Vicious

The short story is I enjoyed this bit of nonsense, particularly because of the narrators. Namely [a:Christian Rummel 2725838 Christian Rummel https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1532289458p2/2725838.jpg], who sounds like he's related to Sebastian York (that's a good thing), and [a:Savannah Peachwood 15436851 Savannah Peachwood https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] less so, she sometimes sounds a bit breathy, or maybe that's just the character. It's a story we've all read in some guise or other, but you may still be entertained by one more iteration. No one was hurt while listening to this book. My commute time was a happy one.The Long StoryThis is the first in a series about four, possibly five, a#*holes. Good times.In this installment we have the story of Barron “Vicious/Vic” Spencer and his relationship with Emilia “Milly” LeBlanc. The story is told in dual P.O.V., alternating chapters, and jumps between 10 years ago, when the characters were seniors in high school, and present day.Vicious, his name is an homage to his perceived personality and his Sid Vicious look, though I had in mind Carl Barât from The Libertines, in any case our Vic is a grade-A prick, almost verging on sociopath territory. Of course he has “reason”: terrible father, step mother physical abuse & dead mom etc. and there's some validity to his grievances, but he's also just your garden-variety, entitled boy/man, who assorts women into two categories: disposable receptacles to pleasure him and The One he likes. He's also a shit to his friends. They have a Fight Club type thing going called Defy, in which they beat each other bloody, again for “reasons”. He's not warm and cuddly by any stretch of the imagination and yet he was the character I liked the most. He was honest, even if brutally so, and didn't wallow in self pity. Though he fights it, once he realizes what he wants, he doesn't fight it, even though it's against everything he thought about himself or his future. I appreciate that. He made me laugh.Our Emilia on the other hand, though dressed in the garb of an artist, has none of these traits. She lacks agency, things “happen to her”, she takes forever to admit to sexual desire, or anything else. The story falls back on the conventionality of a hundred bodice rippers where the hero has to grovel to soothe the heroine's ego and not just to prove he's sorry. I also feel like the story relies on what I call “poverty porn” to paint the heroine as saintly and the monied class as crass, evil, or shallow. I kind of found it hard to believe in Emilia's level of poverty, given her education, where she lives, her looks etc. also this notion that Vicious needs a scholarship for college when his dad is ultra loaded doesn't fly But despite all of my griping, which you can ignore, these are more like personal notes. Just get carried along with these lovebirds on their rocky road to HEA. I had a good and I'll surely do the rest because they're on audio and I'm an audio junkie.