MADAME X
Series: Madame X #1
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Author: Jasinda Wilder
Release Date: October 6, 2015
Madame X invites you to test the limits of control in this provocative new novel from New York Times bestselling author Jasinda Wilder.
My name is Madame X.
I’m the best at what I do.
And you’d do well to follow my rules…Hired to transform the uncultured, inept sons of the wealthy and powerful into decisive, confident men, Madame X is a master of the art of control. With a single glance she can cut you down to nothing, or make you feel like a king.
But there is only one man who can claim her body—and her soul.
Undone time and again by his exquisite dominance, X craves and fears his desire in equal measure. And while she longs for a different path, X has never known anything or anyone else—until now…
I belong to one man and one man alone, and he does not share.”
I’ve been sitting here for two days trying to put all my convoluted thoughts in words. Did I like this book? I don’t know. Did I DISlike it? I don’t know. I really just have no idea how I feel about the book, the characters, or the story. None. And isn’t that a bitch? The entire story is one mystery hidden behind another, and there’s quite a few things at work here that managed to leave me with more questions than answers now that I finished. Am I curious enough to read the next book to see where the story is going? I AM curious. But it’s more of a “I wish someone else would read it and tell me” sort of curiosity. It’s just that middle of the road book that I really don’t know how I even feel about. But I’ve digressed. Allow me to try to sum-up my thoughts somewhat in a semblance of a spoiler free review here…
Madame X is a highly sought after and exclusive trainer to spoiled sons of the rich and entitled. Named after Jon Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X, she whips inept and spoiled boys into men. She’s stunning, beguiling, cold, and incredibly good at her job. Her services are expensive and she has a waiting list 2 years long. She is THE person to go to for the rich to educate their sons how to be men enough to eventually take over their fathers’ empires. Her job is also all she knows and all she’s known for over six years now.
Is she a willing victim or the prey of something much more sinister? Therein lies the rub and that’s what the reader is left questioning for the entirety of the book.
So what didn’t work for me?
The writing style for one…
I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it. Is it present tense? Past tense?
I sink to my knees. Unzip. Free the slide-and-hook clasp of custom-tailored trousers. Taste flesh. Smoky essence. My hands and mouth on firm, clean, masculine flesh….
Madame X refers to her clients as “you”. ‘You sit at a table and wait for me. I look at you’. But then the other main character in the story gets referred to as almost something more…almost like an entity if that even makes sense
Caleb is an enigma in every essence of the word, so perhaps that particular descriptive writing of his scenes are the reasons behind it. To build on that perception? But if I’m being honest, it mostly just flew over my head and managed to confuse me.
The writing style and dialogue is almost ostentatious at times with the words and descriptions used. Madame X is extremely cultured, and it certainly gets across in her inner monologue, however, I just found it to be excessive. Her referring to her nether regions as “privates” didn’t help either.
Do you see what I mean though? It was just entirely too much considering I’m reading a contemporary erotic romance…
My other issue was Caleb
And I hate my body for it.”
Is he a bad guy? A good guy shrouded in mystery that’s simply misunderstood? Who is he? What is it he does? Do I care? The answer to all of those questions is I don’t know. I couldn’t connect to him for the life of me. I’m all for questionable characters, but I do have my limits and I do think that this man was that. I found nothing endearing or captivating about him. Perhaps this was the point and the second and third books will put things in better perspective. The problem is that my perception of him is already skewed and I don’t think it’ll be changing.
Now as for the story itself? I can see how people would enjoy it. It is somewhat spellbinding if you can connect to it. The mystery, the secrets, it all weaves together into quite a tale. Perhaps if I enjoyed the writing style and developed a better connection to X, that would have been the case for me as well.
I couldn’t understand X’s behavior or decisions. She’s a strong and captivating woman, but at times her naivety was a bit too much. Yes, I understand that since this is all she’s known for over 6 years that mostly rules her actions…but to a point. This is particularly true for the direction the ending of the book took. I was not at all a fan of that particular direction. While I do plan on reading the second book to see what happens, I’m not exactly anxious at a chance to jump into it either.
I suppose I’ll save my ultimate judgement of the series until I finish book 2, so we’ll just wait to see what happens.
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THE TRILOGY
Seven books. Seven erotically charged and deliciously addicting books. All of it leading up to this glorious moment; Drake. I’ve been anxiously anticipating for the leader of the Guardians and constantly growling and smoke billowing dragon shifter to get his book, even before his heroine was introduced. And when the author did reveal who the heroine would be in one of the biggest twists ever? Let’s just say on a scale of 1 to ten, I was somewhere around rabid. I wanted it BAD is what I’m trying to tell you here.
Have you ever read a book that touched you on such a visceral level you almost felt like you were living it along with the characters. Where you felt every emotion, every painful revelation, every bruise and emotional scar? A book that gutted you and at the same time you can’t stop thinking about? A book that you just know will stay with you for a long while yet? Sinner’s Creed was that book to me.
Dirk is a nomad National for Sinner’s Creed MC. He’s the shadow that you don’t see coming, and only see right before your final breath. He’s a third generation, and the MC life is all he knows. He grew up with violence and blood. The club is his life and his salvation. He rides for it, he kills for it, and he knows that eventually he’ll die for it. But then a blonde beauty rocks his world to its very core.
Dirk and Saylor’s relationship may have started off from 60 right away, but there was always something so fateful about it. I was totally buying what the author was selling and man oh man but she sold their love to me. I felt it to my very core. It could have been cheesy or OTT, but it never was. It was beautiful, and real, and authentic. I was eating it up with a spoon and loving every second of it.
Lexi Blake’s romances are an addiction I never want a cure from. I don’t care how many books this woman writes in this series because I will read each and every single one of them with the fervor of a kid at a candy store for the very first time. Yes. They’re that good. Her Masters and Mercenaries has been my biggest addiction for years now. And with ten novels into the series, I still hope it never ends. Each book continues to be just as good if not better than the last; keeping me on the edge of my seat one minute, and uncomfortably squirming in it and fanning myself in the next. It’s the perfect combination of romance and suspense, espionage and action, all topped with sizzling hot BDSM that together makes for one unputdownable read.
Kori and Kai together burned up the pages. I loved them as individual characters but I absolutely adored them as a couple. They may not have had a strong presence in the previous books, but they were still a dynamic couple in their own. Sadism isn’t typically my cuppa either, but something about just did it for me here. Possibly because Kai was such a great balance of loving and sweet with that demanding Dom persona with his sadistic urges.
Being a huge Carmen Jenner fan, when I saw she’s coming out with an MM romance, I didn’t even bat an eyelash before adding this beauty to my shelves. And when it landed on my kindle? I devoured it in one sitting…though with much fidgeting involved because holy hot sex scenes! My ovaries got a hell of a work out is all I can tell you, because if there’s one thing this woman can write, it’s one extremely hot sex scene. Finding North certainly didn’t lack in steam, but it also packed on emotion and angst all tied together in a steamy GFY set up that I absolutely enjoyed the hell out of.
North and Will grew up together and were the best of friends until one day everything changed. Now twelve years later all they have between them is regret, longing, and resentment. Will is openly gay in a small Australian town where they’re not exactly excepting of that sort of thing. But with his father being the owner of the town’s lone watering hole where he bartends, they mainly ignore it for the booze they come to him for.
