Ratings4
Average rating3.5
Series
1 primary bookSweetest Taboo is a 1-book series first released in 2018 with contributions by Naima Simone.
Reviews with the most likes.
Skip the audio book on this one. The lady narrator is pretty awesome and I would have preferred that she do both protagonists voice. The narrator for Knox was just bad, cheesy bad, making the love scenes legit spit my drink out hysterical. I just couldn't. I fast forwarded through all of the sex scenes where he was the one talking.
With that said... this could be hot but I wouldn't know. This all about the story for me.
Character and plot wise... I thought it was well developed. I thought it was all believable. From the grief, the desire to want more in life, regrettable first impressions, feeling an attraction to someone society would deem wrong or strange, to the vile words spewed by the mom; all of it felt real and possible. I can even say that by the end of this book, after getting all the details of how everything went down, getting with your dead husbands brother/getting with your dead brothers wife is not as taboo as it sounds. Yet, something didn't sit right with me after reading this novel. I walked away thinking “live your life the best way you can”. The mood created in this book is that absolutely everything was wrong. I didn't feel like it would have been ok at all. I didn't want to feel that way. I wanted to feel like it is what it is and it's going to be ok because it was meant to be this way.
There were hints of that but it was so little and so late in the book that I still felt bad.
Since reading this book back in Sept, I've read at least 4 more books with this trope and not one made me feel it was taboo and some could have really felt that way. So here is the difference...
Eden kept comparing Knox to his brother/her deceased husband. I mean all the damn time. Even while they were having sex. These other books I read not once compared the person they were with to their ex, who again was the sibling. I mean of course it's going to be freaking awkward too if you keep calling the one you romantically love a sister or brother! Both Knox and Eden did this to save face. This was just not done right.
On another note— IN THE HISTORY OF NEVER has Ukrainian Village been considered slumming it or a rough part of town. NEVER. I tell you I hate when Chicago things are mentioned. You might say stop reading it but I didn't know that this was based in Chicago.