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Hallelujah, I finally found a Mariana Zapata book I actually enjoyed 😭

Aiden Graves is by far my favorite MZ hero. He’s not an alphahole so much as he is fatally anti-social. When he’s stressed, he retreats completely into himself and becomes a hermit. SO relatable. But when he loves people, he loves them completely, and I love him for that :) what a perfect gem.

I’ve had my issues with MZ’s books. She’s got a habit of writing female protagonists whose only flaw is how insecure they are about their strengths. Which, imo, is lazy writing. What are you afraid of? Do you think we won’t like your heroines if you give them real flaws?

TWoWaM has one of these heroines. Vanessa’s a perfect saint but terribly insecure about it, and the whole world is set against her, including the classic comically evil family and tragic past. Not my favorite setup.

However, I love slowburn romances, and the pacing of this romance was exactly right. Watching Aiden slowly warm up and open up was so heartfelt and made for a really sweet reading experience.

So I really wanted to give this more stars but there's one particular scene that was so messed up I had to knock down my rating.

Vanessa and Aiden are out and about in Vegas when they meet a fan who asks to take a picture with Aiden. The fan proceeds to sexually harass him by grabbing his ass. How does Vanessa react to this? She laughs. She fucking laughs so hard she cries! What the damn hell is wrong with you, Vanessa?

I barely managed to raise the bag of popcorn to face level when I lost it, peeking at him when I wasn’t blinking away tears. The fact that Aiden’s ears turned red as he watched me crack up said he knew what I was dying over.
“Don’t say a word,�� he gritted.
“Did she grab a handful?�� I choked out.
The look he gave me was a mix of “you’re an idiot�� and “fuck off,�� which only made me laugh harder. He’d gotten molested. By a fan. Right in front of me. That split second look of surprise on his face when he got fondled would probably stay with me for the rest of my life. I had to wipe at the tears in my eyes with the back of my hand, shaking my head.

This, after she got spitting mad at him for not standing up for her when his agent talked shit about her to Aiden. I shudder to think how mad she would have been if someone had molested her and Aiden had just stood there and laughed. What. The. Fuck. Double standard much? This was really fucked up.

So, three stars it is, even though the rest of the story was pretty good.

I’m so glad I waited for the audio re-recording to come in through my library rather than settling for the original audio version. The new narrators did an amazing job. I love how Aiden’s narrator started every one of his lines with a beleaguered sigh 😂😂😂