[Review] Bared to You

German Cover

English Cover

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‚Bared to You‘ by Sylvia Day

  Crossfire # 1...

Synopsis:
Our journey began in fire…
Gideon Cross came into my life like lightning in the darkness—beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I’d never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily…
Gideon knew. He had demons of his own. And we would become the mirrors that reflected each other’s most private wounds… and desires.
The bonds of his love transformed me, even as I prayed that the torment of our pasts didn’t tear us apart…
(Source: Goodreads.com)

My thoughts about it:
Right from the first pages on I could see that Day doesn’t empathize much on the current stylistic writing manners. Her formulations are all extremely exaggerated and drips with adjectives that often I had to shake my head. Don’t get me wrong, in general I’ve nothing against adjectives or I’m also not the same opinion like Stephen King, that every author should delete most of the adjectives/ adverbs … but if you read Day’s book, then you see again, what King meant with that and you also acknowledge, how uncreative Day used them and you notice the bad writing style of her.
Luckily soon I got dragged into the story and also into the life of Ana… ups, sorry – I meant Eva. Therefore you could try to ignore the writing style, even if it hasn’t always worked.

But also the plot and the idioms were not exactly brilliant. And several times I had to ask myself ‚where is here the plot?‘, because after the second or third encounter of Ana Eva and Christian Gideon, it was only just a see-saw between them. One moment they had the best, most unrestrained sex on God’s earth and in the next something happens, so that Eva becomes sad/ disappointed/ sour and simply runs away without saying a word. And then Gideon runs after her like a well educated Golden Retriever/ apologizes to her/ calms her and the endless loop begins/ ends again with the greatest sex you can imagine. This goes on through the whole book – until I was only frustrated and didn’t know what to do against it.

Furthermore instead of adding more action in the story, Day rather described which clothes Eva, Gideon and Cary wore every day. And here I mean really – always and everything! Okay, I also like stylish clothing, but this was a ‘tick’ too much. Also I didn’t get a lot of insights of Eva’s work, which she has started just in the beginning, because everything was described only very short and also the communication with other characters, except with Gideon, was rare. So that, as already said, there were only arguments/ misunderstandings and sex scenes in this book. That’s all!

But regardless of everything, it was also not so, that I didn’t want to read on. To declare, in spite of all my criticism, the book has also pulled me in its spell and above all, also the characters didn’t let me go any more, so that I was tied up wiht them and I simply wished them a happy end.
Even if I had my problems with Eva, I was a fan of Gideon and from the first page on I’ve fallen in love with Cary. He is great and has amused me through the whole book, which has made it lighter for me. Unfortunately he is also a relationship-destroyer like Eva, but I hope that will change in the following books and that he will be even more present in the story.

After all the emotional rollercoaster and constant up and downs, we finally got a pleasant ending for which I was happy and which, to be honest, would have also been enough for me. I would be satisfied with it, if the story of Gideon and Eva has ended now or okay, some little more background information would have been nice too, but all in all, it would have been better to put everything in one book, at most into two (but not in three).
But because nowadays everything goes in the direction of trilogies, we also get here another two books from Day and I’m skeptical what she’ll still present us of Eva and Gideon in two further parts. I’m very doubtful whether it’ll functions for me or not and I fear that it’ll be a duplication of the first book, only with other conflicts, but from the style exactly the same. But we’ll see. 🙂

German Cover:
I like it from the style and it fits also perfectly to the contents of the book. Well selected and I think it’s great that the English Hardcover version was used.

All in all:
Seldom I‘ve liked parts in a book so much and at the same time others convinced me so little. I still want to read book 2, but if this won’t be better, then I’ll stop to read this series.

Rating:
3 of 5 points – (I liked it)
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A huge Thanks for the reviewer’s copy to:

© Random House

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Succession:

#1: Sylvia Day – Bared to You »»
#2: Sylvia Day – Reflected in You
#3: Sylvia Day – Entwined with You

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© Sylvia Day

About the author – Sylvia Day:
Sylvia Day is the #1 New York Times and #1 international bestselling author of more than a dozen award-winning novels translated into over three dozen languages. She has been nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Author and her work has been honored as Amazon’s Best of the Year in Romance. She has won the RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award and been nominated for Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® award twice.s.
(Source: Goodreads.com)

Visit her Website »»

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