Update: I am rounding down to 2 stars. I got pulled out of the story too many times because of stupid little mistakes in Russian. Not just “oh, she misspelled this or that, how quaint”. No. Those mistakes seriously messed up my ability to stay focused on the events and on the characters.

I even gave BE a benefit of a doubt a couple of times and checked several equivalents of Urban Dictionary in Russian, including criminal slang. Nope, it was not me. It’s all on the author. My impression of the book is seriously fractured. Frustration is the only way I can describe my feeling about the whole mess.

Here is "Ask An Expert" link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group_folder/249694?group_id=20149 . There is Regional Experts thread. USE IT.

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Kudos to the author for appealing Russian and Syrian characters. There have been so many books out lately with the same old "mean Russian" stereotype! Honestly, sick and tired of it. So - thanks (and a star) for that.

However, I am absolutely baffled by the fact that the author refuses to ask a native speaker to help with her Russian phrases. It's especially puzzling, considering that BE consistently uses Russian characters in her books. But same can be said for other writers and other languages: Spanish, French, Ukrainian, Japanese, you name it! Here, I don't know if I can trust any of the Arabic words and phrases either. Shame.



There were times when I was rudely jerked out of the book, an intense or even tragic scene, by a wrong Russian phrase or word. I ended up laughing where I should be biting my nails and crossing my fingers hoping for MCs escape. I am tempted to take 2 stars off for that, but whatever, 1 is enough, I guess.

On the whole, I did enjoy this story, like so many others by BE. That said, the longest lull, where MCs just took off frolicking in the sunshine (so to speak) while I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for something nasty to happen, did nothing for me at all. I could not relax enough to enjoy the budding romance. There was no suspense, no real awareness of the fact that someone is always watching or listening. Quite sloppy on Roman's side. No surprise that MCs landed where they did, in Dima's clutches (no big spoiler here). Another star off for that.

In the end, tho disappointed, yet glad I read the book.

3 stars. ( )

I wasn't sure how I would feel about this one when I started reading it. I mean, I like the idea of it, the premise sounds really good. Then we got into Zain's backstory and OMG, I was broken by it. I'm not saying that Roman's backstory was anything full of happy and light, because it was tragic, but Zain's story was so hard and so terrible. It was so very hard to read. But...

The thing is we really needed to see that whole backstory so that we could appreciate where Zain came from so that we can appreciate where he is now. His snark and humor gave me everything. I mean, every time he answers the phone when Roman calls him is just gold. It totally was a needed bit of humor in this story.

I would love to read another book about Roman and Zain. ( )