Consequences
Consequences, Book #1
By Aleatha Romig
ISBN# 9780988489127
Author’s Website: https://www.aleatharomig.com/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi
Claire Nichols was just rolling with the punches and trying to survive. She saw her dream of becoming a meteorologist become a reality only to crash and burn, to no fault of her own. Her news station was bought out about a year ago and her job was eliminated. She hasn’t been able to find another job in her field, so she is trying to make ends meet by bartending at the Red Wing. However, she has acquired extensive debt.
Then, she meets a man that will change her life forever. Anthony Rawlings is handsome, powerful, and rich. He came into the Red Wing and flirted with her, of all people. He insisted on talking to her after her shift, and she felt safe since they agreed to meet inside the Red Wing. Anthony said he could solve her financial problems, if she worked for him. He had them both sign a Red Wing napkin like it was a contract. She felt silly, but went along with it.
Days later, Anthony calls her up for a date and she agrees. They have a lovely time and she goes to his hotel for dessert.
Then, she wakes up in a strange place, covered in bruises. She quickly learns that Anthony has kept his promise about taking care of her financial problems, but it has cost her her freedom. He has locked her up in a posh room in his mansion. She must stay there until he deems she has paid for her 215 thousand dollars of debt. They have a signed contract after all, written on a Red Wing napkin. Here, every action has a consequence. Some good, some bad. And, appearances are everything. Claire must learn to navigate her new reality and keep Tony’s dark abusive persona at bay. When she follows the rules, she earns more privileges, but when she displeases Tony there are heavy consequences to pay.
Over time, Claire learns to navigate her new life and even starts to love Tony’s good side. However, she lives in fear of his dark side emerging. Can Claire overcome her current situation and shift the consequences into her own favor?
I’m going to start this review off with full disclosure. I tried to read this book several years ago, and did what I rarely ever do, and DNF’d it. I’ve seen a lot of people saying this book is really good. And, I have much more dark reading under my belt these days, so I decided to give it another go. I did pay for it after all. And, it did go better this time. However, it still is not one I’d ever recommend to others.
Claire is thrust into a horrible situation where she is at the mercy of a cruel, abusive man. He’s not above beating or raping her because he feels she has been bought and paid for and that equals consent. The scenes in this book are not graphic, but gives you enough to make it clear what happened.
Anthony is a rich man and a local celebrity. He graces the pages of the gossip magazines whenever he goes anywhere public. And, now Claire graces those pages with him. Public failure is not an option if Claire wants to survive unscathed.
I honestly don’t understand how she grows enough love for him to agree to marry him. This was shortly after he had beaten her into a coma. It took her two months to recover and this was right after she had recovered. He was so remorseful though….gah!
“It made Claire feel so much better knowing that even though she’d almost died, appearances were maintained.”
I went into this book thinking it was a dark romance, but it turned out having no real romance and it had felt more like a psychological drama. Tony set everything in her life into motion, it seems, and he was definitely a pro at playing the long game.
I think this book would have been more enjoyable, if it had been cleaned up a bit. It droned on and on and on. The same stuff over and over as Claire wanted to do certain things, but had to find a way to get approval from Tony. Tony getting upset over the simplest of things and forcing consequences on Claire. Not to mention, the details of daily life for them and all the business trips just became so repetitive and boring. This book could have probably been cut down to half the size, without losing any real storyline. It appears this was the author’s first book though, so hopefully this has improved in works since it was written.
I didn’t particularly care for this story. However, with that twist at the end, thoughts of the book have stayed in my mind since I completed it. So, I assume, it has done its job. There are more books in the series so I will have to decide if the rest of series is worth pursuing.
