My current audiobook is I Will Break You by Gigi Styx. Im about 4ish hours away from finishing this at this time.
OK, so. I haven't been reading smut centric stuff for a while. Had to break it up a little, you know? So after I finished Onyx Storm (although thats borderline smut with how much Violet and Xaden fuck), I was like yknow what? Im gonna read some smut! Not just any smut! Stalker smut! Gimme that tasty taboo dark romance stuff right now. I will eat that up.
I dont remember when I bought the audiobook but there it was! Waiting for me to return to my depravity in my to be listened to folder. So, what the hey, I clicked play.
Before I go on, I definitely plan on talking spoilers. Im gonna be cracking jokes and making criticisms. So if you're a fan of the book or the author this post might not be for you. I mean absolutely no hate or disrespect towards fans or the author either. Writing and publishing is an incredible achievement at all and, honestly, props to anyone who's gone through it all and to those hoping to. I dabble in my own writing, but am not a writer. Just a silly little reader with my own silly little opinions.
I Will Break You (IWBY for short) follows Amethyst. A goth girl influencer who's been in a romantic pen pal relationship with a death row prisoner named Xero. Who cares that he murdered his step mom when he's so dreamy and misunderstood? Its giving those Charles Manson brides just a little bit. She's got a basically nonexistent relationship with her parents, missing memories from her childhood, some nasty scars, and some sort of illness or brain injury that causes her to jave vivid hallucinations of basically every himan sense. And right now shes super bummed because she wasnt supposed to be murdering and burying some weird internet guy, she was supposed to be getting married! To who? Xero, of course! Except she got delayed by strange blackmail containing part of her mysterious missing memories and juuuuust missed the cutoff time for prison visitation. So booo no wedding and booo no consumation. Oh and also Xero got executed. Cowabummer.
Amethyst is also severely traumatized and has gone through Some Shit (tm). Her hands aren't clean either. She murdered her groomer when she was 13 - love that. And shes murdered an online troll because he harassed her in person and threatened her life. That'd be Jake. As one does. Im kidding. But needless to say shes not having a great time right now. Its all she can do to drink vodka and let the killer fan club know. Shes realllly torn up about this. Amethyst is devastated that shes betrayed the man she loved and never even got to meet him or fuck him and now he's dead. Been there, girl.
Well. Then some weird stuff keeps happening. Her social media page gets taken down, something fucked the red velvet wedding cake in her fridge, and she starts having visions of the grim reaper/Xero. Yes. You read that right. Fucked. The. Cake. Hole in it and everything. And then she just shrugs it off! Wild!
More creepy stuff happens. Basically every male character introduced is solely there either to be a bastard or to be death fodder for our mmc psychopath. One guy gets his fingers cut off for trying to solicit sex from her in return for his tech support. He also stole her doordash, which thats just rude. One guy gets his tongue cut out and murdered just because he offered to eat her out. An offer which she refused! The ghost tried to hang both of them for it! Well, mostly the dude. Amethyst got kinda choked hard and had to play with herself while borderline hanging. Im not yucking anyone's yum but wowee.
Everything she tries to do, he ruins. She tries to get help from neighbors? Merked. She tried to write a sexy ghost story. Deleted. Goes to her mom for help? Attacked by her weird crazy uncle who shes never met or even seen pictures of. Whats a girl to do??
Like. Ugh. I get it. I do. Hes a spurned ghost man out for revenge. Understandable. He thinks she was only using him to write one of those tell all "I fell in love with a killer" books. Which, to be fair, she was. Apparently she was peer pressured into it because nobody cared about the other stuff she writes. But it personally annoys me that despite her mistakes, she did try to be there. She did feel remorse. And after he died she still stayed loyal to him. Maybe thoughts of other people but like thats just a thought crime and shouldn't be punishable by death!
I diiiid kinda like and was flabbergasted by the scene where Xero makes two rapists basically rape each other to see who lives. That was something.
Xero. The man who was electrocuted twice AND set on FIRE.
He isn't dead. Nope. He's been alive and just been systematic in his attempts to drive this girl crazy. Living in the walls and shit like some sort of rat man. Stinky rat man. Stinky abusive rat man. He's justifying everything he does because he feels betrayed but when SHE feels betrayed by his actions too, oh no, thats different. Clearly. Barf.
I haven't finished this yet. Im very tempted not to. Its so edgy and feels like a big old nothing sandwich. It teases these taboo dark romance stuff but gives you crumbs at best. How can you make the most extreme dangerous kind of sex boring? The sex scenes are interesting at best but, at least to me, aren't exactly arousing. Again. Im not yucking anyone's yum. But the lack of care they build up for these characters doesnt make me want to cheer for them or invest my time into them and I sure as hell dont really care if they take a trip to bonetown or not.
Im probavly going to finish it because even if i dont like it, the show must go on
Plus ive already bought it so