mrs. Mike|155712|Mrs. Mike (Mrs. Mike, #1)|Benedict Freedman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1309212489s/155712.jpg|3232591] But much to my chagrin, I found myself reading about "poles" and I don't mean the North Pole. I'm talking about throbbing members, engorged insistent love muscle, and dripping nectar honey pots (lol, wtf, I don't know) and in my mind I could hear the needle of a record player scratching along the record. What the hell? Now I personally have nothing against that type of book and have read a few in my time. If you are into that kind of book, cool. I'm not really that interested in that type of thing, though, especially in what I consider a literary book, so it came as somewhat of a shock to be reading page after page after page of graphic sex scenes. To the point where it became repetitive and voyuristic and dare I say, boring.

I don't know. It was weird and seemed out of place for a story about the trials and tribulations of Arctic travel back at the turn of the last century. And if this book was really a LOVE story, idk but there sure was a lot of boring back story about the Arctic and character building and all that literary pretensions to finally get to the "good parts". And then the good parts don't last and you're back to boring polar exploration for hundreds of pages.

So yeah. It's not a 5 star read for me. I can't even give it 4 stars because it went too off the rails for me. But it wasn't a terrible book, and really I was quite happily reading along for much of it. It was that middle love story that got a little too graphic for my liking in this type of book. Also it got kind of silly and predictable to bring in a "bad guy" antagonist who gets in the way of the love story. Idk, maybe I'm becoming more prudish as I get older, who knows. So it becomes hard to recommend this book because it's kind of weak on the polar exploration ultimately, kind of weak on the love story. There was a back and forth time element that fell flat and felt really far fetched and contrived, straight out of the movie Titanic.

So all and all, a confusing but not all together unenjoyable read. Just a weird mashup of "bodice ripper" and polar travel that should not have, in my world, been mashed.