Review: Dolly by Measha Stone

Dolly by Measha Stone

Publication date: March 17th, 2020
Pages: 238

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

He's promised me sunlight.

Hope for a better future.

Freedom from this horror.

A life that doesn't end in a dark cellar.

But we're trapped together.

Forced to live for the worst kind of people.

Desperate to survive for each other.

I crave his touch with every breath I take.

My heart aches for him.

He's my hope for survival.

The man I want a future with.

I can have it all again, if only I trust him.

Even if that's the only thing I can't do.

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Review:

There are some situations when going into a book blind can seriously make you wonder about the level of your sanity. I found this book on TikTok in a recommendations video for pitch black romance. That is all I knew going into it. I chose to keep the mystery alive so that I could judge the book from simply what was written on the pages and not whatever intriguing synopsis may be thrown out there to entice others in. I was not prepared for this book. I have learned to be able to stomach a whole lot of terrible stuff when reading books that tend to push the boundaries of the normal romance reader. This one obliterates that line in the sand and creates a jaggedly sharp macabre story of human trafficking, child abuse, and vigilante justice and I am unsure how I feel about it.

Dolly was a beaten down and broken plaything that was ready to give up at any moment until her Kendoll arrived. She found her strength through him because he never stopped fighting. This girl was so afraid of going against her captive's wishes that even with the taste of freedom she couldn't stomach her own name. She remained Dolly. And Ken remained Ken out of affection for her. I never would have pictured Ken turning out the way he did with what I read from his introduction into the story. He surprised me and it was nice to see he was a little bit nutty just like Dolly. They complimented each other well.

The drawbacks of the story were how simple everything seemed. Don't get me wrong, I was concocting all manner of theories running through the book trying to solve the puzzle before the main characters did. All of my bright ideas seemed to not be what the author chose. Instead it felt very generic. Of course, it was incredibly sad what was happening in his trafficking circle but it felt the big mystery that was touched on throughout the book was nothing more than the obvious answer that it arrived at. I was disappointed that the plot was so anticlimactic. Add in the copious grammar and spelling errors I ran into and it was a tough one for me to sit back and say, "yeah, I'm glad I read that." Instead I say, "eh, I didn't hate it." Not enough to avoid the author's other work at the very least. I would have just liked a bit more of the plot and a little less of the cheap shock value ploys when it came to the violent and sexual scenes.