Latest / Rachel Oates / BookTok's Worst Sequel: Hunting Adeline

Transcript

BookTok's Worst Sequel: Hunting Adeline · Rachel Oates

• 0:00
  Everyone and welcome back to a new video.
• 0:01
  This is the second part that I'm filming of what was originally
• 0:05
  going to be one whole video reviewing the entire cat and
• 0:08
  mouse geology. But inside I decided to split it
• 0:10
  into two videos. So if you haven't seen the first
• 0:13
  one, maybe go and watch that. It's reviewing Haunting Adeline
• 0:16
  by HD Carlton. This is reviewing the second
• 0:18
  book in the series, Hunting Adeline, also by HD Carlton.
• 0:21
  And it literally falls straight on from that video because like
• 0:25
  I say, it was meant to originally be one video, but I
• 0:27
  just chopped it down the middle. So we're not doing any recaps.
• 0:29
  We're not doing anything like that.
• 0:30
  We're just jumping straight into the second book, which picks up
• 0:34
  where there was a cliffhanger. OK, my Angel.
• 0:39
  But yeah, thank you for watching and I hope you enjoyed this
• 0:42
  video. But fair warning, it does cover
• 0:44
  some really, really damn dark topics like abuse, rape, sex
• 0:51
  trafficking, and a whole bunch of really difficult topics.
• 0:54
  So if this is something that you think you might struggle with,
• 0:57
  please feel free to skip this video and take care of yourself.
• 1:00
  But for now, yeah, thank you for watching.
• 1:02
  And I'll let you just jump straight to the proper video.
• 1:06
  We're going to move directly on to book 2 in the series Hunting
• 1:09
  Adeline. The last book was ridiculous
• 1:10
  because it was almost 600 pages long.
• 1:12
  This is almost 700 like or over 7.
• 1:15
  It's a lot of pages. Again, didn't need to be this
• 1:19
  long. It's oh, it's awful.
• 1:21
  It's the first half of it is 350 pages of just women being
• 1:26
  tortured and abused and just misery.
• 1:29
  Pure misery. And it doesn't even like each.
• 1:32
  Each bit of misery doesn't drive the plot on, it just draws out
• 1:36
  her misery and pain and trauma for longer.
• 1:39
  It's not. It's not trauma.
• 1:42
  It's not misery or trauma with a purpose.
• 1:45
  It's misery and trauma for the sake of the author enjoying
• 1:49
  writing about the abuse of women.
• 1:51
  That's it. It's a horrible book.
• 1:55
  This one opens with, again, one of the most pathetic excuses for
• 1:58
  a trigger warning I've ever read.
• 2:00
  This book contains very dark triggering situations,
• 2:03
  particularly a four letter one that starts with R and ends in
• 2:06
  E, although not between the main characters.
• 2:09
  Is that creating an is that creative enough?
• 2:11
  Zon? These scenes can be detailed, so
• 2:14
  please proceed with caution. There's also graphic violence,
• 2:16
  sexual assault, explicit sexual situations, human trafficking,
• 2:19
  PTSD, and very particular kinks such as blood, plain knife play,
• 2:23
  degradation, and somnophilia. This book is significantly
• 2:26
  darker than the first. Please take these warnings
• 2:28
  seriously. Your mental health matters.
• 2:31
  Like, mate, if you're going to write graphic rape scenes, at
• 2:33
  least have the guts to call it what it is and use the word
• 2:36
  rape, you know, just be honest with it.
• 2:40
  And if you can put that warning in here for rape in this book,
• 2:42
  why couldn't you put it in for the last book?
• 2:45
  Oh, it's because your main character was raping the other
• 2:47
  main character and you don't admit that it's rape because you
• 2:49
  want to try and make it look sexy.
• 2:54
  Really annoys me. Really annoys me.
• 2:56
  I'm sure you can tell this author is so damn irresponsible
• 3:01
  and no matter what she says, she clearly doesn't give a damn
• 3:03
  about her readers and their mental health and well-being.
• 3:06
  Otherwise she wouldn't be writing rape porn in the 1st
• 3:08
  place, would she? Her website features more in
• 3:11
  depth content warnings that we touched on earlier.
• 3:13
  Like, she actually does label it graphic rape in this great
• 3:16
  lovely. But but again, just because you
• 3:21
  admit that something that you're writing is dark or messed up or
• 3:24
  dangerous or whatever, that doesn't make what you're doing
• 3:27
  OK and excusable. You know, if I tell you I'm
• 3:31
  going to rob you and then do it, does that make the robbery OK?
• 3:36
  I'm like, well, I warned you. You can't complain if I warned
• 3:39
  you I was going to do it and then do it.
• 3:40
  You know what I mean? The action is still bad whether
• 3:43
  you give a warning or not. So this book opens with a
• 3:46
  scribbled page of someone writing Let Me Go over and over
• 3:49
  and over again. I think it's must be intriguing,
• 3:51
  but I'm so uninvested in this series that I do not care.
• 3:57
  And also, we've got all that swearing right from the first
• 4:01
  page again, and this author just just does not have a good enough
• 4:05
  vocabulary to express herself without swearing every other
• 4:08
  line. And it's just getting boring to
• 4:09
  read. Let's do a swear count before we
• 4:11
  go any further. Like the last book.
• 4:14
  Like I say, there's a swear word every couple of lines.
• 4:16
  This time the book contains 722 F words and variations of F
• 4:21
  words, 141 S words, 49 bitches, and seven C words.
• 4:28
  And not including the words on the graphics like the diary
• 4:31
  pages and so on. So even more than the first
• 4:33
  book, oh God, it makes me exhausted before I've even read
• 4:37
  it. One small mercy about this book
• 4:41
  is that Addie and Zaid don't reunite until halfway through
• 4:43
  the book, so at least we don't have to put up with any of that
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  until about 400 pages in. So maybe a God does exist
• 4:50
  because thank you. I can't deal with their banter
• 4:53
  anymore. And him constantly raping her.
• 4:58
  This book no longer has Addie strangely labelled as the
• 5:01
  Manipulator. Good because I'm stupid.
• 5:04
  This time she has the equally stupid name of the diamond.
• 5:08
  And Zaid is no longer the Shadow, but he's the Hunter.
• 5:12
  Because, you know, edgy cringy team vibes are still strong in
• 5:15
  this one. So at the end of the last book,
• 5:20
  the two men said they were kidnapping Addie to take her to
• 5:24
  Max. But now she wakes up in the back
• 5:26
  of a car or a van or some vehicle and they're just info
• 5:29
  dumping about everything that's happened and say that they're
• 5:31
  actually taking her to the society and somewhere called
• 5:34
  Garrison's. Turns out he's a doctor.
• 5:36
  We'll get there. Max may still be involved, but
• 5:39
  really, who cares? We get an info dump about why
• 5:42
  she has a stupid label of diamond as well.
• 5:45
  Too bad you don't have a choice, Rio.
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  Doesn't matter. The girl right here.
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  This girl right here is worth millions.
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  I mean, we've got an effing diamond here.
• 5:52
  Just imagine it, dude. Z's girl, the one and only up on
• 5:55
  an auction stage. You know how many enemies he
• 5:58
  has? People will be frothing at the
• 5:59
  mouth to make his girl their little toy.
• 6:02
  I'll get my cut from Max and the society will compensate.
• 6:05
  Compensate you? I'm sure we'll be living effing
• 6:08
  lavishly. He lets out a burst of hyena
• 6:10
  like laughter. I can buy my own goddamn private
• 6:13
  island after the money goes through.
• 6:15
  A shot of anger pumps into me at the man's callous words,
• 6:18
  Speaking of me like I'm a house up for sale.
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  She then passes out in the back of the vehicle and wakes up with
• 6:24
  some old guy, a doctor, Doctor Garrison, seemingly checking her
• 6:28
  over and putting her under anaesthetic until she heals from
• 6:31
  the injury she got when her car was run off the road.
• 6:34
  When she wakes up again, she looks around her and says,
• 6:37
  breathing through the aches. I glance around.
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  I'm in a darkened white room. It's sterile in here, not clean
• 6:43
  like a hospital, which is where I expected to could be, but
• 6:45
  we're not in a dungeon either. Dirty white walls, concrete
• 6:49
  flooring, and silver cabinets line nearly every wall in the
• 6:52
  room. Next to the hospital bed is a
• 6:54
  large metal table with a bowl and various instruments laid out
• 6:57
  on a bloody cloth. How can it be both sterile and
• 7:02
  not clean with dirty walls? I don't think this author knows
• 7:06
  what the word sterile means. This does not make sense.
• 7:10
  Stop using words you don't know the meaning of.
• 7:13
  SO the doctor is Doctor Garrison, The men who kidnapped
• 7:17
  her are Rio and Rick. Addie goes on a rant about how
• 7:20
  she's scared because these men might hurt her and kill her and
• 7:24
  Zaid would never do that. Except, you know, all the times
• 7:26
  he did hurt her in the last book.
• 7:28
  But I guess I'm just going to pretend that didn't happen.
• 7:30
  And because they want us to think somehow these men are
• 7:33
  worse than him. Somehow.
• 7:36
  You're telling us one thing, but the actions say another.
• 7:39
  It ends there with them sedating her again.
• 7:41
  And then we get another image between the chapters.
• 7:44
  This time it's a diary entry from 2008 written by someone
• 7:47
  called Molly. And she says she is 20 years
• 7:51
  old, and she thinks she's going to die because of what these men
• 7:54
  and Francesca are doing to her. We find out who Francesca is
• 7:58
  soon, don't you worry. She's clearly another young
• 8:01
  woman who was kidnapped and sold into sex slavery by the society.
• 8:04
  Basically she has gone through what Addie is currently going
• 8:09
  through, but like 14 years earlier.
• 8:13
  I just at this point I was hoping that these like added
• 8:17
  diary entries added more than the great grandmothers once did
• 8:20
  in the last book because they were just pointless.
• 8:22
  Like we got told all the information that was in the
• 8:24
  diary in the main text itself in like 1 of the earliest chapters
• 8:30
  and then we just read the diary entries anyway and it didn't
• 8:32
  give us any new information because we'd already been told
• 8:34
  what was in them. So like, it felt quite
• 8:38
  pointless. I was hoping that these diary
• 8:41
  entries were less pointless, but they're not.
• 8:44
  They just tell us that like the same thing happened 14 years ago
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  to this other woman, and now it's happening to Addie.
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  And then halfway through, it switches from Molly's diary
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  entries to Addie's diary entries.
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  Except the narration is already from Addie's point of view.
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  So we don't really learn anything new in it.
• 9:00
  It's just like occasionally like a bit of extra trauma dumping
• 9:03
  for the sake of it. Oh, these books are poorly
• 9:07
  written. They're really poorly written.
• 9:10
  Zaid gets a chapter. You know, Mr Rapist, Stalker,
• 9:13
  serial killer man, I'm not letting anyone forget exactly
• 9:16
  who he is. And it opens exactly where the
• 9:18
  last book ended with Zaid and Jay being held at gunpoint.
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  But we learn who's holding the gun.
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  Whoo. It's a woman.
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  Mysterious. And at this point, you might be
• 9:28
  thinking, well, who could this woman be?
• 9:30
  Think about it. There's only been three women.
• 9:33
  Three women in this book so far, Addy, Dyer and Claire.
• 9:39
  Oh, and Sibby. Sorry, but she's been arrested
• 9:41
  by the police. Four women.
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  We know it's not Addy because she's kidnapped.
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  We know it's not Dyer because she works for Zaid.
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  We know it's not Sibby because she's in prison.
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  So, oh, who could this mysterious woman be?
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  She makes everything very obvious.
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  The exact feeling is reflected on Jay's face as his features
• 10:02
  slacken and his eyes widen, his voice saturated with utter
• 10:05
  bewilderment as he mouths. You.
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  Yes, me, Mother Effer. My mind races, circulating
• 10:14
  through each encounter with her and trying to figure out how the
• 10:16
  FI missed this, missed her being a wolf in sheep's clothing.
• 10:19
  She played her part pretty effing well.
• 10:21
  Clearly it's Claire. It is Claire.
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  I I don't know why anyone is so shocked.
• 10:27
  It's Claire. It will kill Claire Steinberg.
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  So I start grunting when a particularly painful twinge
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  flares in my back. Mark was never your abuser, was
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  he? She titters.
• 10:38
  He, he, he. Oh yes he was.
• 10:40
  He just didn't know what it meant for him.
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  Every time he laid his hands on me.
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  Idiot. Never did figure out I was the
• 10:45
  one pulling all the strings. He was too stupid.
• 10:48
  This really does a massive disservice to us victims of
• 10:51
  domestic violence because it just feels really damn
• 10:53
  disrespectful to make one of the only like prominent victims of
• 10:58
  it in this book actually turn out to be secretly evil and
• 11:01
  abuse of herself. You know, it just anyway says
• 11:04
  that's the best thing about the male species.
• 11:06
  You're all so far up your own bums you've never thought it
• 11:09
  could be a woman in charge. Never suspected the meek abused
• 11:12
  wife because you all assumed I was weak.
• 11:14
  I huff out a dry laugh. Wrong.
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  I didn't suspect the abused wife only because I couldn't imagine
• 11:19
  one victim actively victimising other innocent women and
• 11:22
  children. This is not the feminist
• 11:24
  statement the author thinks it is.
• 11:26
  Luckily, she calls out Zaid for being the hypocrite that he is
• 11:29
  and says I can't imagine that a man that puts his life on the
• 11:32
  line to save these victims forcing an innocent woman into a
• 11:35
  relationship. She is evil, but I love her for
• 11:38
  this line. It is true.
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  Her lips tip up further. We're all hypocritesy.
• 11:42
  She says, ignoring my taunt and straightening.
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  The only difference between you and me is that I choose to
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  profit off the pathetic men in this world.
• 11:49
  They're never going to stop abusing those they deem weaker,
• 11:51
  and they'll never stop raping and killing them.
• 11:53
  So I decided that if that's the world we're going to live in,
• 11:56
  then I'll be damned if I don't gain something from it.
• 11:59
  You could do so much good in your position, Jay fumes discuss
• 12:02
  twisting his features. You have a men's power and you
• 12:05
  choose to feed into the patriarchy rather than changing
• 12:07
  it. Jay, you literally work for a
• 12:10
  rapist and an abuser. Don't lecture women on the
• 12:13
  patriarchy and island though. He is right, so there is that.
• 12:19
  So Claire and her sidekick Patrick kidnapped Zaid, and Jay
• 12:23
  and Zaid make some oddly homophobic seeming snarky
• 12:27
  comments towards this guy, which feels really unnecessary, this
• 12:30
  Patrick guy. And as they leave, the howls of
• 12:33
  pain are slowly fading as the mortalities grow, and I can't
• 12:37
  help but marvel at the fact that the society sacrificed their own
• 12:39
  people's lives just just to ensure that I would be caught.
• 12:43
  That speaks volumes. Not only am IA threat, I'm
• 12:46
  catastrophic. So one, that last sign is cringy
• 12:48
  as hell, please stop it. And two, I can't help but think
• 12:52
  she meant fatalities here, not mortalities.
• 12:54
  In this context, mortalities doesn't really make sense.
• 12:57
  It's like we know what she meant, but it's not really the
• 13:00
  right word it. It's like she got the thesaurus
• 13:03
  out but didn't really understand the meaning of the word she was
• 13:06
  using. That happens a lot in this book,
• 13:09
  anyway. They're bundled into the
• 13:10
  backseat of a car, and by some miracle they have tiny invisible
• 13:13
  implants in their ears which they used to call for help.
• 13:16
  What a miracle of unrealistic technology these magic computers
• 13:20
  are. Back added again.
• 13:21
  So then some vehicle crashes into them to save them.
• 13:24
  It's their team and then we get another diarrhoea entry and this
• 13:28
  one is ridiculous. This is Molly saying they
• 13:30
  drugged me. I only know the date because the
• 13:32
  pedos are coming on the 20th and Francesca said I have 10 days to
• 13:35
  get my act together. Stop the unruliness or however
• 13:39
  you spell it. It's the last word I remember
• 13:41
  before they stuck a needle in my arm.
• 13:42
  If they thought that was going to keep me from escaping.
• 13:45
  Well guess what Francesca, I'm getting the F out of here, going
• 13:48
  to get back to my sister and getting as the hell out of this
• 13:51
  stupid bum paedophile state. So I'm confused because this is
• 13:54
  meant to be like a 20 year old woman, so why are paedophiles
• 13:57
  coming to see her when she's an adult?
• 13:59
  And if she is an adult, why is she writing like she's a 12 year
• 14:02
  old? You know like with the bad
• 14:04
  spelling and the edgy F this, F that.
• 14:09
  I feel like the author didn't know what she was doing here
• 14:11
  with this this character. Oh, I am absolutely exhausted.
• 14:15
  I'm going to take a break and come back to this later because
• 14:18
  I'm tired and my battery is also about to die.
• 14:21
  All right. Hi, welcome to Part 3 of me
• 14:22
  trying to record this video. So we're going back to Zaid in
• 14:25
  his chapter. Patrick is now dead because of
• 14:27
  the car crash. So he was a whole nothing of a
• 14:30
  character who never did anything and never had an impact.
• 14:33
  Clara's angry. Zaid and Jay run off into the
• 14:36
  van that's waiting to save them and that's that's it.
• 14:40
  That big cliffhanger that the book ended on that people were
• 14:42
  like, Oh my God, what's going to happen?
• 14:44
  What the two cliffhangers I get, but this one resolved in like 3
• 14:47
  pages done easy. Yeah, the the writing is still
• 14:54
  poor in this one. I actually think the writing is
• 14:56
  considerably worse in the second book than the first one.
• 14:59
  There has been absolutely no improvement between the two
• 15:02
  books. I nod, some of the pressure
• 15:05
  easing off my shoulders, but not nearly enough.
• 15:08
  It's like the Empire State Building is resting on them and
• 15:11
  only a penny fell off. Who is her editor?
• 15:15
  Someone, someone needs to give us some real feedback.
• 15:19
  Zaid is injured, though, from the explosion, from the car
• 15:23
  crash, from the everything. So he ends up in hospital.
• 15:25
  And Addie's kidnappers apparently got paid $12 million
• 15:29
  to kidnap her. So if the kidnappers got paid
• 15:32
  that much, then how much is she going to be sold for in this,
• 15:35
  like, sex slavery ring? You really expect me to believe
• 15:38
  that like some random 26 year old indie author who, like,
• 15:42
  let's be honest, has had many, many, many, many, many sexual
• 15:45
  partners before because that matters to these people.
• 15:49
  But this random 26 year old indie author is worth over $12
• 15:53
  million. Do you want me to believe that?
• 15:55
  Really, really. Come on.
• 16:00
  So using their magic hacking skills, Zaid and Jay immediately
• 16:04
  know that she was paid for by Max and then Zaid has a whole
• 16:07
  breakdown. So basically what happened is
• 16:10
  Max paid the kidnappers $12 million to kidnap her and then
• 16:16
  he sells her to sex slave owners, presumably for a profit
• 16:22
  and then they are going to auction her off to be sold to
• 16:29
  other slave owners. But like in the sense of like
• 16:32
  they own a slave, not they own a slavery ring.
• 16:35
  Does this make sense? No it doesn't because it's a
• 16:38
  stupid plot. Anyway, Zaid has a breakdown.
• 16:43
  I am. I am no longer a man, only a
• 16:46
  beast succumbing to primal instinct.
• 16:48
  I am annihilation. No, you are an idiot.
• 16:55
  That's another three minutes of magic working on his computer
• 16:58
  and Jay knows exactly where Addie is and sends their team
• 17:02
  out looking for her while Zaid has a nap in the hospital.
• 17:06
  Zaid stays in hospital for five days watching Max on his cameras
• 17:10
  and then finds out that one of the people who tried to kidnap
• 17:13
  Addie is called Rick, so they know a name now.
• 17:17
  After five days they said they know where Addie is, but they
• 17:21
  they didn't actually know where Addie is.
• 17:22
  They don't find her, so I'm not sure what that was about.
• 17:26
  Back to Addie's chapter. And she wakes up to Doctor
• 17:29
  Garrison saying that he's going to help her escape, but he
• 17:32
  might. But this might just be because
• 17:34
  he's crazy too, and he likes to abuse women and he wants to
• 17:37
  kidnap her for himself because remember, Addie is so perfect
• 17:40
  and every man in the world falls in love with her immediately
• 17:42
  when they see her. It's then he looks at me, a
• 17:46
  crazed smile on his face. I'm going to take you somewhere
• 17:49
  safe. No one will ever find you, I
• 17:50
  promise. A rock forms in my throat and I
• 17:53
  work to swallow as my situation becomes more apparent.
• 17:56
  No one will ever find you. He may be saving me from Rio and
• 17:59
  Rick, but that doesn't mean I won't need saving from him too.
• 18:03
  To paraphrase the iconic Fiona coin, I will never understand
• 18:07
  the power Adeline has over men. I will never understand the
• 18:12
  power Claire Edwards has over men.
• 18:14
  No, I don't want to go with you. I snap.
• 18:16
  His face morphs into a snarling demon and that coldness
• 18:19
  radiating from him crystallises. This man is dead on the inside.
• 18:22
  He's no more than an icy, decaying tomb.
• 18:25
  I feel the burst of pain Lancing across my cheek before I
• 18:28
  register him moving. My head whoops to the side and
• 18:30
  fire erupts on the side of my face.
• 18:33
  Everyone in these books is terrible.
• 18:34
  I'll just keep saying it except Addie's dad.
• 18:37
  And also, actually, I'm lying. Jay is not so bad.
• 18:40
  He is like a magical hacker who can do anything with a computer.
• 18:43
  But he's not actually that bad. He doesn't abuse any women in
• 18:48
  this book, which is great. So I don't mind Jay either.
• 18:52
  He's all right. Everyone else, terrible.
• 18:54
  Absolutely terrible. He's breathing heavily, fury
• 18:56
  evident on his Ruddy face. It's like staring into the eyes
• 18:59
  of a corpse, animated only by the evil inside him.
• 19:02
  Again, who is her editor and why are they not calling out all
• 19:05
  these ridiculous descriptions? She agrees to go with him
• 19:08
  anyway, and then on the way grabs a scalpel and stabs him in
• 19:11
  the back of the head. Except it doesn't go like all
• 19:14
  the way through, it just kind of hurts him a little bit, so he
• 19:16
  responds by choking her. Typical Zaid move, except now
• 19:19
  it's the doctor doing it and stars explode in my eyes,
• 19:23
  preventing me from seeing anything.
• 19:24
  For several seconds. It feels as if the back of my
• 19:26
  head has been cracked open, but the hands constricting my
• 19:28
  windpipe bring me out of the pit of agony.
• 19:31
  Again, I'm sorry, but how is this any different of a reaction
• 19:34
  to when Zaid chokes you? You get all the same things.
• 19:37
  I saw stars I did. Like both incidents of choking
• 19:41
  are as bad as each other and yet somehow we're meant to
• 19:43
  romanticise it when Zaid does it and fear it when this doctor
• 19:46
  does it. And you'll see that throughout
• 19:48
  this book, Addie is put in so many horrific situations that
• 19:51
  are completely horrific, and this book acknowledges them as
• 19:55
  horrific, but a lot of them are exactly the same things that she
• 19:58
  went through with Zaid, except they were romanticised and these
• 20:02
  are meant to. Be horrible, but when her
• 20:05
  reactions are the same, when the actions are the same, it it's
• 20:11
  just so it frustrates me, you know, Rio appears and kills the
• 20:16
  doctor by I thought he smashed his head in but apparently he
• 20:19
  shoots him in the head and his whole head explodes.
• 20:21
  So that's fun. And Rio says, get used to the
• 20:25
  sight of dead bodies, Princess. You're going to see a lot of
• 20:28
  them where you're going. And I'm, I'm just so sick of all
• 20:30
  the patronising, misogynistic names for women in this book.
• 20:34
  They're Oh, sweetheart, you mean shut up.
• 20:36
  No, I mean it. It's the lesser of all the evils
• 20:40
  in this book, but it's still frustrating and worth pointing
• 20:42
  out. You know, He does let her shower
• 20:45
  off all the blood while creepily watching her.
• 20:47
  And then he bundles her into another van and takes her to
• 20:50
  meet the infamous Francesca, who we have heard about in the diary
• 20:54
  entries, but we haven't met yet. And Addie doesn't know who she
• 20:57
  is either. And has anyone else noticed how
• 21:00
  many of the characters in these two books have similar sounding
• 21:03
  names? And it's, it's getting really
• 21:06
  confusing. And like, I've, I've been
• 21:07
  through these books quite a few Times Now for this video and
• 21:10
  this video script and everything, and I still find
• 21:12
  myself getting the characters mixed up and having to be like,
• 21:15
  wait, which one is this? And which one is this?
• 21:16
  Because so many sound the same. And we've got Rick, Rio,
• 21:20
  Ronaldo, Frank and Francesca, Mark, Max and Michael.
• 21:24
  There's a few others that we'll see throughout this book, so
• 21:27
  take note of them because they will.
• 21:30
  You'll notice it all the names sound the same.
• 21:33
  So they take her to this rundown house in the middle of nowhere.
• 21:35
  And this is the house where most of the first half of this book
• 21:38
  takes place. Grime is caked into the cracks
• 21:41
  and every surface is coated in dust.
• 21:42
  The deep brown hardwood floor is wonky and uneven and creaks from
• 21:46
  the slightest shift of weight. I imagine if this place was
• 21:48
  haunted, like Parsons Manor, no ghost could walk by undetected.
• 21:52
  So they're still trying to make this ghost thing happen.
• 21:54
  Like, can you just not Like it was of no consequence in the
• 21:57
  first book, It's of no consequence in this book.
• 21:59
  Can you stop trying to convince us that ghosts are real, please?
• 22:02
  It's. Silly, although honestly, I
• 22:04
  would take ghosts over anything that happens in this actual
• 22:07
  book, to be honest. So there are three other men in
• 22:09
  the house, and they all immediately threaten to rape
• 22:11
  Addie once Zaid is dead. I shrink beneath their lewd
• 22:15
  glances instinctively, my arms wrapped tighter around myself,
• 22:18
  but that only elicits a few grunts of amusement.
• 22:20
  Oh, don't be shy, baby girl, I promise I'll make you feel good.
• 22:23
  One of them croons, his black hair sticking up in several
• 22:25
  directions from the copious amounts of grease in it.
• 22:28
  I swallow, a lump forming in my throat as my gaze fixates on a
• 22:32
  dark red puddle on the table that I hadn't noticed before.
• 22:35
  Again, how is this any different to how it was with Zaid?
• 22:38
  It's not one of the guy starts randomly injecting drugs and
• 22:41
  this other man comes in. There's six of them at this
• 22:44
  point and he is carrying a possibly dead girl.
• 22:47
  I flinch, panic rising as the girl's lifeless limbs sway
• 22:50
  behind him. I have no idea if she's dead or
• 22:51
  alive. I'd hope this man would wouldn't
• 22:54
  be carrying an effing dead girl inside the house, but then again
• 22:57
  these bum holes would be the type to do something like that.
• 23:00
  At this point the book just turns into torch upon of Addie
• 23:03
  being put in increasingly dangerous situations with people
• 23:06
  who do want to harm her and do repeatedly harm.
• 23:09
  We get several long pages of graphic, graphic violent rape
• 23:16
  scenes over and over and over. One of the first lines is
• 23:20
  something like you keep your mouth open like that, don't be
• 23:22
  surprised when someone sticks their penis in it.
• 23:24
  And it only gets worse from there.
• 23:26
  It's absolutely disgusting. There is no good reason for
• 23:30
  these scenes to be written as gratuitously, graphically
• 23:34
  violent as they are. It does just feel like the
• 23:38
  author was getting off on the idea of torturing and abusing
• 23:42
  and sexually assaulting young women herself, you know?
• 23:44
  I mean, like she she seemed to really enjoy writing these
• 23:47
  scenes because there's so many of them and they're so graphic
• 23:51
  and it's unnecessary and it's really damn disturbing to read.
• 23:54
  The writing is still terrible, though, and even in these really
• 23:57
  serious moments. So in response to a man
• 23:59
  threatening to orally rape her, Addie responds to one saying
• 24:03
  he's lucky. I well she responds in the
• 24:05
  narration saying he's lucky I don't bark at him like a dog as
• 24:08
  I'm tempted to. They tell her that Francesca and
• 24:12
  Rocco will be back in a few hours and in the meantime she is
• 24:14
  put in her room. This is her room for the first
• 24:17
  half of the book entirely. So now we have Jerry and Jay,
• 24:20
  Rick and Rocco and again, please, I am begging this author
• 24:23
  to get some new names so we can actually remember who these
• 24:25
  people are. Rick, Rocco, Rio and who was the
• 24:30
  other one? Ronaldo, Rick, Rocco, Rio,
• 24:33
  Ronaldo help me remember which is which, please.
• 24:36
  Jerry and Jay, of course, they're we're going to get mixed
• 24:40
  up, I'm sure. But basically to give you a
• 24:43
  summary, Rio is friends with Rick, who is friends with Rocco,
• 24:46
  who's Francesca's brother. Francesca works for the society.
• 24:50
  Rick was hired by Max, who then recruited Rio.
• 24:52
  And then Rio and Rick are the ones that kidnapped Addy.
• 24:56
  Now she is with Rio and Rick but not Max, and she is going to be
• 25:02
  staying in the house that Francesca and Rocco run.
• 25:05
  I know it's needlessly complicated.
• 25:07
  We get more excerpts from Molly's diary, and it's just
• 25:09
  more accounts of the torture and rape of young women and girls.
• 25:12
  Again, it's gross. There's no need for any of us to
• 25:15
  read it. We already know horrific things
• 25:16
  happen in the sex slavery business.
• 25:19
  We don't necessarily need to read about it for hundreds and
• 25:22
  hundreds of pages, as this book does.
• 25:25
  Zaid's next chapter opens with more teenage angst, rage.
• 25:29
  It's not appreciated enough, not studied enough.
• 25:33
  The capabilities of the human body are no longer limited to
• 25:36
  the laws of physics. The absolute destruction that
• 25:39
  resides in my fingertips could burn down entire cities, reduce
• 25:42
  them to ashes and embers. A simple stroke of a match or a
• 25:45
  flick of my wrist and as far as my eyes can see would be
• 25:48
  consumed in the same black fire that rages inside me.
• 25:52
  For now, I turn the destruction on myself, my reflection seeds
• 25:56
  overcome with violence. Overcome with the violence only
• 26:00
  seen through telescopes, our universe was forged in brutality
• 26:04
  and now the cosmos resides in not one but two black eyes
• 26:07
  glaring back at me. So at least there are some
• 26:11
  moments of levity where we can laugh at just how bad this
• 26:14
  writing is. Amongst all the torture and rape
• 26:17
  of women. It oh God, it just it feels so
• 26:21
  out of place to have these like graphically violent scenes over
• 26:25
  and over and over. And then it just cuts back to
• 26:28
  this. The tone shift is unbearable.
• 26:32
  I can't but like, but I know the author is taking this seriously.
• 26:36
  She wants, she wants us to read this and take it seriously and
• 26:39
  be like, oh, isn't Zaid such a big strongman?
• 26:42
  Oh, let's swoon over him. And I'm like, no, he's like a 12
• 26:46
  year old boy. Come on.
• 26:48
  Anyway, Zaid smashes up a mirror in his home just for funsies
• 26:51
  because why not? This is also the one and only
• 26:53
  time we see that he does have a home of his own.
• 26:56
  It's never seen in the first book, and it's never seen after
• 26:59
  this moment. He smashes the mirror in it.
• 27:01
  That's it. And there's more angry internal
• 27:03
  monologue. We don't need to read it all
• 27:05
  again. So little has actually happened
• 27:07
  at this point and we're already 11% of the way into the book.
• 27:10
  It's that boring. Finally something does happen
• 27:13
  though, and Stalkerman Zaid goes to Max's house and kills all six
• 27:17
  of his guards. Off page, of course, because why
• 27:19
  bother actually, you know, writing out the plot when you
• 27:22
  can just tell us in a summary line or two.
• 27:24
  He kills two more guards. Then he interrogates Max, and
• 27:27
  Max says he did it because Zaid killed his father.
• 27:30
  But plot to us, Zaid didn't kill his father, but Max's father is
• 27:34
  dead and whoever did it said they did it for Addy.
• 27:37
  So Zaid thinks the society killed Max's father and then
• 27:42
  tried to blame Zaid for it so that Max would kidnap Addie for
• 27:46
  the society instead of the society just kidnapping Addie
• 27:48
  themselves. They had to do this whole big
• 27:50
  convoluted plot because reasons. I know it is stupid at this
• 27:56
  point. There's so much death in these
• 27:57
  books that you do kind of start to become desensitised to it and
• 28:01
  you're like, oh, another dead character, never mind.
• 28:04
  And I don't, I don't think that's a good thing.
• 28:07
  I think that's one of the big problems when these things are
• 28:10
  thrown around so carelessly and there's so much of it.
• 28:13
  You start to be like, like, I found myself at times being
• 28:16
  like, oh God, another rape scene.
• 28:18
  This is so boring. And like I was finding them
• 28:20
  boring instead of completely horrifying.
• 28:23
  I mean, they were still horrifying, but you know what I
• 28:25
  mean? My first instinct was this.
• 28:26
  Again, it's boring and I think that's the problem when you get
• 28:29
  so desensitised to these absolutely horrific occurrences
• 28:34
  and that is a problem with these books. 1 positive of this book
• 28:38
  so far though is that we are currently 12% of the way in and
• 28:41
  while they have been threats, there hasn't yet been a single
• 28:44
  sex or rape scene for which I am incredibly grateful for.
• 28:47
  However, that all goes downhill from here on out.
• 28:50
  So Max reveals all the stuff to Zaid that we already know, so
• 28:53
  it's kind of repetitive, and tells him that his friend Luke
• 28:56
  has also kidnapped Dyer too. So Zaid decides he won't kill
• 29:00
  him yet, but he does cut off his penis and shove it down his
• 29:02
  throat as you do. Again, it's all graphic and
• 29:05
  unnecessary. Zaid goes to rescue Dyer like
• 29:08
  it's the easiest thing in the world, and he gets mad at Luke
• 29:11
  for raping her because apparently now he cares about
• 29:13
  consent. He didn't care about it when he
• 29:15
  was raping Addie, but now Dyer's been raped.
• 29:17
  He's like, Oh no, it's bad, So rape is bad when anyone other
• 29:22
  than Zaid does it, but when Zaid rapes, it's a good thing,
• 29:26
  according to this book. What did he do to you?
• 29:29
  I ask. Nothing that I haven't let him
• 29:30
  do before. She Mumbles.
• 29:32
  I cock my head. We both know that this time
• 29:34
  around wasn't consensual. She looks away, appearing
• 29:36
  embarrassed. You know you didn't ask for any
• 29:38
  of this, right? I remind her, shaking her just
• 29:40
  enough to emphasise my point. She nods her head, though she
• 29:42
  doesn't look entirely convinced. And what about when it wasn't
• 29:45
  consensual with Addie? And you admitted that it wasn't
• 29:47
  consensual? It's.
• 29:48
  It's one rule for this guy, another for everyone else.
• 29:51
  That annoys me. Mr Rapist doesn't get to condemn
• 29:54
  other people for being rapists. Luke even uses the same excuses
• 29:59
  that Zaid does for why he raped Dyer, saying that he misses her
• 30:02
  and really cares about her. But apparently we're supposed to
• 30:05
  be disgusted by it this time but find it hot when Zaid says it
• 30:07
  because make it make sense. They both Zaid and Dire torture
• 30:14
  Lukes and more and then I think they kill him.
• 30:16
  End of chapter. Back to Addy and she is being
• 30:20
  called a product by Francesca who is mad that she has stitches
• 30:24
  and bruising and injuries. And Addy says I don't need to be
• 30:27
  an expert in the skin trade to know that no one wants to eat a
• 30:30
  bruised apple. They want nice shiny apples to
• 30:33
  sink their teeth into and RIP apart themselves piece by piece.
• 30:36
  So in today's episode of What Object are Women?
• 30:39
  We Are apples, they put a literal tracking device in the
• 30:42
  back of Addie's neck and they tattoo a slave ID on her.
• 30:46
  And yes, they literally call it that.
• 30:49
  And, and this is where the book gets really deep into like sex
• 30:54
  slavery and it gets really, really dark.
• 30:56
  I know I keep saying this, but it does.
• 30:57
  But I just I feel like subjects like human trafficking and sex
• 31:01
  slavery are horrific and serious and happen far too often and
• 31:06
  they should be written about in books with care and sensitivity,
• 31:10
  not in poorly crafted torch upon like this where the author
• 31:13
  seemingly gets off to the abuse of women.
• 31:16
  It just feels insensitive as a whole.
• 31:20
  You know, hey, so here is day 10 million of me trying to edit
• 31:24
  this video or videos as they've now been planned to.
• 31:26
  And I felt like I'm just wanting to jump in here because there's
• 31:30
  a few things about this book that I haven't discussed that I
• 31:32
  have since seen other reviewers talking about.
• 31:35
  And I think maybe some of the good points and I think it's
• 31:36
  worth bringing up. And one of the things that I
• 31:40
  think is quite obvious is that the whole Z organisation is a
• 31:46
  kind of insert of like Q Anon and conspiracy theories and
• 31:50
  stuff. And the first book started out
• 31:53
  with like Daddy saying that Dyer was deep into conspiracy
• 31:56
  theories like faking the moon landing and so on.
• 31:59
  And I think he wasn't, now that I was listening, one reviewer I
• 32:05
  saw called the Moon London conspiracy theory like a gateway
• 32:08
  conspiracy theory to kind of more serious and more harmful
• 32:14
  and also quite severe right wing conspiracy theories and things
• 32:18
  like that. So I think the fact that the
• 32:20
  main character's best friend believes in that and we're just
• 32:23
  meant to accept it as truth in this novel says a lot.
• 32:27
  The other thing I saw through Googling is the whole kind of
• 32:33
  blood ritual sacrifice of children thing from the first
• 32:36
  book and which kind of underpins all of this.
• 32:40
  You know, like these big bad guys control the government and
• 32:43
  they sacrifice children and drink their blood to maintain
• 32:46
  their power or something like that.
• 32:48
  That has its roots in a really, really harmful anti-Semitic
• 32:53
  again, conspiracy theory called, I think, I think I'm going to
• 32:56
  say blood libel. And it suggests that Jewish
• 33:01
  people are evil in controlling the world and performing blood
• 33:04
  rituals on Christian people, particularly Christian children.
• 33:07
  And it's a really, really damn harmful anti-Semitic theory.
• 33:11
  Now, in some versions of the book, Haiti Carlton got a lot of
• 33:15
  pushback for this and she specifically said, oh, no, it's
• 33:18
  not. It's not actually Q Anon.
• 33:22
  Oh no, like, I didn't mean for anything to be anti-Semitic.
• 33:25
  And she apparently hired some sensitive sensitivity.
• 33:28
  Readers for like the. So like the 3rd or 4th edition
• 33:33
  of the book and made some changes.
• 33:37
  I'm not entirely sure which version of the book I have, so
• 33:41
  I'm not sure which bits have been changed and which haven't.
• 33:44
  I think I've got a version where some bits have been changed from
• 33:47
  the original, but not the most up to date version.
• 33:51
  The other thing is even in the most upstate versions, they've
• 33:53
  kept the things like the slave tattoos, which were actually a
• 33:57
  real thing that Jewish people were forced to have, not slave
• 34:00
  tattoos, but identity number tattoos that Jewish people were
• 34:04
  forced to have in concentration camps during World War 2.
• 34:07
  And it's a horrific, dehumanising thing.
• 34:10
  I don't know if I quite made as much of a big deal about it as I
• 34:12
  as I possibly should have in the script and in this part of the
• 34:15
  video, which is why I want to throw this in there.
• 34:17
  But, but I just think it was interesting of the author to
• 34:20
  include that when she's already been accused of including
• 34:24
  anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, you know, So that was
• 34:28
  interesting. There's also stuff around, I
• 34:31
  think it's Rio being quite like stereotypical and like, you
• 34:36
  know, those stereotypes being potentially a little bit racist.
• 34:39
  And there's, there's some conspiracy, not conspiracies.
• 34:42
  There's some criticisms of her there.
• 34:44
  And you're just about the fireworks.
• 34:48
  Yeah. That's how many.
• 34:50
  Fireworks will start going outside the poor and.
• 34:52
  Just sort of go here. Yeah, and I just felt like there
• 34:55
  were a few things that I could have mentioned in this video
• 34:59
  that I don't think I maybe went into enough detail with just
• 35:02
  because I was exhausted. And running out of time so I
• 35:04
  wanted to. Just jump in.
• 35:05
  Here and pop at least a little note.
• 35:07
  About it in now someone said he's still some.
• 35:13
  Snuggles because you made it. Don't you do nasty fireworks?
• 35:19
  Rio then drugs her and warns her that she's likely to be raped by
• 35:22
  all the men in the house while she's passed out.
• 35:24
  So that's lovely. Before Francesca showed up, Rio
• 35:27
  had informed me that five other girls are being groomed for
• 35:29
  auction. Francesca's job is to mould us
• 35:32
  into proper sex slaves, teach us how to act, how to look and what
• 35:36
  not to do. But what she really does is
• 35:38
  teach us how to survive. I don't see the effing point in
• 35:41
  any of it. The more compliant, obedient and
• 35:44
  pleasant we are, the less likely we are to be needlessly abused,
• 35:46
  Rio claims. But there's no doubt that the
• 35:49
  buyers will have a brutal, sadistic side.
• 35:51
  Nor is there any doubt that we'll be on the receiving end of
• 35:53
  it, regardless of what perfect little pocket vaginas we are.
• 35:59
  There's more info dumps about like, what the girls are going
• 36:01
  to go through, although we already know them because they
• 36:05
  were covered in Molly's diary entry pages.
• 36:07
  So there's just, there's a lot of repetition in this book.
• 36:09
  It's needless and Addie has drugged for over a week.
• 36:12
  And then on the 7th night, she wakes up to find someone
• 36:14
  watching her from inside the wall of her room.
• 36:17
  But when she gets closer, no one's actually there.
• 36:19
  But there is a journal, Molly's journal.
• 36:21
  And so this is just like a repeat of book one.
• 36:24
  I thought this was a ghost in the wall.
• 36:25
  She thought it was a ghost in the wall.
• 36:26
  Turns out it's not a ghost in the wall.
• 36:28
  It's one of the other girls who's being groomed.
• 36:30
  We find that out later, but it's it's inconsequential.
• 36:32
  It doesn't really matter. The next journal of Molly's that
• 36:36
  we read says that she's planning on escaping, but she doesn't say
• 36:39
  how. But the journal ends there, so
• 36:41
  clearly she did escape. So that's fun.
• 36:44
  And then in the next chapter, we meet another person who is being
• 36:47
  trafficked. Addie thinks she is creepy,
• 36:49
  which feels insensitive considering this woman is a
• 36:52
  victim too. Her name is Sydney.
• 36:54
  And a whole bunch of girls get together to go meet Francesca.
• 36:58
  I'm very, very confused about the ages of the girls and women
• 37:03
  in this book because no specific ages are given for any of them,
• 37:06
  right? They are constantly referred to
• 37:09
  as girls and not women, and they're often infantilised, but
• 37:12
  a lot of them do seem older in a lot of ways.
• 37:16
  So Addie herself, we know she's 26, turns 27 during this book.
• 37:22
  So she is a fully grown adult, You know, she's adult, adult.
• 37:27
  And yet a lot of the men who come and like, try and buy the
• 37:30
  women are often called like pedos and creeps.
• 37:33
  And it's implied that they rape children.
• 37:35
  But I don't know how old these other trafficking victims are.
• 37:39
  I don't know if they're meant to be 12 or 20 or 30.
• 37:42
  Like there's no, it doesn't tell us and we don't know.
• 37:47
  It's really confusing and I would have thought if these
• 37:50
  girls were considerably younger than Addy that like, you know,
• 37:53
  she's all like an actual child being trafficked in this way.
• 37:57
  Like she would probably be like quite protective of them and
• 37:59
  like try and look after them a bit more.
• 38:00
  Like you would, wouldn't you? Like if you were kidnapped
• 38:03
  alongside like a 12 year old girl, I would be like, crap.
• 38:06
  I need to do everything in my power to protect this like
• 38:09
  literal child, you know, like put myself at risk for this
• 38:12
  actual child. But there's there's none of that
• 38:15
  from Addy like, so I don't, I don't know.
• 38:18
  It just doesn't really make sense.
• 38:20
  It's confusing. She does say of one of the other
• 38:22
  girls there. She's tense.
• 38:24
  That much I can tell. And I'm not sure if it's for
• 38:26
  what will happen when Francesca arrives or because of something
• 38:29
  else. Or maybe it's because she's been
• 38:30
  abducted and sold into human trafficking.
• 38:32
  And no matter what's happening, it's all effing bad.
• 38:36
  Well, yeah. Don't you think anyone would be
• 38:39
  tense in that situation? Addie is quite dumb.
• 38:43
  Next, there were just pages and pages of degrading these women
• 38:45
  and girls about their appearance.
• 38:47
  And when Addie speaks up, Rocco, Francesca's brother, strangles
• 38:50
  her and we get the first rape scene of the book, and it's
• 38:54
  horrific. So Rocco is strangling her and
• 38:57
  Rocco, Francesca warns, cutting through the sheer panic that has
• 39:00
  consumed my mind. She needs to heal.
• 39:02
  She needs to learn her place. It doesn't have to hurt, he
• 39:04
  argues, breathless, from wrangling my struggling body
• 39:07
  into compliance. He's failing, but so am I.
• 39:10
  I'm still weak. I'm weak and still in pain, and
• 39:13
  he's so much stronger. He's going to win.
• 39:16
  What falls next is an absolutely horrifying rape scene, but it's
• 39:20
  almost identical to one that we've seen before in the first
• 39:22
  book. So remember when in the first
• 39:24
  book, Zaid strangled her in the woods and ripped off her clothes
• 39:28
  and raped her? Well now Rocco does the exact
• 39:31
  same thing and it's disgusting. The only difference is Rocco is
• 39:35
  apparently ugly and that's why she doesn't like it this time.
• 39:39
  But when Zaid does, it's hot. Also, this time she has an
• 39:42
  audience, so I guess that's different.
• 39:43
  But either way, this poor woman is just being raped again and
• 39:49
  it's disgusting and obviously I'm not going to read anything
• 39:52
  out. It's just absolutely horrifying
• 39:54
  and it's very, very graphic. But at least the author
• 39:58
  acknowledges that this is rape this time, and it is portrayed
• 40:01
  as rape, as it should be. Afterwards, she is allowed to go
• 40:04
  and get changed, and then she's brought right back into the room
• 40:07
  with her rapist and told that her and all the other girls have
• 40:10
  to prepare for something called the Culling.
• 40:12
  Francesca smirks. It means to hunt animals.
• 40:15
  The men will hunt, and you, my dear, are the prey.
• 40:18
  My chest tightens. But deep down I knew that answer
• 40:20
  already. I just didn't want to believe
• 40:22
  it. I suppose I shouldn't be
• 40:23
  surprised that they actually effing hunt women like my game
• 40:27
  that will be shot and mounted above a fireplace.
• 40:29
  This is purely for sport, to laugh and try and get their
• 40:32
  rocks off while a bunch of girls run for their lives and what to
• 40:35
  try and avoid being hit with an effing bullet or something.
• 40:38
  I just, I don't get who would write something like this.
• 40:40
  It's it's awful. The event will take place later
• 40:44
  this week and I have an important client visiting Xavier
• 40:47
  Delano. He is one of the top buyers in
• 40:49
  the market and if you're lucky you'll be selected for auction,
• 40:52
  but you will only be selected if you're deemed worthy after the
• 40:55
  culling. So more similar names here we've
• 40:58
  got Sibi and Sydney, Zaid and Xavier.
• 41:01
  Like just pick some new names. Why not?
• 41:04
  Why not have one of them called Bob?
• 41:06
  We haven't had a Bob yet. Why does it have to be Sybby and
• 41:09
  Sydney? Why not Sybby and I don't know,
• 41:12
  Mary? They're different.
• 41:14
  There's a bunch more misogyny about them.
• 41:16
  Taught to be good, quiet, obese little girls.
• 41:19
  And then at the end of the chapter, Addie decides to start
• 41:21
  writing in Molly's diary herself.
• 41:23
  Like where Molly left it. Addie picks up and starts
• 41:26
  writing. I don't know where she got the
• 41:27
  pen from, but there you go. She has pens now somehow and
• 41:32
  these come up later, so remember that she has pens and she also,
• 41:36
  it's really weird. She writes like a child in these
• 41:38
  diary entries, not a 26 year old best selling author.
• 41:42
  It's so confusing. Inside this chapter, him and Jay
• 41:45
  are on Addie's trail and they find the dead doctor.
• 41:48
  That's it. That's the whole chapter.
• 41:50
  Cool, in the next chapter Jay hacks the cameras in the
• 41:55
  doctor's like building to see how he died and then there's
• 41:59
  several pages of them re watching the footage of Addie
• 42:03
  killing the doctor and then being saved by the guy.
• 42:05
  And also them watching videos of the doctors secretly taping
• 42:07
  women and raping them while they were unconscious.
• 42:10
  Again it's just graphic and unnecessary and we didn't really
• 42:13
  need this. We already know he was a bad
• 42:14
  guy, we didn't need to see his rapes on page you know?
• 42:19
  Then they burn down the building and that's the end of that
• 42:21
  chapter. Then we get an Addy diary entry
• 42:24
  followed by a chapter just re explaining everything.
• 42:26
  The diary entry already just told us they are practising for
• 42:30
  the culling and being shot at by plastic arrows.
• 42:32
  Sydney sabotaged Abby Addy and Addy is mad.
• 42:36
  That's it, that's the whole whole thing.
• 42:39
  And Sydney is apparently jealous because she meaning Francesca.
• 42:42
  It's given you privileges that we don't get because she thinks
• 42:45
  you're special. Well guess what Diamond?
• 42:47
  I don't think you're special at all.
• 42:49
  And Addie thinks to herself, it doesn't really matter what you
• 42:51
  think, does it? Bitch, Why does everyone act
• 42:54
  like Addie is so special? I don't get it.
• 42:56
  I don't get it. And it's really frustrating and
• 42:59
  can we please just stop having women calling each other bitches
• 43:02
  all the time? Please?
• 43:03
  Can we just not in this chapter? Addie says some very frustrating
• 43:09
  things, like men have this funny habit of thinking they're
• 43:11
  entitled to women, especially when they don't respect them, as
• 43:14
  if their respect is a determining factor on how women
• 43:16
  deserve to be treated, which is so spot on to the real world.
• 43:19
  This is so true. This is exactly what it's like
• 43:21
  for women. But you realise this is exactly
• 43:24
  how they treated you, right? Like he felt entitled to you.
• 43:27
  He didn't respect you, he raped you.
• 43:29
  He, he felt entitled to you, your body, your emotions, to
• 43:33
  just walk into your house and your private spaces as you
• 43:36
  please. Like come on, like that.
• 43:41
  This book is so frustrating. I'm just going to keep saying it
• 43:45
  anyway, Addie ends up by calling this other abuse woman Sydney,
• 43:50
  who clearly has severe mental health problems, right?
• 43:53
  She's she's, we find out she's been in this house for years.
• 43:56
  She has been abused by so many men.
• 43:58
  She's clearly got a lot of issues going on and Addie ends
• 44:03
  this conversation between them by calling her a bitch and the C
• 44:06
  word, which obviously I'm not allowed to say on YouTube.
• 44:08
  We've had it many times. And then the whole rest of this
• 44:10
  chapter it's just women being degraded over and over and over
• 44:13
  again. And then it ends with another
• 44:15
  rape scene and it's disgusting and reminiscent of the gun rape
• 44:19
  scene from book 1. And Sydney has destroyed some of
• 44:23
  Francesca's shoes and blames on Addy.
• 44:25
  So Francesca uses the stiletto heel of a broken shoe to rape
• 44:31
  Addy. It's unclear whether it's
• 44:34
  vaginal or anal rape, but either way, it's disturbing.
• 44:38
  It's disgusting. I couldn't read the whole thing.
• 44:42
  I had to skim it. That's why I'm a little bit
• 44:44
  unclear. I just, I couldn't get through
• 44:45
  it. It was revolting.
• 44:48
  I genuinely don't understand the target audience for this second
• 44:51
  book. It's 350 pages.
• 44:54
  Like, that's the first half of the book of women being
• 44:57
  repeatedly degraded and raped and assaulted graphically and
• 45:01
  violently on the page. Who is reading this for fun and
• 45:06
  enjoying it? I don't understand.
• 45:09
  It's not treated sensitively or seriously enough to be like, you
• 45:13
  know, like a a sensitive look at the topic.
• 45:17
  It's very, very confusing. Also, sorry, you'll have to
• 45:21
  excuse me. I have like major, major brain
• 45:23
  fog today. I've been dealing with more
• 45:25
  uterus issues and the pain is back quite badly.
• 45:28
  So I'm not if I'm not making sense today, if I'm repeating
• 45:31
  myself a lot, I'm really sorry. I can only apologise.
• 45:34
  So in the next chapter, Zaid is trying to track down Addy again,
• 45:38
  but he gets distracted by finding organ traffickers who
• 45:41
  also worked with Doctor Garrison.
• 45:43
  Oh my God, I completely forgot this whole plot point because it
• 45:45
  goes nowhere. I genuinely forgot this was in
• 45:47
  the book. So these are four men, and
• 45:49
  apparently they aren't as bad as they seem, and Jay just has to
• 45:53
  come out with saying this. You'll get along with them
• 45:56
  Great, Jay says over my shoulder.
• 45:58
  You're all in a business where being obscure is key, yet each
• 46:01
  one of you stands out like lollipops among mouldy bread.
• 46:05
  Very lickable lollipops, too. And Zaid thinks, yeah, whatever,
• 46:10
  I didn't ask to be beautiful. I hate this book.
• 46:14
  And with all due respect to the author, which is none, I request
• 46:18
  that they never ever, ever ever ever use the phrase very
• 46:23
  lickable lollipops ever again. Please stop it.
• 46:29
  These four organ traffickers all have stupid names like Riker,
• 46:32
  Slade, Dare and Case or Casey. Who knows, who cares?
• 46:39
  Dare is spelt with an I, by the way, so that's fun.
• 46:42
  Die Dare Dare do they're stupid. Name stupid.
• 46:47
  And these four reminded me of the four rapists from that
• 46:51
  Penelope Douglas series that we reviewed one of the books of, I
• 46:55
  think even down to some similar names, actually.
• 46:57
  And anyway, he finds them, end of chapter.
• 47:00
  It's dull, it's slow. This is just the Zaid story is
• 47:04
  being dragged out for so long just so the author can drag out
• 47:07
  Addie's story and fit in more scenes of her being raped.
• 47:11
  It's very frustrating. Back to Addie and it is the day
• 47:14
  of the culling. And just to make things worse,
• 47:17
  we're told that Addie was gang raped along with three other
• 47:20
  girls by a large group of men just three days ago.
• 47:24
  Great, lovely, thanks. So that night, the night of the
• 47:27
  culling, they meet a bunch of rich men who are going to be
• 47:30
  hunting them in a forest maze at night with bows and arrows.
• 47:34
  I still don't really understand the point of this.
• 47:36
  Like I think again, the author just wanted another way to
• 47:39
  torture women and make it kind of Hunger Games style weird
• 47:44
  because Addie is just perfect and irresistible to every single
• 47:47
  person in the world ever. the Super duper rich important man.
• 47:50
  Xavier decides he wants her as soon as he sees her and he's the
• 47:54
  one who is going to be hunting her and he's going to try and
• 47:57
  buy her at the end of all this and blah blah blah.
• 48:00
  The hunt itself. I don't think I need to go into
• 48:02
  much detail here, but Addie tries to help another girl
• 48:04
  survive but then she gets caught and shot but, and this is the
• 48:08
  other girl by the way, but not before she steals a bow and
• 48:11
  arrow and shoots one of the rich guys hunting them in the head.
• 48:14
  Love that for her. Great.
• 48:17
  Addie manages to get away and hide and she just waits it out
• 48:20
  and survives. Like there's not really much
• 48:22
  tension in this whole scene, it's so poorly written.
• 48:25
  But she manages to survive. And now this means that Xavier
• 48:28
  gets to buy Addie, but first they have to go and entertain
• 48:31
  the men and then the chapter ends.
• 48:34
  There's more to say. Welcome back to it.
• 48:36
  What I'm giving you this chronologically as it's told to
• 48:38
  us in the book, back to Zaid. And it has been dragged out so
• 48:42
  much. It's been over 200 pages of
• 48:44
  women being tortured and Zaid being angry and making slow
• 48:47
  progress. Like this could have all been
• 48:49
  summarised in two to three chapters.
• 48:50
  We didn't need 200 and odd pages of this.
• 48:52
  That ends up being 350 pages. OK, we just don't need this.
• 48:56
  And said we're about to start chapter 16 and I am losing the
• 48:58
  world to live. It takes five whole pages before
• 49:01
  he finally gets inside the building of these organ
• 49:04
  traffickers. And while he's in there, he
• 49:06
  finds one of the guys dare degrading a naked woman that he
• 49:10
  keeps on a leash. Remind me again how they're not
• 49:13
  that bad? Seriously, this whole book is
• 49:16
  like just how do we traumatise and degrade women in every
• 49:18
  single way possible in every single scene?
• 49:21
  There is not a woman in this book who isn't abused, degraded
• 49:26
  or raped in some way. Even even Addie's mum.
• 49:30
  She gets her own torture scene too, don't you worry.
• 49:34
  The organ traffickers agree to help him, but we don't actually
• 49:37
  see that help, it just ends there.
• 49:40
  Now we're back to Addie and her torture and she meets Xavier
• 49:43
  properly for the first time and they've stuck like an extra
• 49:46
  metal collar around her neck with a second tracking device
• 49:49
  in. And Addie hates Xavier because
• 49:53
  he's creepy and weird, but he's exactly creepy.
• 49:57
  But he's creepy in the exact same way that Zaid was.
• 49:59
  Some of the things he says to her could be lines from Zaid.
• 50:03
  Tell me, Addie, would you run from me if I made you mine?
• 50:06
  God, yes. I'd run until my feet were worn
• 50:08
  down to the bone. Even then, I'd still run.
• 50:10
  Of course not. I answer, keeping my voice
• 50:12
  quiet. He chuckles, a mixture of
• 50:14
  amusement and condescension. Hot breath fans across the side
• 50:17
  of my face as he leans in close, his coarse beard scraping
• 50:20
  against the shell of my ear. You wouldn't be able to even if
• 50:23
  you wanted to, Whispers. You wouldn't be able to stand.
• 50:25
  Your legs would be shaking too badly from how hard IF you.
• 50:29
  This is literally what Zaid was saying in the last book.
• 50:31
  This is literally the sort of stuff that Zaid goes on to seg
• 50:33
  later in this book. I could compile lines of
• 50:36
  dialogue from Zaid and Xavier and just read them out to you
• 50:40
  and you would not know which one was which.
• 50:42
  But somehow I meant to find it hot when Zaid does it and creepy
• 50:45
  when Xavier does it. I know, I know the consent is
• 50:48
  the factor in there, but you know, like, I mean, you could
• 50:53
  say that for anyone, like, oh, the person I'm dating says this
• 50:55
  and it's hot when they do it. Random man on the street says
• 50:57
  it's creepy when he does it. Obviously context matters.
• 51:00
  Consent matters. But the fact is that in both of
• 51:04
  these situations, she hasn't consented to these men saying it
• 51:08
  to her. She hasn't consented to Zaid
• 51:10
  either. But when he does it, apparently
• 51:12
  the readers meant to find it hot.
• 51:14
  That's that's what my complaint is.
• 51:16
  Sorry if I'm being repetitive again.
• 51:21
  This is where I get confused. Right?
• 51:22
  How do you also think stuff like this?
• 51:24
  What the F does he expect me to say to that?
• 51:26
  Yes pedo master, I would forget all about Zaid and only think of
• 51:29
  you and your small puny penis. And again, I'm confused by this
• 51:33
  because this man has shown no interest in children in this
• 51:35
  book. He's only shown interest in
• 51:38
  Addie who is a 26 year old woman.
• 51:40
  So I'm really confused why she's calling him a paedo.
• 51:43
  It's not clear how old the other women are in this house or girls
• 51:46
  are in this house and you can't really tell from context clues
• 51:49
  because they all speak like teenagers, but Addie speaks like
• 51:52
  a teenager. So but, but it's just you can't
• 51:56
  go around calling a man interested in a 26 year old
• 51:59
  woman a paedo. That just completely undermines
• 52:02
  the meaning of the word. Anyway, back to the events of
• 52:07
  the book. And another event happens where
• 52:10
  the men drag the girls who failed the culling into the Red
• 52:13
  Room. And this includes the woman who
• 52:15
  shot the guy in the head. They take her in there and these
• 52:18
  women are bloody, naked and mutilated.
• 52:21
  And then as these women lay dying, the other girls who
• 52:24
  survived the culling are made to kill them by like smashing their
• 52:28
  head in with bricks and then bury their bodies.
• 52:31
  It is disgusting and once again, completely unnecessary.
• 52:35
  And we did not need this. We didn't need to see it on the
• 52:38
  page. And it's again, this whole like
• 52:41
  adding the elements of the culling and making these girls
• 52:44
  kill all the girls and stuff. I feel like it's so excessive
• 52:47
  and over the top that it really undermines the seriousness of
• 52:51
  how brutal and disgusting the sex trafficking industry already
• 52:54
  is. You know, it, it frustrates me.
• 52:57
  I genuinely worry about the author who wrote this.
• 52:59
  You know, we suddenly Fast forward in time two months, and
• 53:03
  it turns out that Xavier has been raping Addie repeatedly for
• 53:07
  the last month and a bit, and he plans to buy her auction, which
• 53:10
  hasn't happened yet for some reason.
• 53:13
  Yeah, and he's not just raping her, but he's got this whole
• 53:16
  thing where he likes to cut her skin and mark her while he does
• 53:20
  it. And again, it's sick.
• 53:21
  And it's all just told so damn graphically it's repulsive.
• 53:25
  We did not need to read the details of this described on
• 53:29
  page after page after page. We could have just been told,
• 53:32
  you know, we, we could have been told about this and shown Addy
• 53:36
  tending to her cuts and scars afterwards, something like that.
• 53:38
  We didn't need to see these graphic rape scenes play out on
• 53:41
  the page again and again and again.
• 53:44
  There is nothing positive you can get out of reading this
• 53:47
  other than if you are another sick person who enjoys seeing
• 53:50
  women tortured and hurt. You know, it's not entertaining
• 53:56
  in the way that a creepy horror book is.
• 53:58
  It's just disgusting. Because don't get me wrong, I
• 54:01
  love my horror books and horror fiction.
• 54:03
  I think they're really fun and entertaining.
• 54:05
  And I love being a little bit creeped out, you know?
• 54:07
  And I like it when bad guys get justice at the end, or I like it
• 54:11
  when it's all left a bit ominous or like, I like that.
• 54:14
  That's not what this is. This is just gratuitous violence
• 54:18
  against women again and again and again and again and again.
• 54:22
  This chapter includes lines like once I take you home with me, He
• 54:25
  pants. I'm going to drink that effing
• 54:27
  blood, dine on it all hours of the day.
• 54:30
  My stomach revolts and I nearly gag again.
• 54:32
  The picture he's painting in my head is vile and and disturbing.
• 54:36
  He might as well declare himself a cannibal or an aspiring
• 54:38
  vampire. Again, these lines are just so
• 54:42
  poorly written that it kind of underplays the seriousness of it
• 54:44
  all, doesn't it? There's even scenes in this
• 54:48
  where he rapes her and she orgasms during the rape, and she
• 54:51
  acknowledges that this can happen involuntarily.
• 54:55
  So please tell me how this is different from the rape by Zaid
• 54:58
  in which she orgasmed and that was used to play off as like, Oh
• 55:01
  well, I must have actually consented because I orgasmed.
• 55:04
  And yet here she's acknowledging that it doesn't change it.
• 55:12
  There's just pages and pages of suffering.
• 55:15
  And it keeps getting worse and worse.
• 55:16
  And then we cut back to Zaid and he's find out.
• 55:20
  And he's found out where the auctions are held.
• 55:22
  And he's been buying every girl he can find to save them.
• 55:25
  And then at this one particular auction, he gets all the girls
• 55:28
  out of the building and then kills everyone in it, which is
• 55:30
  standard at this point. It's just like kills everyone.
• 55:33
  And then two of the girls that he saved tell them that they
• 55:35
  know Addie and that Xavier plans to buy her.
• 55:38
  And it turns out that two of them are girls that she was with
• 55:40
  in the house. And then we come back to Addie's
• 55:43
  chapter. Claire has come to see her and
• 55:46
  Addie is shocked to realise who she is and that she's behind all
• 55:49
  of this. But all she really says is that
• 55:52
  Addie won't be auctions off. But all she really says is Addie
• 55:56
  won't be auctioned off. She's been sold directly to
• 55:59
  Xavier already. So Addie's like ah crap I'm out
• 56:02
  of time. So later that night Sydney comes
• 56:04
  into her room and tries to kill her because she's jealous of
• 56:07
  her, but instead Addie stabs her to death with a pen.
• 56:10
  Like proper stab stab stab stab stab.
• 56:13
  Like it's very graphic. Many stabs with a Biro, that's
• 56:17
  fun. Rio rushes in and he's like Oh
• 56:19
  no, what have you done? Oh well I better help you escape
• 56:23
  because apparently he's only staying and working for these
• 56:26
  people because they've kidnapped his younger sister.
• 56:28
  And Addie's like, tell me her name, get me free, and I'll get
• 56:31
  Zaid to save her because it's apparently that easy.
• 56:34
  And Zaid's a miracle worker who can find a sister in 2 minutes,
• 56:37
  but he hasn't been able to find Addie in like 3 months.
• 56:40
  But Rio agrees, and he's like, yeah, sure, this is her, let me
• 56:44
  help you get out of here. And then he goes and kills some
• 56:47
  guards for her and runs off. Meanwhile, she steals a bunch of
• 56:51
  food and water to take with her, but she gets caught by one of
• 56:53
  the guys who's sleeping on the sofa, so she murders him too,
• 56:56
  because why not? And then off she goes into the
• 56:59
  woods. Well, sorry if I'm zooming
• 57:02
  through this, but I'm absolutely exhausted by this point, so
• 57:05
  we're just going to get through it.
• 57:06
  OK, back to Zaid and him. And the organ traffickers used
• 57:10
  computer magic and Google Maps, of course, to track down the
• 57:14
  house where Addy was being kept. And then he's like, let's go.
• 57:17
  It's killing time. But they send a drone over the
• 57:19
  house and find that there's a crap tonne of men searching the
• 57:22
  woods. We know they're looking for
• 57:23
  Addy. Zaid doesn't know they're
• 57:25
  looking for Addy, but he assumes they're looking for Addy because
• 57:27
  magical knowledge. And Zaid drives over there and
• 57:31
  he's like, let me speak to someone and pretend to be a
• 57:33
  concerned citizen. And then the men are like, oh,
• 57:36
  don't worry, we're just looking for a missing dog.
• 57:38
  Well, actually, he doesn't say dog.
• 57:40
  He says a missing bitch. There you go.
• 57:43
  And then Zayda is like, ah, yes, they must be talking about
• 57:45
  Addie. And so somehow they know exactly
• 57:48
  where Addie is hiding in the woods because reasons.
• 57:51
  And Addie has managed to get herself to this like, abandoned
• 57:54
  train cart that she saw in the woods.
• 57:57
  And she's hidden in a carriage overnight.
• 57:59
  And somehow Zaid immediately knows, oh, I know Addie, she'll
• 58:02
  be hiding in that train. It makes no sense.
• 58:05
  But anyway, he knows to immediately go and find her.
• 58:08
  He gets there just as two guards are finding her.
• 58:11
  So obviously he kills those two guards.
• 58:13
  And then he's like, hello, let's save you from the train.
• 58:16
  And then they embrace and that's that's it.
• 58:20
  That's end of Part 1 of this book.
• 58:26
  We are at this point 46% of the way through this book.
• 58:29
  And that was easily the worst, most depressing, most anxiety
• 58:35
  inducing 300 page 300 pages of fiction that I have ever read in
• 58:41
  my life and I never ever ever want to think about it again
• 58:44
  once this video is done. OK, I have literally, even with
• 58:47
  skimming so many of the scenes, I have literally been having
• 58:51
  nightmares in the however many weeks it is at this point I've
• 58:55
  been working on this video. I don't think this book needed
• 59:00
  to be this graphic or long or drawn out.
• 59:03
  It could have been much more powerful to have some fate of
• 59:05
  Black moments and focus on showing the effects of the abuse
• 59:09
  on Addie rather than just showing the actual abuse.
• 59:12
  Show me Addie's suffering with PTSD.
• 59:14
  Show me her tending to her wounds.
• 59:17
  Show me her looking after other women who have been assaulted
• 59:21
  too. Show me her having flashbacks
• 59:23
  and anxiety and depression. That's fine.
• 59:24
  I didn't need to see several gang rape scenes graphically
• 59:28
  described over and over and over and over.
• 59:32
  Like these scenes literally go as far as to like, describe as
• 59:36
  clothing is torn off, as her skin tears, as, like, you know,
• 59:41
  every single little act of violence against her was
• 59:43
  subscribed in detail on these pages.
• 59:45
  And it didn't need to be like that.
• 59:48
  It was awful. So let's move on to Part 2 of
• 59:52
  this book. All the abusers and traffickers
• 59:55
  have cleared out of the house by the time that Zaid and his team
• 59:57
  got there, so there's no consequences for any of them.
• 1:00:00
  I also, again, this doesn't make sense.
• 1:00:02
  There was apparently a whole field of men looking for her,
• 1:00:05
  but then they find her and the other men don't know that she's
• 1:00:08
  been found so they should be still looking for her, but
• 1:00:10
  instead they all just decide to clear out and it.
• 1:00:14
  It doesn't make any sense, but here we are.
• 1:00:17
  Zaid gets Addy medical treatment off page and that is all rushed
• 1:00:20
  through and her her reactions and responses we get stuff like
• 1:00:25
  this. I'm not even sure if she even
• 1:00:27
  recalls much of her time with Teddy the doctor.
• 1:00:29
  She was catatonic the entire stay and that's all we learn
• 1:00:32
  about her stay with the doctors, which happens for weeks and
• 1:00:35
  weeks and weeks as opposed to, you know, the four page
• 1:00:38
  descriptions of each and every sexual assault.
• 1:00:40
  Like, I just feel like it's bad taste and like the author's
• 1:00:45
  focuses in the wrong place in this book.
• 1:00:47
  She doesn't care about this character or her journey, She
• 1:00:49
  just enjoys showing the repeated abuse of women on the page over
• 1:00:54
  and over and over again. The chaos has died down, but
• 1:00:57
  it's sent Addie further into herself, and she's been confined
• 1:00:59
  to her bedroom and cocooned under her black silk sheets as
• 1:01:02
  if she's allergic to the outside air.
• 1:01:04
  For the first couple of weeks after the rescue, she would
• 1:01:06
  hardly speak at all. Addie often flipped between
• 1:01:08
  complete desolation where she stared blankly and gave no
• 1:01:12
  reaction to crying and gave no reaction to crying and
• 1:01:16
  inconsolable. I've had a therapist, Doctor
• 1:01:18
  Mabel, come in to talk to her a few times to help draw her out
• 1:01:21
  and it has helped. Seeing how like this breaks my
• 1:01:23
  effing heart and all I want to do is hand her the pieces and
• 1:01:26
  give her something to hold on to.
• 1:01:29
  So even when there is a little bit more description of what Adi
• 1:01:31
  is going through, Zaid still has to make it all about himself.
• 1:01:35
  It it's really annoying. Like it happens over and over.
• 1:01:38
  She won't hold on to anything, won't even let me come near her.
• 1:01:41
  If I get within a foot of her she flips out.
• 1:01:43
  She absolutely refuses to let me touch her and it's effing
• 1:01:46
  killing me because that's all I want to do.
• 1:01:48
  And frankly I don't care what you want to do.
• 1:01:50
  This is a woman who has been abused and needs time to
• 1:01:53
  recover. Her needs are what matter, not
• 1:01:55
  your need to touch her all over creep.
• 1:01:58
  And for some selfish reason he's still creeping around her
• 1:02:01
  bedroom while she sleeps. Like stop it, give her space.
• 1:02:07
  Every night she thrashes in bed, screams tearing from her throat
• 1:02:10
  and her body flailing. I've learnt to be careful when I
• 1:02:12
  wake her. Some nights she goes into full
• 1:02:14
  attack mode, sightless as she scratches at me, convinced I'm
• 1:02:17
  one of the demons haunting her nightmares.
• 1:02:19
  During the day she's back to being a ghost, though that
• 1:02:21
  doesn't seem right either. The ghosts in person's manner
• 1:02:24
  are far more active than she is. And to be frank and growing
• 1:02:26
  frustrated, not because she's lost in her trauma, but because
• 1:02:29
  I have no effing idea how to bring her out.
• 1:02:31
  Like, get over yourself. I don't care.
• 1:02:33
  Like, you can't expect her to just spring back to her old self
• 1:02:36
  in a month after she spent months and months being
• 1:02:38
  violently assaulted over and over and over.
• 1:02:40
  Her physical wounds haven't even healed yet.
• 1:02:43
  And he's like, oh, I'm so frustrated that she's not better
• 1:02:46
  yet. I just want to touch her.
• 1:02:48
  Like, shut up. Meanwhile, Zaid went and rescued
• 1:02:52
  Rio's captured sister off page 2, and that took all of a couple
• 1:02:55
  of days because that's easy, apparently.
• 1:02:59
  And then he's back to pushing out these boundaries because why
• 1:03:01
  not? I grin and slowly approach her.
• 1:03:03
  She visibly tenses, so I sit at the end of the bed and give her
• 1:03:06
  space. I'm all for pushing Addie's
• 1:03:08
  boundaries, but this isn't one I'm willing to.
• 1:03:10
  Despite my lesson on rural methods with her in the past.
• 1:03:13
  The last thing I want to do is worsen her trauma.
• 1:03:15
  She's been through enough. She doesn't need another
• 1:03:17
  self-serving man taking something from her that she's
• 1:03:20
  not willing to give when she's ready to accept me again.
• 1:03:22
  I can't promise I won't push her past her comfort zone and work
• 1:03:26
  to reawaken a part of her I'm sure she feels is lost.
• 1:03:29
  But that takes time and trust and I'm a very patient man and I
• 1:03:32
  hate him. I hate him so much.
• 1:03:35
  Like you're already thinking about how much you want to have
• 1:03:37
  sex with her and no, not actually sex.
• 1:03:39
  You're thinking about how you want to sexually assault her
• 1:03:41
  again and push her limits and push her boundaries after she's
• 1:03:44
  just been tortured for months. You are sick and need to go jump
• 1:03:48
  off that Cliff that is never used in this book.
• 1:03:50
  Do it like there's a bit where she's paranoid about being
• 1:03:54
  watched because she's obviously been watched in this house that
• 1:03:57
  she was tortured in for months and Zaid having cameras all over
• 1:04:00
  her house does not help with that.
• 1:04:02
  So she's like, can you make sure there's no cameras in the
• 1:04:05
  bathroom please? Like I don't want them there.
• 1:04:06
  They make me feel uncomfortable. And he's like, no, no, I'm
• 1:04:10
  leaving them in there. And then that's it.
• 1:04:12
  He like she just has to accept it.
• 1:04:14
  He's just OK to keep traumatising her, I guess.
• 1:04:17
  Finally we get the first scene in two books where they actually
• 1:04:21
  have a conversation with each other without having sex.
• 1:04:24
  So that's refreshing. And it feels like they're
• 1:04:27
  finally making an effort to get to know each other.
• 1:04:29
  But it's it's also surface level, right?
• 1:04:32
  It's stuff like, what's your birthday?
• 1:04:34
  What's your surname? And then they just like, ah, now
• 1:04:37
  I know these things about you, I'm going to marry you.
• 1:04:40
  Like, mate, you don't even know each other.
• 1:04:42
  Stop it. Oh God, it's, it's terrible,
• 1:04:47
  it's stupid. It's just.
• 1:04:51
  The chapters meanwhile, are being punctuated with Addy's
• 1:04:53
  diary entries and it's mostly just her reminiscing about the
• 1:04:56
  abuse she faced. So don't worry, even though
• 1:04:58
  she's safe and well, now in the story, we still get to see
• 1:05:02
  scenes of a woman graphically being tortured through her diary
• 1:05:05
  entries because I guess the author just needed to include
• 1:05:08
  more of that in the next chapter.
• 1:05:11
  Adi decides to go get an STI and pregnancy test, which is
• 1:05:14
  completely fair. But my question is, if she was
• 1:05:16
  with doctors for weeks when she got out, why didn't they do this
• 1:05:19
  stuff automatically at the hospital?
• 1:05:21
  It's pretty actually. No, it wasn't a hospital.
• 1:05:22
  It's like a private doctor. But why didn't he do this stuff
• 1:05:25
  then? Like, that's quite standard,
• 1:05:27
  isn't it? And I know you can have the
• 1:05:29
  argument of like, you know, some tests, sorry, some STI's take a
• 1:05:33
  few few weeks after exposure to like show up on tests.
• 1:05:36
  So you'd probably want to go back and get a repeat one.
• 1:05:38
  But the fact that this is the first time she's doing it at all
• 1:05:41
  is really confusing to me. But I guess we need to add
• 1:05:44
  drama. So there's there.
• 1:05:46
  Even though Addie has an IUD, which is like a coil, she's
• 1:05:50
  still worried about pregnancy by Xavier.
• 1:05:53
  And it's here. I got some really weird anti
• 1:05:55
  choice vibes from the author too that I was not a fan of Xavier
• 1:06:00
  used condoms but there was 1 occurrence when that condom
• 1:06:02
  broke. I bite my lip, anxiety flaring
• 1:06:05
  just thinking about that miniscule chance that I got
• 1:06:07
  knocked up. Anyway, Despite that, I have the
• 1:06:09
  IUD. It's improbable, but not
• 1:06:11
  impossible. My heart drops picturing the
• 1:06:14
  disgusted look on Zaid's face when finding out that I'm
• 1:06:16
  pregnant with another man's baby.
• 1:06:18
  I wouldn't blame him if he did. That disgust is what I feel
• 1:06:21
  every time I stare in the mirror, which is why I tend to
• 1:06:23
  avoid it at all costs. I'm getting a pregnancy test and
• 1:06:26
  if I did get that unlucky, I'm throwing myself off the building
• 1:06:29
  next. Or you know, you could get an
• 1:06:31
  abortion. You could terminate the
• 1:06:33
  pregnancy. Why is this character's first
• 1:06:36
  response thanks to the author? If she's pregnant with her
• 1:06:39
  rapist baby, she should kill herself rather than terminate
• 1:06:42
  the pregnancy. Why is that the first response?
• 1:06:44
  It feels like a very kind of anti choice narrative to put in
• 1:06:49
  there. And I also I was really confused
• 1:06:51
  by the whole process, right? I feel like the author has never
• 1:06:53
  had an STI test and this is really weird.
• 1:06:55
  So I blink, the loss of blood making me a little woozy.
• 1:06:59
  I told the doctor to test me for every STD known to man,
• 1:07:02
  especially herpes since that's one of the scarier and mostly
• 1:07:04
  silent ones. I lost count of how many tubes
• 1:07:07
  of blood she drew. She stared at the barcode on my
• 1:07:09
  wrist almost the entire time. Like, you do know that you don't
• 1:07:13
  need a whole vial of blood for each individual test, right?
• 1:07:17
  One vial is enough and they can use that one vial to carry out
• 1:07:21
  multiple tests. What?
• 1:07:23
  And also no talk of any like swabs to the genitals or the
• 1:07:27
  mouth, the throat, anything like that.
• 1:07:28
  There's none of that. So again, I, I feel like this
• 1:07:31
  author has never had an STI test.
• 1:07:33
  They just don't know what it's like.
• 1:07:35
  She also thinks that. She also finds out on the day,
• 1:07:37
  thankfully she's not pregnant, but she does have chlamydia
• 1:07:40
  which she takes antibiotics for. OK, one more thing I'll mention
• 1:07:43
  while I'm editing again. I can't believe I forgot to
• 1:07:45
  mention this in the actual video, but this was pointed out
• 1:07:47
  in video I watched yesterday by Weirdo Book Club who is a
• 1:07:51
  fantastic smaller YouTube channel who deserves a lot more
• 1:07:55
  subscribers than she has because her video is fantastic.
• 1:07:57
  If you like mine, you'll love her videos because she's very
• 1:08:01
  much like me in her presenting style and the way she talks
• 1:08:04
  about books and the things that she likes and doesn't like.
• 1:08:06
  But she's a lot funnier than me so I definitely recommend her
• 1:08:10
  channel. But she pointed out in this how
• 1:08:12
  shaming HD Colton's language is around STI's.
• 1:08:17
  And this is something that I noticed, but I'm not sure why I
• 1:08:21
  didn't speak about because I think for me, I kind of put it
• 1:08:23
  down to like, oh, this is maybe how a victim of sexual assault
• 1:08:28
  would feel about these things. She would feel disgusted with
• 1:08:30
  herself even though, you know, she's not actually disgusting,
• 1:08:34
  but that's that's how she would feel.
• 1:08:36
  But. I do think as well, yeah, the
• 1:08:38
  authors shaming language around STI's, calling them like
• 1:08:42
  disgusting and like just just being very shaming around them
• 1:08:47
  in her language and is completely inappropriate.
• 1:08:50
  And you know, because there was no counting narrative, there was
• 1:08:52
  no one saying, oh, don't worry. Like, you know, STI's are a
• 1:08:55
  normal part of life. Lots of people have them.
• 1:08:58
  They're not disgusting, They're not dirty.
• 1:09:00
  They're just an illness. Like anything else.
• 1:09:02
  People get illnesses, we can treat them.
• 1:09:04
  This is OK. Like, I wish there'd been a
• 1:09:06
  little less stigma around them. And I have to give credit to
• 1:09:11
  Weirdo Book Club for reminding me to talk about this because I
• 1:09:14
  think she brought a fantastic point and it is a fantastic
• 1:09:17
  point. And it's something that is worth
• 1:09:19
  pointing out as another problem with this book.
• 1:09:22
  One problem in many, many, many, many.
• 1:09:28
  Zaid thinks now is an appropriate time to take Addie
• 1:09:31
  to visit one of his safe houses, where he lets people he's
• 1:09:35
  rescued stay if they've got nowhere else to go.
• 1:09:38
  So these are the other women who have been raped and trafficked
• 1:09:41
  and abused and are now out safe. He or she meets Katarina, Rio's
• 1:09:47
  sister, and it's just an excuse to talk more about abusing
• 1:09:50
  women. And so Katarina's story is they
• 1:09:54
  took my eye. Yeah, they took my eye because
• 1:09:57
  he tried to escape from Francesca.
• 1:09:58
  I was 10 years old. Our parents had just died the
• 1:10:00
  year before, and he was trapped with that evil woman.
• 1:10:03
  He never forgave himself. And even though I haven't seen
• 1:10:05
  him since, I know he's done everything that's been asked of
• 1:10:07
  him so I wouldn't get hurt. She was trapped in that house
• 1:10:11
  for at least five years. I can only imagine the horrors
• 1:10:13
  she's witnessed. Francesca was effing Rio, but I
• 1:10:16
  have a feeling it wasn't mutual. She was raping him regardless of
• 1:10:19
  his compliance. And it sounds like she was quite
• 1:10:21
  attached to him. So look, we have another
• 1:10:25
  character being raped and abused for no reason.
• 1:10:26
  This time it's a man. Lovely.
• 1:10:28
  But just the more suffering, the more people suffering, the
• 1:10:31
  better. Apparently for this author.
• 1:10:33
  Ridiculous. Addie then goes and gets her
• 1:10:37
  slave ID on her wrist tattooed over, so that's nice.
• 1:10:41
  The next chapter, Addie has some bad dreams and when she wakes up
• 1:10:45
  we get a plot hole. So this, this is confusing,
• 1:10:49
  right? Three chapters go.
• 1:10:51
  Zaid said Addie doesn't know who runs the society yet.
• 1:10:56
  Last chapter Addie said how does Claire not find the safe houses,
• 1:11:00
  which showed Zaid that she does know that it's Claire because
• 1:11:03
  Claire visited her in the in the house.
• 1:11:07
  And she yeah, like she literally said, how do you keep it hidden
• 1:11:11
  from Claire? And he answered her.
• 1:11:13
  So he knows that she knows it's Claire.
• 1:11:15
  And now in this chapter, so just one chapter later.
• 1:11:20
  So while I'm not scared of the society, we are currently
• 1:11:22
  sitting ducks and I need to handle a few things with Jay.
• 1:11:25
  And there are a few things I need to discuss with you,
• 1:11:27
  starting with who put a target on your head.
• 1:11:29
  Claire, right? I ask.
• 1:11:31
  Surprise flashes across his face.
• 1:11:32
  How did you know she came to visit me?
• 1:11:35
  Don't act shocked, she already told you that she knew last
• 1:11:37
  chapter. Like he's just poor writing that
• 1:11:40
  any basic editor would have picked up on.
• 1:11:41
  And it's silly. Addie says that she wants to
• 1:11:45
  start taking down the bad guys with Zaid.
• 1:11:47
  And he's like, sure, but we need to train you.
• 1:11:49
  So then we essentially get like a training montage.
• 1:11:51
  And in the middle of it, there's more of Zaid justifying like
• 1:11:54
  previously raping and assaulting Addie.
• 1:11:56
  And I hate this, Like, oh, oh, this is this is so frustrating.
• 1:12:00
  He says, just like, I justified stalking you.
• 1:12:03
  He puts air quotes around the word because we both know Zaid
• 1:12:06
  was well aware of what he was doing and how wrong it was.
• 1:12:09
  Forcing a gun into that vagina and making you cum all over it.
• 1:12:13
  All the other times you told me no and I did it anyway.
• 1:12:15
  He volleys back the flushing. My cheeks deepen and my face
• 1:12:19
  burns from the reminder of that stupid gun.
• 1:12:21
  Did I know it was wrong? Of course I did, but it clearly
• 1:12:24
  didn't stop me from doing it. You need to figure out your
• 1:12:26
  morals and what you're OK living with.
• 1:12:29
  Not what you've been taught but what you feel in your gut.
• 1:12:32
  So stalking and assaulting me is written in your book of morals,
• 1:12:36
  no? He says, his smile widening.
• 1:12:39
  I was obsessed with you from the moment I saw you and all those
• 1:12:41
  dark, twisted emotions I felt with a rawest form, with a
• 1:12:44
  rawest form of who I am. I made the decision to show you
• 1:12:48
  that instead of concealing it. I never claimed to be a good
• 1:12:50
  person, little mouse, and that was something I decided I could
• 1:12:53
  live with. Just like murdering a bunch of
• 1:12:54
  paedophiles and human traffickers.
• 1:12:56
  I'm pretty sure the people you kill tell themselves the same
• 1:12:59
  thing you do to help them sleep at night.
• 1:13:01
  I comment dryly. I'm sure they do.
• 1:13:02
  He agrees, taking a step towards me.
• 1:13:04
  My breath hitches while I stand my ground, even as his voice
• 1:13:07
  deepens sinfully. And I'm sure there'll be many
• 1:13:09
  who claim to be good and honest, and that they would be willing
• 1:13:12
  to kill me for my crimes against you.
• 1:13:14
  But that's the difference. I've never made those claims.
• 1:13:17
  Oh, well I guess it's OK then to rape and stalk someone and
• 1:13:20
  assault them. As long as you don't claim to be
• 1:13:22
  a good guy, you can get away with it, right?
• 1:13:24
  Oh it's stupid. It's so stupid.
• 1:13:27
  This author is literally telling us Zaid is as bad as all the
• 1:13:30
  other rapists and he acknowledges it and yet she
• 1:13:33
  still expects us to root for him because reasons.
• 1:13:36
  You still have women online being like oh I wish I had a
• 1:13:40
  Zaid. Oh I'd let him rape me.
• 1:13:42
  Oh, maybe like stop it. Slowly he begins to circle me
• 1:13:48
  while I stand frozen. His heat presses into my back
• 1:13:50
  and his breath warms the side of my neck.
• 1:13:52
  My fight or flight instincts are kicking in and my control over
• 1:13:55
  it is slipping. You will always be the little
• 1:13:58
  mouse and I will always hunt you.
• 1:13:59
  I'll patiently wait until you're ready for me to touch you, but
• 1:14:02
  make no mistake Adeline, it'll still hurt when I do.
• 1:14:06
  Please never, ever, ever say this to a sexual assault
• 1:14:09
  survivor. No, it's so messed up.
• 1:14:13
  He then makes her replay a bunch of her trauma over and over and
• 1:14:16
  over in her head, including the way she killed people and the
• 1:14:19
  way she was raped again and again and again until after a
• 1:14:22
  while she's like, wait, I think murder is good.
• 1:14:27
  Like and he just makes her keep going over and over and over
• 1:14:29
  until he she comes around to his way of thinking and like this is
• 1:14:32
  not healing. This is not helpful.
• 1:14:34
  This woman needs real therapy, not just two visits from a
• 1:14:38
  therapist that you mentioned off page and then never again.
• 1:14:41
  Like if she needs real therapy for a long, long period of time.
• 1:14:46
  Addie's mum comes over and is concerned about her and Zaid and
• 1:14:50
  Addie says that she didn't feel safe telling her mum that she
• 1:14:53
  was seeing him. And then her mum says why did
• 1:14:55
  you need to feel safe? I roll my lips and turn back
• 1:14:58
  towards the window. Addie, does he hurt you?
• 1:15:01
  My neck nearly snaps from how quickly I turn back to her.
• 1:15:04
  No, I say sternly, though that's not entirely true.
• 1:15:07
  Did he hurt me? Yes, but not how she's thinking.
• 1:15:10
  He would never lay a finger on me out of anger except the times
• 1:15:14
  he did. The type of pain Zaid delivers
• 1:15:16
  is an orthodox and while there's always been a part of me that
• 1:15:19
  enjoys it, it still hurts. I think her mum is the only same
• 1:15:24
  one in this book for pointing out how bad this is.
• 1:15:26
  Other than the dad later but we'll get to that.
• 1:15:28
  The mum says just because he loves you that doesn't mean he's
• 1:15:30
  good for you. Can we please stop trying to
• 1:15:32
  paint this woman as a villain please because she is the only
• 1:15:34
  one making sense right now. Love this.
• 1:15:38
  In her next diary entry, Addie. It's been her birthday.
• 1:15:41
  She's turned 27, she's gone out for a birthday meal with her mum
• 1:15:44
  and again she writes like a petulant teenager.
• 1:15:46
  I think mum could tell I was anxious to be out of the house
• 1:15:49
  again. Halfway through dinner she
• 1:15:50
  finally broke down and made some comment about getting medication
• 1:15:53
  and I told her that I'd rather smoke weed.
• 1:15:55
  Of course she broke her promise and asked if Zaid is the one
• 1:15:57
  supplying me the marijuana. I told her I'm the drug dealer.
• 1:16:01
  Loud enough for the waiter to hear, loud enough for the waiter
• 1:16:04
  to hear. So she chewed her food extra
• 1:16:06
  hard the entire dinner, irritated and embarrassed by my
• 1:16:09
  jokes. Regardless, it felt good to
• 1:16:11
  laugh and I have a feeling my mum will let me get away with a
• 1:16:14
  lot of poop now just to see me smile again.
• 1:16:16
  All trauma aside, this is not how a 27 year old acts or
• 1:16:20
  writes. Or just I can't.
• 1:16:23
  I can't. Auntie still has trauma,
• 1:16:26
  obviously. He means AIDS.
• 1:16:29
  Give me the space I so desperately need, even though I
• 1:16:31
  can see that it's killing him inside.
• 1:16:33
  While I feel guilty every time I pull away, I also feel relief.
• 1:16:36
  But now I feel other things, things I know have nothing to do
• 1:16:38
  with him. But with sex.
• 1:16:40
  The thought of it makes me want to vomit.
• 1:16:41
  And there's this fear ingrained in me that every time Zaid shows
• 1:16:44
  me affection, that's what it's going to lead to.
• 1:16:47
  So she works through this by getting drunk with Daya instead
• 1:16:50
  of seeing a therapist, because that's healthy, and she
• 1:16:52
  acknowledges. For the next hour, Daya and I
• 1:16:55
  finish off a bottle of Merlot and I'm pleasantly buzzed.
• 1:16:57
  I also decide that I'm going to have to be very careful with
• 1:16:59
  drinking from now on. It feels a little too nice and I
• 1:17:02
  refuse to use it as a crutch. I'd rather work through my
• 1:17:05
  trauma the healthy way, you know, by murdering Claire with
• 1:17:07
  my bare hands. I'm not sure if major trauma
• 1:17:10
  should be used for making jokes like this.
• 1:17:12
  It just makes me a little uncomfortable.
• 1:17:15
  Anyway, while they're drunk for some reason, Sibby has broken
• 1:17:19
  out, broken out of prison, as you do, and Zaid brings her to
• 1:17:22
  the house. You know she was the serial
• 1:17:24
  killer from the first book who dressed as a broken doll and
• 1:17:27
  lived in a haunted house, or like a Halloween house,
• 1:17:30
  whatever. She apparently should be in a
• 1:17:33
  psychiatric ward of a prison now.
• 1:17:35
  But she escaped because I killed my therapist.
• 1:17:37
  She answers, her smile dropping. I didn't want to kill her.
• 1:17:40
  She smelled like pine trees so she wasn't a demon.
• 1:17:43
  The first and last person I've ever heard who wasn't deserving,
• 1:17:45
  I promise. Great love that.
• 1:17:48
  Thanks. Does this author have something
• 1:17:51
  against therapists? I mean that would explain why
• 1:17:54
  she isn't seeing 1 when she clearly needs to for some
• 1:17:57
  reason. Addie is like, that's OK, let's
• 1:17:59
  just invite this serial killer on the run who's on the most
• 1:18:03
  wanted list to come live in my house because why not, Funsies.
• 1:18:08
  They all decide that they're going to go after Claire
• 1:18:10
  together and find her by targeting her lawyer.
• 1:18:12
  And this, none of this makes sense.
• 1:18:14
  It's so convoluted and stupid and I don't get it.
• 1:18:17
  And it's just dragging things out for the sake of it and it's
• 1:18:20
  so stupid. That is the only what's stupid.
• 1:18:24
  Everything is stupid. They hack the lawyer's phone and
• 1:18:29
  find a bunch of child sexual assault material on there.
• 1:18:32
  So they put ads on websites that he visits with CSA material on
• 1:18:38
  there, which he clicks on and that puts spyware on his phone.
• 1:18:43
  So now they can see his phone because of the spyware, except
• 1:18:47
  they could only put the spyware on there because they saw the
• 1:18:49
  phone because they hacked it. It's just nonsense, and it gets
• 1:18:52
  worse. There's some complex plan to put
• 1:18:54
  spyware on Claire's computers too, and then there's just pages
• 1:18:58
  and pages of them talking about how they could find the others,
• 1:19:01
  but then nothing actually happens and it's all page
• 1:19:03
  filler. We, that's my phone, Sorry.
• 1:19:05
  Sibi finally goes and breaks into the lawyer's office and
• 1:19:09
  she, I think, leaves a bunch of USB sticks with spyware on them
• 1:19:14
  in his office, hoping that he'll give one of those declare and
• 1:19:19
  it'll put some software on her computer.
• 1:19:21
  And this was written in 2022. Does anyone even use USB drives
• 1:19:25
  anymore? Because no, everything's just
• 1:19:28
  transferred online these days. This makes no sense.
• 1:19:31
  And if you could hack his phone, why can't you hack Claire's
• 1:19:34
  phone? I I hate that it's so stupid.
• 1:19:38
  On the way out someone recognises Sibby and then
• 1:19:40
  there's a car chase involved with loads of really creepy
• 1:19:42
  sexual comments towards Addie from everyone involved.
• 1:19:45
  In the next chapter Zach tracks down Rick and shoots him and
• 1:19:49
  kills him. That's done now they've hacked
• 1:19:52
  Claire's computer too but not with the USB stuff.
• 1:19:55
  There's like a whole convoluted thing where like, it turns out
• 1:19:58
  Siby maybe didn't leave USB drives but she took some, but
• 1:20:02
  then they found out their plans so they got wiped or dumped or
• 1:20:05
  something and then they did something.
• 1:20:07
  So then they just hacked Claire's computer in another
• 1:20:09
  magical way. It doesn't make any sense.
• 1:20:13
  It's stupid. Dyer has tracked down Francesca,
• 1:20:16
  so Zaid and Addie casually jump on a private jet to go and
• 1:20:20
  kidnap her. Turns out she's staying in a
• 1:20:22
  motel that looks like comes straight out of Bates Motel
• 1:20:26
  Rundown and owned by a serial killer.
• 1:20:28
  And I found it really interesting that they used this
• 1:20:30
  reference here straight out of Bates Motel.
• 1:20:33
  She's referencing the TV series prequel to the film Psycho,
• 1:20:38
  which was based on the book Psycho.
• 1:20:40
  She could just say it looks like something out of Psycho, but she
• 1:20:43
  didn't. She chose Bates Motel.
• 1:20:45
  Or she could say it looks like the Bates Motel.
• 1:20:47
  It could I it feels silly. Anyway, that's just a mild
• 1:20:54
  annoyance of mine. Also, that's just another sign
• 1:20:58
  of bad writing, isn't it? Instead of describing why the
• 1:21:00
  hotel is creepy, why it looks scary and blah blah blah, why it
• 1:21:05
  looks rundown, she's just like, it's rundown and it looks like
• 1:21:08
  this thing that someone else created, you know what I mean?
• 1:21:12
  So conveniently, Francesca and Rocco in the hotel room and they
• 1:21:15
  are arguing so loudly and conveniently info dumping
• 1:21:19
  everything we need to know, you stupid bitch.
• 1:21:22
  That right there is why we're in this situation.
• 1:21:24
  You can't keep your effing hands to yourself.
• 1:21:26
  Oh that's rich coming from you. She hiss us back.
• 1:21:29
  What about all my girls, huh? You think they tell you that you
• 1:21:31
  kept your hands to yourself? You shut the F up right now or
• 1:21:34
  I'll kill you. Do it.
• 1:21:36
  She screams. We've lost everything anyway,
• 1:21:38
  Rocco. Haven't heard from Claire for a
• 1:21:39
  damn for damn near a month now, except to be told we can't leave
• 1:21:43
  the God damn country. We're running out of money
• 1:21:45
  because we can't effing access our cards.
• 1:21:47
  I'm tired of this stupid bum wig.
• 1:21:50
  And this motel has cockroaches. How thoughtful of them to just
• 1:21:53
  let us know all of that through an argument.
• 1:21:55
  Wonderful, Adi knocks on the door pretending to be room
• 1:21:58
  service and then knocks them both out by injecting them with
• 1:22:02
  generic anaesthesia in an EpiPen for some reason I'd anyway not a
• 1:22:09
  regular syringe. I don't know, this author makes
• 1:22:11
  weird choices. Somehow they stay past that.
• 1:22:14
  This is so silly. They stay passed out long enough
• 1:22:16
  for Zaid and Addy to drive them all the way to the airport, put
• 1:22:19
  them on a private jet, fly them back across the country, then
• 1:22:22
  drive to Addy's house, take them down to her dark creepy basement
• 1:22:26
  and lock them up down there. Make it make sense.
• 1:22:29
  Addy's plan is to keep Francesca, Rocco, and Xavier
• 1:22:32
  when they get him locked up in her basement with all the ghosts
• 1:22:35
  for however long and torture them for months or whatever.
• 1:22:40
  In the next chapter, they're back on the private jet and they
• 1:22:41
  go capture Xavier. It's all quite repetitive at
• 1:22:44
  this point. It's all very easy for them.
• 1:22:46
  I'm literally skipping over just pages of filler at this point to
• 1:22:49
  try and get us through this. But before they go and capture
• 1:22:52
  him, Zaid decides for Addy that it's about time she reclaims
• 1:22:55
  what Xavier did to her. So the cutting while he raped
• 1:23:00
  her. So Zaid is like, I know just
• 1:23:01
  what to do. And so he just starts to cut her
• 1:23:04
  himself and tries to make her accept it.
• 1:23:06
  Now I'm no therapist but tell tell me, is this not just more
• 1:23:11
  likely to re traumatise her? The man who raped you cut you
• 1:23:15
  while he raped you. So your other rapist is now
• 1:23:18
  cutting you against your will to try and make you reclaim elite.
• 1:23:21
  This seems unhealthy. And then he puts the knife
• 1:23:26
  handle inside her and you get the rest.
• 1:23:28
  It's a sex scene. It's meant to be empowering, but
• 1:23:32
  I mean, according to the author, but it's just very uncomfortable
• 1:23:35
  to read after everything. And I, I was very anxious and
• 1:23:38
  uncomfortable reading it. So God knows how Addy as a
• 1:23:40
  character felt. And there's no mention of
• 1:23:43
  cleaning up the blood that they're apparently now both
• 1:23:45
  covered in like, and they just head into the club and no one
• 1:23:49
  says anything about all their bloody mess, but never mind.
• 1:23:51
  And they so they're in another one of these clubs that exist
• 1:23:55
  purely to abuse women, apparently.
• 1:23:57
  And she goes downstairs and she finds Xavier, who doesn't
• 1:24:00
  immediately recognise her because she's wearing a mask and
• 1:24:02
  a wig, of course. And and they're in this, like,
• 1:24:06
  sex dungeon place. And then none of the doors are
• 1:24:09
  meant to lock for safety, but Xavier is so special and
• 1:24:11
  powerful that he can lock them with a magic button.
• 1:24:14
  So she goes into this room with him and then Xavier locks it.
• 1:24:18
  And then they fight. And once again, he tries to rape
• 1:24:21
  her. But then Zaid is like, oh, no,
• 1:24:23
  Jay hacked the doors. And then Jay hacks the doors.
• 1:24:26
  And then Zaid breaks in and he saves the day.
• 1:24:29
  And yeah, Addie says. I nod my head again.
• 1:24:32
  Reality is starting to catch up to me now that I'm no longer
• 1:24:35
  under attack. Zaid's voice becomes a distant
• 1:24:37
  whisper, and I grapple with the tunnel vision slowly narrowing
• 1:24:40
  my sight. My system is crashing, and I
• 1:24:42
  struggle to hold on to my sanity.
• 1:24:44
  Xavier tried to rape me. He came close to succeeding.
• 1:24:47
  And Addie very clearly has PTSD, right?
• 1:24:49
  So Zaid sitting in a car with her, cutting her skin is not
• 1:24:52
  going to help that. Two security guards burst in
• 1:24:55
  from the club, and Addie's like, he tried to rape me.
• 1:24:57
  And they're like, oh, OK, that's bad, we'll sort this out.
• 1:25:00
  And Zaid's like, they're here to help, but I better kill them
• 1:25:03
  anyway. And then he just shoots these
• 1:25:04
  two innocent guards. And I say innocent.
• 1:25:07
  I mean, they work in a club that abuses women, so they're not all
• 1:25:09
  that innocent. Not the point.
• 1:25:10
  Zaid shoots them, kills them, they pick up and knocked out
• 1:25:13
  Xavier, and somehow they carry him knocked out throughout the
• 1:25:18
  entire sex dungeon, throughout the entire main floor of the
• 1:25:22
  club, out onto the street, into a car, onto a private jet flying
• 1:25:28
  across the country, still knocked out.
• 1:25:30
  Drive him all the way back to Addy's house, put him in the
• 1:25:33
  basement without anyone seeing them or stopping them and him
• 1:25:36
  not waking up again. Make it make sense.
• 1:25:41
  Back home we get more absolutely terrible writing with lines from
• 1:25:44
  Addy. Like I'm effing rattled like an
• 1:25:46
  old AC unit on its last leg. I question if this author has
• 1:25:51
  ever read a decent book before. I must have forgotten to lock
• 1:25:53
  the damn door because minutes late a Zaid burst in and slams
• 1:25:56
  it shut, a wildfire raging in his eyes.
• 1:25:58
  We have to talk out of line. I've let you process for over 4
• 1:26:01
  hours now. I really need you to talk to me.
• 1:26:04
  Because she's just trying to like sit alone in a room
• 1:26:06
  silently and process everything she's been through and the way
• 1:26:11
  like Xavier attempted to rape her again and he's like Nope
• 1:26:15
  that's enough you're done. 4 hours is enough.
• 1:26:18
  And it's like, I don't, I don't think it is, is it?
• 1:26:20
  Give her a time mate. They had this whole big argument
• 1:26:23
  and it's just, again, horrible to read.
• 1:26:25
  Stop it, I snap. Just leave me bees aid.
• 1:26:27
  How many times will you run away before you learn you can't
• 1:26:29
  escape me? He growls, Getting in my
• 1:26:31
  personal space. Yeah, this is not how you treat
• 1:26:34
  a survivor. She starts having major
• 1:26:36
  flashbacks and he stills, his mouth poised over my cheek.
• 1:26:39
  Stop. Stop effing touching me.
• 1:26:41
  I hear him swallow. That's like asking me to cut out
• 1:26:44
  my own effing heart, and he's so selfish, I don't care.
• 1:26:47
  Cut it out then, fine. But you don't treat a survivor
• 1:26:50
  like this who is actively having flashbacks in front of you like
• 1:26:54
  you're no different, right? I bite out, my voice cracking.
• 1:26:57
  You've forced yourself on me before, remember?
• 1:26:59
  Taken from me, stolen from me. What makes you so different,
• 1:27:02
  huh? My eyes burn from the tears
• 1:27:04
  dwelling, my eyes burn from the tears welling up and within
• 1:27:08
  seconds they spill running down my cheeks.
• 1:27:10
  She is absolutely right and at this point she points a gun at
• 1:27:13
  him and a happy ending right now would be if she just shot him
• 1:27:15
  and moved on. I would like that, but sadly she
• 1:27:17
  doesn't. What you've forgotten is that
• 1:27:20
  the heart beating inside your chest isn't effing yours.
• 1:27:23
  He snarls. It's mine.
• 1:27:24
  And if my heart has stopped working then pull that trigger
• 1:27:27
  little mouse. Kill the rest of me.
• 1:27:29
  I'm nothing if I'm not the reason you breathe.
• 1:27:32
  He's pathetic. He's absolutely, absolutely
• 1:27:35
  pathetic and disgusting. Like who feels attracted to this
• 1:27:37
  type of behaviour? Who reads lines like this and
• 1:27:40
  thinks, yeah, I want that in my life.
• 1:27:41
  If that's you, get help. I've been protecting you from
• 1:27:45
  getting hurt, but sometimes embracing the pain is the only
• 1:27:48
  way to overcome it. Take off your dress.
• 1:27:50
  He orders quietly. I blink and open my mouth, but
• 1:27:53
  he cuts me off. Just trust me online.
• 1:27:55
  I'm not going to do anything you don't want me to do this time.
• 1:27:59
  And like seriously, we expected to believe this.
• 1:28:01
  He's ordering about like she's having flashbacks to being raped
• 1:28:04
  and he's like, let me order you around as your rapist like the
• 1:28:08
  other rapist did. Like I hate this.
• 1:28:12
  He just keeps touching her while she's having a panic attack.
• 1:28:15
  And the author wants us to think this is sexy and empowering and
• 1:28:18
  that he's curing her and fixing her when it's so damn
• 1:28:22
  uncomfortable to read. And I hate this scene so much.
• 1:28:25
  I'm not going to read it all to you because it's horrible.
• 1:28:27
  But it's just, again, this is not how you treat survivors.
• 1:28:31
  She does, because the author wants her to actually start to
• 1:28:35
  feel ever so slightly more comfortable, and the flashbacks
• 1:28:38
  reduce a bit, so suddenly he's demanding more and more from
• 1:28:42
  her, because of course he does. He can't just take an in.
• 1:28:44
  She's got to take a mile. You think you're ready for me?
• 1:28:47
  Let's see how far you're willing to go to please me.
• 1:28:49
  Crawl to me. He orders, his voice as rough as
• 1:28:52
  lava rock, yet as enticing as the spice whiskey he swallowed.
• 1:28:56
  Show me how pretty you are begging on your knees for my
• 1:28:59
  penis. Like can you just not just give
• 1:29:02
  her time mate? There's more like blood play and
• 1:29:05
  him cutting her all over and like I'm just, I'm just so over
• 1:29:08
  it at this point, like I'm done. He's just rumbles and his voice
• 1:29:13
  is guttural when he says. You look like such a pretty
• 1:29:16
  whore for me. A flash of anger ignites inside
• 1:29:19
  me and he only smiles in response.
• 1:29:21
  He's so damn insensitive. I hate this man.
• 1:29:24
  A devilish grin quirks his lips up.
• 1:29:27
  But you are my whore, you're my everything, and you become so
• 1:29:31
  much more with each passing day. I possess every effing part of
• 1:29:34
  you, Adeline. Even when you screamed and cried
• 1:29:37
  that you didn't want me and you could never let me go.
• 1:29:40
  All those nights you stood at your window letting me watch
• 1:29:42
  you, confronting me instead of running and instigating me,
• 1:29:46
  knowing what would happen. And when you did run, you only
• 1:29:48
  ever used your mouth to try and get away.
• 1:29:50
  You gravitated towards me just as I did you, and that is
• 1:29:53
  something no other man will ever have.
• 1:29:55
  This is not romantic. It's awful.
• 1:29:59
  Absolutely disgusting. Zaid and I, we don't make sense
• 1:30:01
  to the outside world. Barely even in my own head.
• 1:30:04
  Yet I'm finding it hard to care anymore.
• 1:30:06
  I won't ever justify what Zaid has done to me, but I do forgive
• 1:30:09
  him. Not only that, but I accept him.
• 1:30:12
  I hate this author. I hate this author so much.
• 1:30:16
  OK, we have 200 pages left. We have 3 bad guys chained up in
• 1:30:19
  the basement of a haunted house. Still never relevant.
• 1:30:23
  If we can get through this nonsense, yeah, we absolutely
• 1:30:26
  can. Right.
• 1:30:27
  OK. Right.
• 1:30:28
  So where were we after all of this?
• 1:30:30
  There's a few pages of torture, and then we get the wild
• 1:30:33
  revelation that Sydney and Sybby were actually siblings from the
• 1:30:36
  same cult with the same dad, apparently the the cult leader
• 1:30:41
  dad. So this is the one time that I
• 1:30:43
  can kind of excuse the similar names because, you know, maybe
• 1:30:46
  he's doing like a Carissa Collins thing where he, like,
• 1:30:48
  gave his kids all very similar names.
• 1:30:50
  I don't know Addie then decides to reenact the culling but this
• 1:30:56
  time she Sibby and Zaid. So my mind is just going sorry
• 1:31:03
  are chasing down Francesca, Rocco and Xavier and I don't
• 1:31:09
  know how I feel about this. I don't mind a whole like female
• 1:31:13
  rage revenge plot thing sometimes when it's done well,
• 1:31:19
  like in Promising Young Woman. I liked the first majority of
• 1:31:25
  that film. The ending I have very mixed
• 1:31:27
  feelings about. I both love it and hate it, but
• 1:31:31
  I'm not sure if I necessarily like it how it's done in this
• 1:31:36
  book in terms of like, you overcome the bad guys by
• 1:31:39
  becoming the bad guys and being as bad as they are.
• 1:31:42
  Revenge in this way, just, I don't know, it doesn't quite
• 1:31:45
  feel. Maybe it's just because I hate
• 1:31:48
  the characters and the writing, maybe that's what it is, I don't
• 1:31:50
  know. I says only a monster can create
• 1:31:54
  another monster, and that's exactly who I've become.
• 1:31:57
  Again, I'm not really sure this is a sensitive way to handle
• 1:32:01
  this overall topic of sexual abuse in general.
• 1:32:05
  Just feels a bit iffy to me. Again, it kind of feels
• 1:32:09
  unrealistic to you because we're meant to believe that in the
• 1:32:11
  space of less than a year we've gone from I'm just some silly
• 1:32:15
  little indie author to, yeah, I'm hunting and killing people
• 1:32:18
  on my property knowing there'll be no legal consequences for
• 1:32:21
  this because I know a rich guy now who's a master hacker and I
• 1:32:24
  can get away with it. These books are entirely
• 1:32:27
  ridiculous. There's more bad writing and a
• 1:32:29
  tonne of repetition here. Like the repetition is so
• 1:32:32
  annoying. Like people say, I'm repetitive
• 1:32:34
  sometimes in my videos, and I probably am, but at least I'm
• 1:32:37
  not as bad as this. This all takes place on the same
• 1:32:40
  page, within just like a few lines of each other.
• 1:32:43
  Xavier is confident he'll get away, but with how deep these
• 1:32:46
  woods are, we're confident none of them will find their way out
• 1:32:48
  before we catch up to them. Xavier believes he can find his
• 1:32:51
  way out, but it would take him hours, and that's without
• 1:32:53
  getting turned around. You 3 are luckier than I was.
• 1:32:57
  There's no maze or traps in here for you, just the sharp tip of
• 1:32:59
  our arrows. There are no maze walls keeping
• 1:33:02
  them confined in one area, so it'll be easy for them to get
• 1:33:04
  lost. They're just the repetition.
• 1:33:08
  This culling takes place even quicker than the first one did,
• 1:33:12
  and they catch up with them almost immediately.
• 1:33:14
  And then there's just more pages of torture.
• 1:33:16
  It's not fun to read, and it's all just done so carelessly and
• 1:33:19
  callously, you know? Like.
• 1:33:20
  He stutters, sweat pouring down his face, growing more desperate
• 1:33:23
  and panicked, especially as Sibby begins to remove limbs and
• 1:33:26
  Zaid starts to pluck out Rocco's eyes.
• 1:33:29
  It's just also Blase, like, Oh yeah, he took an eye out.
• 1:33:33
  Whatever. It's poor writing and it's
• 1:33:36
  showing misery just for the sake of it.
• 1:33:38
  In the next chapter, Zaid decides he's going to make of
• 1:33:40
  make all of Addie's scars that she got through her abuse and
• 1:33:44
  everything his. By recutting all her scars, like
• 1:33:49
  literally cutting over them, reopening all the wounds, the
• 1:33:52
  hundreds of wounds on her body, he's going to cut through them
• 1:33:55
  and open them all in one go. He says.
• 1:33:58
  These will become mine too. I will put a blade to every
• 1:34:00
  single one and claim them as my own.
• 1:34:02
  The only thing you'll see when you look at them is me.
• 1:34:05
  I growl, my hand flexing around her throat.
• 1:34:08
  You wouldn't. She reads, challenge sparking in
• 1:34:10
  her irises. I grin wickedly, delighting in
• 1:34:13
  the sight of her fear deepening just as her nipples tighten and
• 1:34:16
  her arousal permeates the steamy air.
• 1:34:19
  That's it. I whisper, right before I
• 1:34:21
  tighten my hold until her air supply cuts off.
• 1:34:24
  Fear me, little mice, not the sick FS who have no right of any
• 1:34:28
  part of you. And again, this is just really
• 1:34:31
  messed up. It's possessive, it's dangerous.
• 1:34:35
  She's going to get an infection. Like, it's just, it's just as
• 1:34:39
  abusive, isn't it? Then there's another sex scene
• 1:34:41
  that goes on for far too long. Again, I skimmed it because,
• 1:34:44
  one, it's something I find a bit gross, which is like blood play
• 1:34:48
  and there's a lot of blood. And two, it's just the same as
• 1:34:52
  everything we've seen so far. And three, I'm really bored at
• 1:34:55
  this point. This book is literally twice,
• 1:34:58
  three times as long as it needed to be because there's just so
• 1:35:00
  much filler. Zaid then hacks ATV station so
• 1:35:04
  he can deliver a message to the world.
• 1:35:06
  This is again, it's just laughably stupid and none of
• 1:35:09
  this makes sense, right? My heart trips over itself when
• 1:35:11
  the image of the reporter on TV begins to skip and then turns to
• 1:35:14
  static before cutting out. I gasp when a picture of a man
• 1:35:18
  replaces the reporter, his black hood drawn over his head and
• 1:35:21
  face covered with a familiar black mask and a dramatic frown
• 1:35:24
  and slashed through the eye. No effing way.
• 1:35:27
  Slowly, I stand, my mouth open as I near the TV.
• 1:35:30
  Greetings, fellow Americans. Zaid starts, my brows jumping
• 1:35:34
  when I hear how abnormally deep his voice is.
• 1:35:36
  He altered it in light of the disappearance of oil tycoons
• 1:35:39
  Xavier Delano. This is a message for the police
• 1:35:42
  force, all government officials and all government officials,
• 1:35:46
  and as always, the people of this country.
• 1:35:49
  This may have been intimidating in the 80s and the only way to
• 1:35:51
  get the message out back then, but it just feels very outdated
• 1:35:54
  now, doesn't it? And just cringy.
• 1:35:56
  I mean, for 1:00, not that many people watch live TV, never mind
• 1:35:59
  whatever station this is with the news on.
• 1:36:02
  So if you want a lot of people to see it, it'd have been way
• 1:36:04
  better. Just like uploading a YouTube
• 1:36:06
  video or something, right? You just think this master
• 1:36:09
  hacker would know that, but never mind.
• 1:36:11
  And also, why is there static? Why is it like, and then his
• 1:36:15
  face pops in like, it's not the 80s anymore.
• 1:36:17
  TV signals aren't sent like that anymore.
• 1:36:19
  It wouldn't be static. It's all done digitally so it
• 1:36:22
  wouldn't do it it. It makes no sense anyway.
• 1:36:26
  He's like I'm big tough guy Xavier by slave now he's dead
• 1:36:31
  and and So what? Well OK, they weren't his words.
• 1:36:33
  His words were blah blah blah blah blah.
• 1:36:37
  He is not the first to suffer the consequences of his actions
• 1:36:39
  and he will not be the last. I am Z and I am watching.
• 1:36:43
  No one is safe, especially not those who have betrayed me.
• 1:36:48
  His video disappears. Coming back to the news
• 1:36:49
  reporter's pale, slackened face. This isn't half as intimidating
• 1:36:53
  as HD Carlton wants it to be. Like it's just kind of cringy
• 1:36:57
  and funny. This is followed by another
• 1:37:01
  boring sex scene. It's filled with anger and
• 1:37:04
  aggression and none of it's healthy.
• 1:37:06
  So again, I skimmed it at this point, get used to it.
• 1:37:10
  I'm not apologising for skimming at this point, it's just they're
• 1:37:13
  dull. Like how many more times can I
• 1:37:15
  read? Oh FZ yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:17
  You like that baby? I'm going to make you scared of
• 1:37:19
  me. No Zaid, no.
• 1:37:21
  Well, I'm doing it anyway. Like how many times can you read
• 1:37:24
  that for like 300 pages without getting bored?
• 1:37:27
  Not even exaggerating about the number of pages.
• 1:37:29
  Seriously. Later Claire sends people to
• 1:37:31
  break into Addy's parents house and hold them hostage, including
• 1:37:34
  her dad, who we've literally neither seen nor heard from once
• 1:37:37
  in this entire book series until now.
• 1:37:39
  Like 100 pages from the end they go charging in and I don't
• 1:37:43
  understand why this author has to bring sex into everything
• 1:37:45
  because like, her parents are in danger right?
• 1:37:48
  And Addie and Zaid are like don't go charging.
• 1:37:52
  Mindlessly ripping her arm from my grip, she scoffs at me.
• 1:37:55
  I'm not an idiot. She snaps.
• 1:37:57
  I smirk and raise my hands and surrender.
• 1:37:59
  If this weren't her mother in danger I'd bend her over and F
• 1:38:02
  her until she does go stupid. Like I don't care how hot
• 1:38:05
  someone is, if someone I know or the family of someone I care
• 1:38:08
  about has been kidnapped and is being held hostage I'm not going
• 1:38:11
  to be thinking with my vagina. I can't be in like a traumatic
• 1:38:15
  situation be thinking Oh well you know I could be having sex
• 1:38:18
  right now. That's not how normal people
• 1:38:20
  think. I just wish these characters
• 1:38:22
  would grow up and like get their hormones checked or something
• 1:38:24
  because they're out of control. She tries to write a bunch of
• 1:38:27
  action in the scene but it's filled with really stupid lines
• 1:38:30
  like sniper dude just got sniped.
• 1:38:34
  Yes, this will surely be a classic piece of literature one
• 1:38:36
  day. Studied in universities around
• 1:38:38
  the world. They find the parents in the
• 1:38:41
  basement and Addie immediately gets captured by one of the bad
• 1:38:44
  guys and sexually assaulted again, because of course she
• 1:38:46
  does. This author just wants to
• 1:38:48
  traumatise this poor fictional woman, but it's OK because Addie
• 1:38:51
  shoots him with a pen gun, a gun which looks like a pen, which is
• 1:38:56
  something that we have never seen nor heard of before in this
• 1:38:59
  book. But she just happens to have it
• 1:39:01
  with her when it's convenient. Then there's a whole bunch more
• 1:39:03
  shooting and everyone is saved except the mum who got shot in
• 1:39:07
  the scuffle. And they bundle her into the car
• 1:39:09
  and get her to the illegal doctor that Addie recovered with
• 1:39:11
  earlier. And the dad is like, no, I
• 1:39:13
  wanted to go to a real hospital. And Zaid is like, oh, we'll
• 1:39:16
  knock you out like, so, you know, great impression with the
• 1:39:18
  father-in-law there. And he says Dad must see it too
• 1:39:22
  because he trains his glare on me.
• 1:39:23
  Don't sit there and act like you're the daughter I raised.
• 1:39:25
  He barks. You just murdered someone.
• 1:39:27
  He was going to kill Mum. I defend disbelief.
• 1:39:30
  He's lecturing me right now in disbelief.
• 1:39:32
  He's lecturing me right now. He's in shock and angry and
• 1:39:34
  taking it out on me. He clenches his teeth, burying
• 1:39:37
  them at me as he spits. If she dies, this will all be
• 1:39:39
  your fault. That bullet hit her because of
• 1:39:41
  you. Again, I think the dad may be
• 1:39:43
  the only sensible person in this scenario.
• 1:39:45
  She's not the one that pulled the trigger.
• 1:39:47
  Zaid barks, defending me. Huffing, he turns around and
• 1:39:49
  stares out the window, vibrating with fury.
• 1:39:52
  This is your fault too. He accuses snidely, directing
• 1:39:54
  towards Zaid. The both of you.
• 1:39:56
  None of this would have happened if it weren't for your criminal
• 1:39:58
  boyfriend, Adeline. Excellent point.
• 1:40:01
  You tell him Sir, the mum survives and recovers but the
• 1:40:04
  dad obviously won't let Addie or Zaid be around her because he's
• 1:40:07
  like I'm not having criminals around my wife like you caused
• 1:40:10
  her to get hurt, stay away unless you're done with all the
• 1:40:13
  killing and stuff, don't come near us.
• 1:40:15
  And I think that's pretty fair because she can't see her mum
• 1:40:18
  anymore. Addie gets mad at Zaid and tries
• 1:40:20
  to get him to leave and she says she must have Stockholm
• 1:40:23
  syndrome. Accurate.
• 1:40:25
  But he won't believe her because he is the worst and he just
• 1:40:28
  doesn't care, Ade's narration says.
• 1:40:31
  I narrow my eyes. Stockholm syndrome is real, a
• 1:40:34
  human reaction to someone constantly threatened.
• 1:40:36
  It makes sense to trick our brains into thinking we love the
• 1:40:38
  person, if only it makes it easier to tolerate them.
• 1:40:41
  And Zaid responds with please baby, run free.
• 1:40:44
  Then show me how far you'll get before you realise you're only
• 1:40:47
  running from yourself. How long will you last when I
• 1:40:49
  possess everything that gives you life?
• 1:40:51
  He's pathetic. Don't you just hate it when a
• 1:40:53
  man thinks he owns a woman? It's pathetic, typical abuse and
• 1:40:57
  nonsense right here. So Zaid finally leaves.
• 1:41:00
  It's like, oh thank God, let's end the book there.
• 1:41:02
  But sadly, the minute he's out the door, she's like, Oh no, I
• 1:41:05
  made a chair of the mistake and then immediately goes and chases
• 1:41:08
  him down because the author, I think, wants to personally
• 1:41:11
  torture me or something, I don't know.
• 1:41:13
  And then he's like, I'll only forgive you if I can sexually
• 1:41:15
  assault you right now. And then that goes on for pages
• 1:41:19
  and pages and she doesn't really want it.
• 1:41:20
  But then she orgasms and she's just like, Oh well, maybe I must
• 1:41:22
  want this, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:41:24
  I skim this too because, you know, we have like 70 more pages
• 1:41:27
  before this is over. We are nearly there, OK?
• 1:41:31
  You would think after the sheer quantity HD Carlton has written
• 1:41:35
  in these books, written in these books, her writing would get
• 1:41:37
  better. But shockingly, it never does.
• 1:41:39
  It just gets worse and worse as the books go on.
• 1:41:42
  I think I could eat you alive, Adeline.
• 1:41:44
  Consume every bit of you while you scream beneath me, and even
• 1:41:47
  in death, you would still torture me.
• 1:41:49
  I would die of starvation because nothing else would
• 1:41:51
  compare to you. You will never be able to live
• 1:41:54
  without me's aid. I breathe.
• 1:41:56
  If you're my death, then I'm your effing lifeline.
• 1:41:59
  He grins humorously, the tilt of his lips dangerous as he drags
• 1:42:03
  them up my thigh and towards my aching vagina.
• 1:42:06
  I'm drenched, and the slightest touch of his tongue will send me
• 1:42:10
  stories soaring. You are, he agrees.
• 1:42:12
  You're the only thing I need to survive.
• 1:42:14
  I will follow you into the afterlife, little mouse.
• 1:42:17
  And then how will you escape me? There's nowhere to run after
• 1:42:20
  you've been dragged to hell. It's so stupid, Oh my God, oh
• 1:42:25
  God, and then this, this, this is one of the worst things I've
• 1:42:28
  ever read. This gave me like, a visceral
• 1:42:31
  reaction. Worse than the gang rape scenes
• 1:42:33
  did I physically recoiled at this.
• 1:42:37
  It's you guys know, I've had issues this last like year and a
• 1:42:41
  bit two years really with the coil and pain and cramping
• 1:42:45
  constantly and a whole nightmare with it.
• 1:42:47
  So I'm very sensitive to stuff like this.
• 1:42:49
  So just listen. So basically he has sex with her
• 1:42:52
  and he's inside her without a condom and he touches her belly
• 1:42:56
  and says would this being swollen with my child make you
• 1:42:59
  stay? He asked darkly then groaning as
• 1:43:02
  if overcome with bliss from the thought.
• 1:43:04
  Hot breath fans across my ear and it feels like a warning.
• 1:43:07
  I wasn't asking permission, baby.
• 1:43:09
  Would you stay or would you run off with my child?
• 1:43:12
  You. I have the IUDI say it would be
• 1:43:15
  difficult to tamper with that. Not unless he physically pulled
• 1:43:17
  it from my body. Do you?
• 1:43:19
  He murmurs, his voice low and challenging.
• 1:43:22
  He poses the question in a way that suggests he knows the
• 1:43:24
  answer to that question better than I do.
• 1:43:26
  You didn't I snap if you sleep so heavily sometimes.
• 1:43:29
  He responds, pressing deeper into me as I try to shove him
• 1:43:32
  back. He slides out again before
• 1:43:34
  slamming into me one more, once more drawing a mix between a
• 1:43:38
  moan and an enraged gasp. So no, no no no no no no no no.
• 1:43:44
  He just implied that he pulled out her IUD while she was
• 1:43:48
  sleeping. Literally.
• 1:43:50
  For those of you who don't know, it's a little T shaped device
• 1:43:53
  that's surprisingly big that goes through your cervix and
• 1:43:56
  sits inside your uterus. Doctors need to take it out very
• 1:43:59
  carefully and when they do, it's very, very, very painful.
• 1:44:05
  Like it was a little different for me because I have this like
• 1:44:08
  abnormal cervix that's abnormally small and abnormally
• 1:44:12
  positioned. So it was like extra painful for
• 1:44:14
  me, but still. One, you don't ever tamper with
• 1:44:18
  someone else's birth control ever.
• 1:44:20
  If you do that and then have sex with them, that is rape.
• 1:44:23
  Even if they consent to the sex, if they don't know you tempted
• 1:44:26
  tampered with their birth control, it's rape.
• 1:44:28
  And two, I don't think a person could sleep through the pain of
• 1:44:32
  removing the coil. I just don't.
• 1:44:33
  I don't believe it. But Even so, even the
• 1:44:36
  implication that it happened just.
• 1:44:41
  It made me feel physically sick and gross and like my vagina
• 1:44:47
  just shrivelled up. Hated, hated it.
• 1:44:50
  She says he does the worst things to me sometimes, yet here
• 1:44:52
  I am wrapped around him even as he threatens me.
• 1:44:55
  Stop it. Leave this man immediately and
• 1:44:56
  call the police. Thankfully it turns out he was
• 1:45:00
  bluffing and he didn't actually take out her IUD.
• 1:45:02
  But still, the implication that he could have.
• 1:45:05
  He wanted to convince her that he did, and the fact that she
• 1:45:08
  believed he was capable of that. All the red flags.
• 1:45:11
  OK, disturbing as hell, especially when it's followed up
• 1:45:15
  by this. When I do get you pregnant, you
• 1:45:18
  will know about it. He promises, though it sounds
• 1:45:20
  like another threat. You.
• 1:45:22
  I hate this. You will watch me pull the IUD
• 1:45:25
  from your body myself. That oddly makes me feel better
• 1:45:29
  and I need therapy. Yes you do.
• 1:45:31
  Stop this. No, no, no, all that's left in
• 1:45:35
  the plot at this point is for them to take down Claire because
• 1:45:37
  Yep, that's still going on and being dragged out like crazy.
• 1:45:41
  So they find out where she's working with these two guys who
• 1:45:43
  are lobbyists who we've never heard of before in this book,
• 1:45:46
  but suddenly they're in here for whatever reason, and they're
• 1:45:51
  going to be on some private planes the next day.
• 1:45:54
  So Addie and Zaid fly on their private jet to commandeer their
• 1:45:58
  private jet. And then when they get on the
• 1:46:00
  private jet, they find them and they're like, oh, we kill
• 1:46:04
  everyone on board. We wait for these two lobbyists,
• 1:46:06
  and then we kidnap them. And then they do that.
• 1:46:08
  And then they use these two guys that they've kidnapped as bait
• 1:46:11
  to get Claire to come to an abandoned wine distillery for
• 1:46:14
  some unknown reason. Again, the wine distillery has
• 1:46:16
  not been in this book before. It's just a new location
• 1:46:19
  introduced for the sake of it. It happens in a wine.
• 1:46:22
  Why? Why?
• 1:46:23
  I love wine. Why are you doing this?
• 1:46:25
  No, Addie and Zaid awkwardly flirt with each other literally
• 1:46:29
  over their kidnap victims. Like it's weird.
• 1:46:32
  So uncomfortable to read. I'm sick of it.
• 1:46:35
  I don't understand how people read in this book think at least
• 1:46:37
  you have any chemistry because when you read the the scenes and
• 1:46:40
  the banter between them, it's just that there's nothing there.
• 1:46:43
  There's nothing there. Like while they wait for Claire
• 1:46:47
  to show up, at one point Addie goes and sits on that Cliff edge
• 1:46:50
  near her house. You know the one that we thought
• 1:46:52
  it was foreshadowing some action happening there, but it didn't
• 1:46:56
  because reasons. But anyway, she sits there and
• 1:47:00
  Zaid comes up and as she sat on the edge, he says.
• 1:47:04
  So I see today is the day we both die.
• 1:47:05
  Zaid announces from behind me, causing me to jump.
• 1:47:08
  Why would we both die? Stupid question.
• 1:47:10
  I know what he's going to say the moment the last word leaves
• 1:47:12
  my mouth. Because if you fall, I'll follow
• 1:47:15
  you. Yeah, great chemistry there.
• 1:47:17
  I love it. So at this point in the plot,
• 1:47:19
  one of the men that they had as hostages is dead because
• 1:47:22
  whatever that happened off page Claire is apparently on a plane
• 1:47:26
  on a way over and they just talk some nonsense in the meantime on
• 1:47:29
  this Cliff edge. And then he fakes pushing her
• 1:47:31
  off at one point and then makes it weirdly sexual and and then
• 1:47:35
  they just have sex on the Cliff edge because that's normal I
• 1:47:39
  guess. Totally safe and whatever.
• 1:47:43
  I don't care. I do not care.
• 1:47:45
  Like I think at one point Eddie's like, Oh my God, I'm
• 1:47:47
  going to orgasm so hard I fall off the Cliff.
• 1:47:49
  Oops. But I mean, obviously she
• 1:47:51
  doesn't. There's no actual action or
• 1:47:52
  anything that happens that furthers the plot.
• 1:47:54
  It's just nonsense. And like, guys, can you just
• 1:47:57
  like, do something together for once that isn't sex or violence,
• 1:48:00
  please? Like that's all you 2 do.
• 1:48:02
  Like maybe, maybe like go on a date, play a board game, go for
• 1:48:06
  a run, read a book, just just anything other than just sex and
• 1:48:10
  violence because you have nothing else in your life and it
• 1:48:12
  sounds really, really damn boring.
• 1:48:15
  Finally Claire shows up and she's like, no bloodshed, let's
• 1:48:17
  make a deal. She says.
• 1:48:19
  I will help you eliminate trafficking.
• 1:48:21
  Even though she's the one running like all the traffic in
• 1:48:23
  America, but whatever. But she says, I'll help you
• 1:48:25
  eliminate trafficking. When aid and I stay silent
• 1:48:29
  processing her offer, she continues.
• 1:48:31
  While the skin trade is vastly profitable, there's something
• 1:48:33
  more I desire absolute control over the human population.
• 1:48:37
  Of course, right now people are too self aware of their useless
• 1:48:40
  existence. I want full power, us both to
• 1:48:43
  have full power. My brow pinches a nasty look on
• 1:48:46
  my face. To do what with?
• 1:48:47
  He asks. What exactly do you intend to do
• 1:48:50
  with this power? Create a whole new era?
• 1:48:52
  Of course. We can do anything we want.
• 1:48:55
  We could make their lives useful again, give them a real purpose.
• 1:48:58
  And what purpose would that be? I cut in.
• 1:49:00
  To be mindless robots that would serve you Suffering would end.
• 1:49:04
  She snaps, turning her glacial green eyes towards me.
• 1:49:07
  There really is no soul in there, and this planet would
• 1:49:09
  thrive if humans had real law and order.
• 1:49:12
  We could do so many things. End world hunger, close the gap
• 1:49:15
  between the poor and the rich, and lessen poverty and
• 1:49:17
  homelessness. I shake my head.
• 1:49:19
  You're trying to make taking away people's free will sound
• 1:49:21
  virtuous. It is.
• 1:49:23
  She retorts. This is an absolute joke at this
• 1:49:25
  point. I'm exchanging human suffering
• 1:49:28
  for a new, better world. She argues the technology you
• 1:49:30
  could create would advances into an entirely new era.
• 1:49:34
  She turns her attention to me and I realise she is an effing
• 1:49:37
  reptile. She's a God damn snake.
• 1:49:40
  No one would ever suffer through what you have.
• 1:49:43
  No one would ever suffer through what you have ever again.
• 1:49:45
  No more children sacrificed. No more women sold.
• 1:49:48
  I would dismantle it all, talk to me like I'm stupid.
• 1:49:51
  Claire. Zaid says dryly.
• 1:49:52
  You want me to stop exposing the government?
• 1:49:55
  No, you want more than that. You want me to create some type
• 1:49:57
  of technology to implant in people's brains and make them
• 1:50:00
  actual robots? Make it to where they have no
• 1:50:02
  fight. She raises her brows, a smile
• 1:50:05
  forming. Now there's an idea.
• 1:50:07
  I can create a new world with laws and consequences for
• 1:50:09
  breaking them. Your technology could advance us
• 1:50:12
  and make it easier to enforce these laws.
• 1:50:14
  We could force people to walk in a straight line wherever we draw
• 1:50:17
  it, but taking away their ability to think for themselves?
• 1:50:20
  My God, that'd be wonderful. This is laughable at this one.
• 1:50:24
  And this, this is the culmination of all these 1300
• 1:50:27
  pages. This is, this is what it's all
• 1:50:29
  built up to. This nonsense like magic tech
• 1:50:33
  that controls people's brains to stop them breaking laws that you
• 1:50:37
  are going to set to control the entire human population in the
• 1:50:41
  world. This was her big evil mastermind
• 1:50:45
  plan all along. I just, I just, I can't.
• 1:50:47
  I absolutely. You can tell this author had no
• 1:50:49
  idea how to actually end this book.
• 1:50:52
  She had no idea where this was going.
• 1:50:54
  She had no idea how to like make this realistic.
• 1:50:57
  So she just came up with this bunch of nonsense.
• 1:50:59
  Absolute bunch of nonsense. Technology can do anything.
• 1:51:03
  It's only limitation is its creator said says please and
• 1:51:08
  Zaid is like Nah I'm not into that, sorry.
• 1:51:11
  And then just sets off some bombs which blow up all of
• 1:51:13
  Claire's security guards and her eyes wide and sensing the
• 1:51:17
  incoming doom. Before it happens.
• 1:51:19
  A line of bombs is planted along the front of the distillery
• 1:51:22
  right below where Claire's men are standing.
• 1:51:24
  In seconds the explosives detonate, creating a deafening
• 1:51:27
  blast. The force of the explosion sends
• 1:51:29
  us back a step or two and I cover my face as debris flies
• 1:51:32
  around us. We made sure the bomb wasn't so
• 1:51:34
  powerful that it is send the building crashing down around
• 1:51:37
  us, but enough to blow someone or someone's to pieces because
• 1:51:41
  magic bombs, of course. A few of the guards who were
• 1:51:44
  standing on the outskirts wriggle missing lip.
• 1:51:47
  Yeah, missing limbs, but still alive and set on going out in a
• 1:51:51
  blaze of glory. They're shot dead before they
• 1:51:53
  can lift their guns towards say to me his time, his team behind
• 1:51:57
  us and hiding in the depths of the distillery.
• 1:52:00
  So this book is basically just everyone dies.
• 1:52:02
  The novel Zaid then picks up Claire and Addie, slits her
• 1:52:06
  throat, and it's basically the end.
• 1:52:08
  Well, not quite, but basically the chapter ends with the
• 1:52:11
  horrifically cringey line. She walked into this place
• 1:52:14
  firmly believing she could conquer the world if only she
• 1:52:17
  gave Zaid the one thing he's been working so hard for.
• 1:52:20
  Doesn't she know Zaid is a God and the only one who will
• 1:52:24
  conquer this world is him? Please stop, please stop calling
• 1:52:29
  a literal rapist a God. It just I can't, I can't.
• 1:52:32
  I want to buy physical copies of this book just so I can burn it.
• 1:52:35
  It's so frustrating. Addie then makes up with her mum
• 1:52:39
  but not her dad and we get an epilogue in which Sibi
• 1:52:42
  disappears with some other guy who's turned up from her cult.
• 1:52:45
  It's clearly setting up some like story or novel series of
• 1:52:48
  her own. Whatever, I really don't care.
• 1:52:50
  I do not care at all. Sibi was such a non character
• 1:52:54
  like this book would have been exactly the same.
• 1:52:56
  She didn't exist you know? And the epilogue is ridiculous.
• 1:53:00
  Addie is still having nightmares and flashbacks and when these
• 1:53:02
  happen Zaid fixes her by shoving his penis inside her, usually
• 1:53:07
  while she sleeps. And this is supposedly
• 1:53:09
  effective? Weird.
• 1:53:10
  I don't know. I hate this stupid book.
• 1:53:12
  It's stupid to the very end, I hum.
• 1:53:14
  Who owns this little P word, Addy?
• 1:53:16
  I ask starkly. You.
• 1:53:18
  She whispers, the answer automatic.
• 1:53:20
  Good girl, I murmur. The man in your head isn't the
• 1:53:22
  monster little mouse. I am.
• 1:53:24
  Every time you scream out another's name, I will replace
• 1:53:27
  it with my own, and I don't care how much it effing hurts.
• 1:53:30
  And he's a monster to the end, too.
• 1:53:32
  And of course, because we haven't had one yet, the author
• 1:53:35
  has to throw in a random anal sex scene at the end.
• 1:53:38
  Because of course and of course it's non consensual with Addie
• 1:53:41
  saying no and stop and not wanting it throughout, but he
• 1:53:44
  does it anyway and then she orgasms so it's all OK, I guess.
• 1:53:47
  So there we go. Assault right to the end too.
• 1:53:50
  And then the book ends with the classic line.
• 1:53:52
  Again, this is no reader. I married him.
• 1:53:55
  This is better. This is more iconic.
• 1:53:56
  OK. She swallows and croaks.
• 1:53:59
  Are you proposing because you're in love with me or because I
• 1:54:03
  gave you anal? The end.
• 1:54:05
  That is it. That is the haunting Adeline and
• 1:54:08
  Hunting Adeline series, the cat and mouse series by HD Carlton,
• 1:54:12
  and it is the worst thing I've ever read.
• 1:54:16
  Stupid, disrespectful, harmful, nasty, anxiety inducing, poorly
• 1:54:22
  written, cringy, just pathetic. Yaiku even Coos grumbling in the
• 1:54:27
  background because she's like, why did you make me listen to
• 1:54:29
  all that, mother? Why indeed, Kyra, Why indeed,
• 1:54:34
  right? OK, this, the video has taken
• 1:54:38
  out of me. This has been so much effort to
• 1:54:40
  write and record and the editing that I've been doing along the
• 1:54:44
  way and obviously still have a lot to do.
• 1:54:46
  I am exhausted. So if you have made it through
• 1:54:50
  this far and watched the entire video, thank you so, so much.
• 1:54:53
  I don't know how you did it. I don't know how you kept your
• 1:54:55
  patience, but I appreciate you. Thank you so, so much.
• 1:55:00
  Yeah, if you aren't subscribed, I would really, really
• 1:55:03
  appreciate if you want to subscribe for more kind of long
• 1:55:06
  form content and in depth stuff and also lighter stuff
• 1:55:08
  occasionally and you know, the stuff that is a little bit
• 1:55:12
  easier on my brain, like I do a mix of stuff.
• 1:55:14
  And I've also got my second channel if you want to go see
• 1:55:15
  shorter clips from my long videos and more casual videos,
• 1:55:18
  like some little makeup videos or just fun stuff that I've been
• 1:55:21
  doing. There's all sorts over there.
• 1:55:22
  Second channel is a mixed bag. Everything that doesn't go on
• 1:55:26
  here goes on there. So there's that, but for now, I
• 1:55:28
  need to go and take out my little grumble pig because I
• 1:55:30
  think someone is ready for a WALK.
• 1:55:33
  It's Blessa. But thank you so much for
• 1:55:35
  watching. I appreciate you guys so much.
• 1:55:37
  If you'd like to help support me and my channel because videos
• 1:55:39
  like this often get demonetised and they do have Patreon where
• 1:55:41
  you're going to support me for as little as a dollar or a pound
• 1:55:44
  a month. And every little helps.
• 1:55:46
  It really, really does. And I appreciate every single
• 1:55:48
  one of my Patreon supporters so much and every single one of you
• 1:55:51
  who is subscribed and watch my videos.
• 1:55:53
  So thank you. I appreciate you guys and I'll
• 1:55:56
  see you again soon. Bye.