"I wasn't one of those women who would rather be with anyone than alone. Alone was not scary anymore. Alone was challenging, but it was also deeply satisfying. Alone was not lonely."
These SECRET stories by L. Marie Adeline are the only books I read in which I don't skip the sex scenes.
They aren't disgusting or lame. They are about what women want. Each fantasy leaves the woman with a new sense of something...courage, confidence, trust...
What I love about this series is it says/shows that it's okay for women to have sex lives as interesting and exciting as men's. You're not a slut for wanting to have physical pleasure and it's okay to seek a warm body for comfort...just make sure you're doing it for YOURSELF, nobody else. Because you want to, not because you want to please someone else, or worse, feel you have to in order to be loved.
This, book three, introduces us to a new recruit, Solange, an older woman, a mother, a woman who has an ailment many women suffer. She's simply lost interest in sex. It's not worth the time, trouble, mess....you know what I'm saying, ladies.
I feel Solange is a much better character and much easier to relate to than book two's young girl. Her fantasies are exciting and she leaves each step with a lesson learned, something I feel we missed out on in book two but that was very strong in book one.
Cassie... I think her story should have ended with book one. She walked away from that story so cool and amazing, and then in book two it started going downhill. SHE went downhill. I just can't seem to like her anymore. I'm so over Will. OVER him. Sadly, she's not. I guess like with most series involving women and love, there's a Team Will and a Team Jesse. I was Team Jesse and I still think Cassie has treated him like crap, but as I read this, I kept thinking about the quote posted at the beginning of this review...and sadly, while Cassie THINKS this, she certainly doesn't live by it. When one man isn't interested, she pounces on the other one and back and forth we go and this, to me, does not say, "I'm a woman who isn't afraid of being alone." On the contrary, I felt Cassie was unable to be alone and was going against the very quote I liked from her. And I have to ask...just how did SECRET empower her? It doesn't seem to have worked.
At some point in the story I got tired of the Will/Jesse thing and I became a member of Team No-Man At All. Needless to say, I loathed the ending of this story. LOATHED it.
The twist Pierre felt out of place as well.
Cassie's story this time though does bring up some new issues in SECRET, mainly jealously. It's going to happen. I find myself interested in seeing how this was going to be handled by everyone involved.
Didn't love it like I did the first one, am a bit on the fence really with how I feel about where this series went, and I def think there was more sex than story this time, but the morals were there. I still really wish we had a SECRET club for real.
I received this via Netalley.
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