This is fuck or die fic. If you know that is what you like, you will probably like this. If you are put off by the consent issues inherent in the trope, you will probably not like this. It's erotica more than it is a story, although for erotica, the story element is quite good. I got the ebook for free from Amazon, and it may still be available at that attractive price.

Fun fact: The book opens with a page telling you that the premise might be triggering to some people, and giving you a web page you can go to for further details. Cool!

Further detail: Brook does a good job of making the characters people who I could care about, which is a problem I often have with pro-erotica: it's hard for me to care about the boning if I don't care about the characters.

I liked that Olivia's job is with a construction firm. Often romance and erotica that wants to give a woman a 'high powered' job gives her a job with a law firm, a job I find both incomprehensible, intensely boring, and morally a bit luke-warm. I also liked that this was part of her character; she makes observations about the construction of buildings she encounters.

I'm going to spoiler-cut, not because of actual spoilers, but to talk about the way consent is dealt with.


Re: the fuck-or-die, Erik's line is under a curse whereupon he is once-per-year irresistibly driven to fuck the woman the he loves. Erik is pretty concerned about the consent issues in this. Almost, and I am aware of what I am saying, too concerned, because he keeps trying to convince Olivia to kill him so that they can avoid this fate, despite her stated willingness to fuck him, and disinclination to be a murderer. (For curse-related reasons, he is immortal unless killed by her? I think?) I feel he could have been slightly more open to boning as the less terrible option.

Anyway, this book is aware of its consent issues, even though it wants to play with non-consent, and the characters are not always fully able to consent.

The sex is decent, although there were a couple of pages where ice was used in a way that caused me to turn pages very quickly.