Enthralled by Giana Darling

Published: March 28, 2019

Publisher: Self Published

Pages: 394

Genre: Dark Romance, BDSM

Rating: 3/5

This was my first Giana Darling book and I’m sad to say that I thought it was just ok. I usually love dark romances but I found this one to be boring with characters that I didn’t really care about. Enthralled is book one of the Enslaved duology following Coisma who at 18 is sold by her father to Alexander to be his sex slave. Of course, being a dark romance, Alexander and Cosima fall in love with each other and this book is part one of their love story. I wasn’t aware going into this but the Enslaved series is a Beauty and the Beast retelling. I am not a fan of retellings but I did appreciate the Beauty and the Beast touches this story had and I think that it was well done. Enthralled is also very BDSM heavy, she is a sex slave after all, but I do think that Cosima and Alexander were able to build a strong bond with each other despite all that. This book is a much darker take on BDSM and it is very abusive in the beginning although as the relationship grows it becomes more mutual. For this reason I don’t like Alexander and while he does have a terrible dark backstory I don’t think it excuses what he does as an adult.

I prefer my romances to have more substance than this had and I wish we had gotten more of Alexander’s world and not Cosima’s. Alexander is part of a very dark, very abusive, very disgusting secret society and the only real action of this book are the parts that are related to it. I also found Cosima to be naive and she never grows out of it. Despite learning and seeing things that are showing her how people are, she still was shocked about things that were so obvious. I also can’t decide if I liked Darling’s writing style or not. When the little bit action was happening I didn’t notice her writing at all but when the book was dragging I found myself irritated by her flowery style of writing. Overall, this was just a passably good book.

This book is part of Kindle Unlimited so if you have it and this book still seems like something you want to try you don’t have much to lose. I will be passing on the second book in this series but I am very interested in reading Giana Darling’s Fallen Men series. Hopefully I have better luck with those romances!

~Cassie