Colters' Woman by
Maya Banks
My rating:
3 of 5 stars
I've been in a huge reading slump, and this book temporarily talked me out of that, for so many wrong reasons, but it felt so right in the moment to be reading again and. . . well, enjoying might be the wrong word for this one.
So let’s talk about this beautiful disaster. It’s a dated (or maybe just reads like it's dated) erotica novel about 3 brothers who decide they’re only going to have one wife to share. It is how they grew up and what they are comfortable with. It’s sort of like a backwards Sister Wives situation, but without the always separate intimate relationships. And hey, they just sort of pick the girl out of the snow, in the middle of the wilderness, and then call dibbs, which pretty much sums up the . . . well, I think meet cute is definitely the wrong definition for whatever that was.
Now, I suspect many of you are like—wha-wha? I have so many questions about how this works. Like, how does this work? Do they hide this from people? What does their community think? How do they manage to share without fighting? Are they incapable of getting their own separate women, or do they just prefer it this way? Does it ever get awkward? How did they decide on this path and why? How can I go on with my life without answers to my many questions?
And yes, I did have a whole lot of questions, most of which I can’t post in a book review. The logistics were very unclear, which peaked my curiosity, which is why when Nicole told me she started this novel and quit it, because “I don’t think I can do it,” I knew immediately that my difficult brain was going to insist on picking it up and getting some answers.
Basically, Nicole failed me, and I had to know, which is how I started reading this ridiculous story in the first place. And yes, the whole first part of the book is really a stretch. It’s not well-written, and I had to work hard to suspend disbelief. Almost nothing is logical, and characters don’t act in ways that are true to who they supposedly are. But, I mean, I needed some darned answers, so I kept on, like a good little soldier.
Then something insane happened. The writing evened out. The characters and backstory grew more interesting, and somehow, I was suddenly hooked on this story, which I had intended to DNF as soon as I got enough answers to sate my curiosity.
Then I finished this book, and I found out there were more of them, so darned if I didn’t download them all and continue on with book two.
Here’s the deal: if you can’t handle intimate relationships that are outside of the norm, then you shouldn’t have picked this book up. If you can handle those, you’re still going to struggle with the rocky storytelling, which I suspect many people would say is not the point of the story anyway.
Overall, this had my attention, even if it wasn’t for the usual reasons.
Book 221 read in 2018
Pages: 272
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