Thursday, June 20, 2019

Book Review: The Dirty Ones

I'll be honest and tell you I only bought this book for the cover and the description. I had finished reading another book by this author called 18 (truly, you have to read the review) because I said in there that I wanted anything and everything this author has written. It felt like fate that not long after I started seeing teasers for this book and I ended up buying it a year or so later because I'm poor. But then it sat here on my shelf because I have this weird problem of really wanting a book and then not reading it because I don't want it to be over.

Rational?

Probably not, but here we are. So I finally got into it and um.... it wasn't all that.
The Dirty Ones - JA Huss

They said write what you know so that's what I did. I wrote dirty, I wrote erotic, I wrote the truth.
And then they called me a liar. But it's not me who's lying, it's them.
Our story isn't for everyone. It's not even for us.
So if you're looking for the fairy tale and the stupid prince on his dumb white horse, move along. You've got a hold of the wrong book. This is not your story, this is not your life, and this is not your opportunity to dip your frightened little toe into the dark pool of water and "try new things" and then pull it out and decide... #NotForMe.
When you go in with us you go all in. So make a decision before you turn this page.
Because I'm making one promise with this book.
Just one.
We are The Dirty Ones and this is our truth.


I am not going to sit here and tell you this book is terrible because it wasn't terrible, it just isn't want 18 was for me and it wasn't at all what I expected. Honestly, from the description I was expecting orgies and basically a novel of porn and this was far off the mark. The book does give you a couple of alright sex scenes, a couple of really weird orgies but it was also mostly a bizarre mystery?

Each of "The Dirty Ones" had an eventful senior year in college and they all remember their time in the tower a little differently so one of them, Hayes, decides to bring them together after a book called The Dirty Ones finds itself on the New York Times Bestseller List, and that's no good because this could be bad for all of them potentially. The way they talk about their memories immediately reminded me of the book Vox by Nicholson Baker that I read way back when I was far too young to be reading dirty books, but it's like memories morphed into fantasies. Kind of? It's hard to really explain it. Anyways. So it becomes clear that something is amiss so they are trying to figure out who all of the weird sexual acts were really about, who programmed them, and why.

This book was really lacking in a few areas for me:

  1. It doesn't really go into detail what the hell happened in the tower. We all kind of know how they got there, we heard about notes, but I really wanted more detail of what they did and with who. Don't tease me saying they were "dirty" and then give me literally no information on what made them dirty. 
  2. The love triangle between Connor-Sofia-Kiera is so weird to me. How can you be jealous and then not care at the same time? That's stupid. Then we throw in Hayes and we have a weird love square and we make it more weird with an orgy?
  3. Bennett and Camille.. the way their story line works out is odd and it feels like the author had no idea what to do so she takes the easy way out and never explains why. 
  4. The mystery and how it's figured out? COME ON. First off the ending is ridiculous and completely over the top implausible that I couldn't even deal. It wasn't even worthy of an eye roll. 

I have a lot more thoughts but I can't go into it without spoiling it. I really want one of you to read this and tell me if I'm wrong. I was kind of in a crabby funk when I read this so maybe I was more critical but I just couldn't get behind this one. The couple of hotter scenes couldn't save this one for me. Two stars.
   
This post contains affiliate links because that helps keep this blog going. Consider supporting it by purchasing from these links. Happy reading, lambs!

1 comment:

Deanna Reads Books said...

Hmm, I feel like I would feel similar. The description even has me confused!