Lotus

I’m just glad I’m done with it…

Overall rating (no spoilers)
World building: ⭐️⭐️
Characters: ⭐️
Spicy: 🌶️ 🌶️ (it’s not kinky spice, there’s just a lot of it)
Violence: 🔪

I checked Goodreads before buying this so I was semi-aware that I might not like the story or (some of) the characters.
The majority of three star reviews on Goodreads struggled with the middle section but enjoyed the beginning and the ending. I, unfortunately, did not have the same experience, as I disliked one of the main characters from the get go and thus had no fun at all throughout the entire 600 pages (phone screen).

This will likely contain some spoilers, so beware.

About the characters:
Sydney is at best annoying, at worst a selfish, self-centred idiot. Of the multiple, sometimes heavy topics in the book, she makes every single last one about herself.
Spoiler: not ONE of them is about her.

Oliver is given this quirk where he uses old timey wording and is continuously confused by technology. Now.. an initial confusion about newer tech is understandable, however, Oliver is ALSO repeatedly described as a very smart man. He at one point wonders why his pants make music…

Now onto the HEAVY spoilers:

There are two significant and technically heavy topics written about in the book: Oliver’s abduction and the CSA of Clementine.

Neither topic is handled particularly well for the simple reason that the author clearly just wanted to write a slightly smutty romance novel. The abduction, including the majority of its potential consequences for Oliver, gets dismissed after maaaybe 150 pages and doesn’t matter at all. Apart from his (infrequent and inconsistent) confusion about modern phones he shows no signs of havingspend 22 YEARS in an underground bunker. He isn’t claustrophobic, he doesn’t see a psychologist (except to get hypnotised TWICE, so he can remember his mom), there are barely any scenes that involve him getting readjusted to living outside.

The CSA is barely a footnote and only serves as a reason for his abduction. Yes, that is right, the victim doesn’t really matter.

Also, and that’s even more outrageous to me, Sydney makes BOTH of these traumatic events about herself.

Then there is the issue of Oliver’s comics. It’s fairly obvious from the get go that these comics are super important to him, as they were his way to deal with the isolation of his captivity. Unfortunately, just as any other topic that doesn’t involve him and Sydney getting together, they are forgotten for the majority of the story. They pop ip every once in a blue moon serving as a cheap plot driving device.

The story is TECHNICALLY built around Oliver breaking out of the bunker he had been kept in and building a life again afterwards.
However, as mentioned previously, that is just the excuse to have a backdrop for him and Sydney getting together and getting into bed. That plot line is the focus of the middle part of the book and it DRAGS. Mostly because Sydney, who, for all intents and purposes probably should have been in therapy for decades at this point, has the emotional maturity of a 12 year old. Oliver’s abduction, Oliver’s return, Oliver’s plans and life… she makes absolutely everything about herself. At some point he considers moving away to get his new life in order. Which she throws a hissy fit about, doesn’t consider his feelings at all and also doesn’t have a conversation with Oliver about.
Everything is always about her. How she was affected by the abduction. How she is torn between remaining friends but also being sooo attracted to Oliver and yada yada yada. It’s exhausting to read and honestly just annoying most of the time.

The plot twist - if you can even call it that - of her sister being the victim of CSA can be guessed a mile off. The story outside of the relationship drama is mishandled at every turn and just… so boring.
Every potentially heavy topic is mishandled. Every. Single. One.

Oh and then there is that other plot thread… fairly early in the book, Sydney gets attacked. By some mysterious male figure in her own house. Something which is fairy traumatic, understandably so. Except… it doesn’t really traumatise her. She gets triggered twice.. roughly once every 200 pages. The first time is so utterly irrelevant it’s almost laughable, the second is intriguing for all of 2 pages.
Whenever it does come up it is portrayed as if she was heavily traumatised by the event. Unfortunately, that trauma has zero effect on her the entire rest of the story in between those two occasions.

About the ending…

Well, not the ending. The conclusion of the non-romance plot threads. About 100 pages before the book is FINALLY over we get the resolution to everything. And it’s exactly what I assumed it would be. There were a few nice misdirects throughout the book that had me doubt my theories, but my initial gut feeling was spot on.
The Bradford-Chapter was probably the most interesting of the whole book.

The four chapter long epilogue and the chapter titled epilogue were once more needlessly wordy and included some shifts in thought that were truly jarring.

Overall, the story had a very interesting premise but handled it very poorly. I didn’t care about the characters, every aspect of the story that could have been interesting was waylaid in favour of the romance plot.
Basically, an entire chore to get through from start to finish. Glad that’s over.