Little Miss Bookmark: Book Review: Twisted Up In You by Dawn Martens

Surviving a harsh upbringing, Corinne Treyton’s new life, comes courtesy of the Angels Warriors MC. No one will ever use her body again, unless she wants them to. Cori, a party girl, doesn’t believe in relationships, but she’d be willing to try if only Blake, her boss, could really see her for who she is. She hides her lifestyle from him; afraid he would think less of her.

Blake Lexington has crushed on Cori since the day she started working for him. He knows a bit about her past, living with the Angels Warriors, and he doesn’t care. He refuses to make a move, thinking it will scare off his shy assistant. For years he thought she wouldn’t be attracted to someone like him.

Finally realizing that he needs to take action, her reaction surprises him. Cori believes he sees her as a slut and wants to use her. Secrets from the past will be revealed causing everything to unravel.

Will real love bring them together or is Cori too damaged to give true love a chance?

This is the first book I've read by Dawn Martens and unfortunately, it will probably be my last. When I was reading the blurb for Twisted Up In You, I was intrigued but also a bit worried because the last couple of MC books I've read ... we just didn't get along. I just started watching Sons of Anarchy a few months back (about time, right?) and absolutely fell in love with it and ever since, I've wanted to find an MC series that I connected with on the same level. I told myself that this book was it ... the last MC book I would read because if this one didn't work out for me either, after all of the others that I've tried, then maybe I'm not an MC reader. I'm okay with that decision but I sure do wish that it had turned out differently.

From the very beginning of Twisted Up In You, it was pretty gritty. In my mind, it played out like a movie that was filmed while someone was just walking around holding the camera on their shoulder ... a bit shaky with lots of raw footage. Not a bad thing, it brought an interesting feel to the book as a whole but the book just wasn't ... enough ... to warrant that kind of edginess. There was just so damn much going on! This could have EASILY been split into two or three separate books. There was an abundance of characters that you're introduced to but then in the end, you feel like you don't really know them. Hell, I couldn't even keep up with all of the characters because there were at least 10 other sub-plots going on that were pretty intricate with their own set of characters that ended up intermingling with the main characters and the secondary characters and then the 54th tier characters. There were just so many. So, so many. Too many, for my reading pleasure.

With the edginess that I talked about also came uninhibited situations within the story. Some of it was straight up shocking for some reason. I've read some raunchy books (don't judge) and there was one scene in this one that really surprised me ... this dude had a chick pushed up against the wall with his digits all up in her lady parts and they were in full view of all of the club goers. Now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't the scene that was shocking but the aloofness that the character had while this was going on, like that kind of thing is normal and maybe it was because this particular female character had been used and abused ten ways to Sunday and just reading it felt like she was being violated again. Hell, who knows at this point.

While there was a shit-ton of things going on, it also felt like the story didn't have enough of a build up to make the story seem settled and established. This is going to sound horrible and I hope that it's taken in the constructive manner that is intended but I think that the story didn't feel established was because it was as if there was an outline done for the story and then other ideas were thrown out there and instead of picking the ones that are best for the story, they were all just added. It watered down the story for me and there was so much promise with the characters, it just made it that much more disappointing.

I enjoyed getting to know the characters within the first few chapters but my interest fell off after that because the main character, Cori seemed so damn immature. It became irritating and just sad. I hope that others have a better experience with this one than I did.

* I received this novel in exchange for an honest review *

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