Review: Caged by Clarissa Wild

Caged by Clarissa Wild

Series: Savage Men #1

Publication date: September 21st, 2017

Pages: 503

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

A new dirty dark romance by New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author Clarissa Wild!

They call me savage. An untamed beast.

I was born in the cage. Born to fight. Born to carry its name.

Locked away, I've spent years waiting for my mate.

I'm pent up with need. Brimming with desire.

All I want is her... That beautiful girl from the picture on my prison wall.

Now she's finally here, sharing a cell.

So close. So hard to resist.

But one thing's for sure...

Even if she doesn't know it yet, she's already mine.

This book contains both CAGED and UNCAGED, originally meant as a duet.

Note: This STANDALONE novel contains disturbing content that may be offensive to some readers. Complete at 120,000 words. NO Cliffhanger. Book 1 in the Savage Men Series.

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Plot: I am all for a book that wants to push the boundaries and dabble in the deep dark that is dark romance, but this one missed the mark on a lot of fronts. I didn't realize that the book was originally a duet but it makes a bit of sense with how it was written. First you encounter the captivity that Ella and Cage both endure and how they manage their way through it with the psychotic man Graham at the helm of their activities. Ella is simply breeding stock while Cage is Graham's prized fighter and son. The whole thing seems a little vague and a little all over the place. There were times when I felt like the story could have ended hundreds of pages before it actually did. Perhaps the books would have read better as a duet with a cliffhanger than trying to mash them together to make one extremely long and drawn out book that seemed to circle around nothing of importance for several chapters. The layout of the story was simply all wrong. It felt like a lot of filler for a story that could have been concluded much faster. All the facets of the story seemed too odd to be real so it really hindered me from getting a real sense of the story. There were times when the author would dredge on for chapters and chapters about nothing of importance while she would gloss over more important facts. It all felt like a story thrown together with Elmer's glue and a prayer hoping that it is stable enough to support an audience's attention. It did not for me. 

Characters: I didn't like Cage. There, I'll say it. I didn't like that he was so sheltered that he had no idea about the world to the point where Ella had to treat him like a wide-eyed toddler a lot of the time. One thing that does not say 'Ooo hot' for me and that is a man who doesn't know how to shake hands but knows exactly how sex works in every single facet. Granted, I can understand that it was probably part of his teachings from his father so he could do what he was meant to do, but still. He was far too childlike for me to find appealing in anyway. It was either confused toddler or aggressive caveman and nothing in between. Ella was okay but she was no Jane Porter. Come to think of it, the two of them did remind me a bit of Tarzan and Jane. Neither of which I would really want to see featured in a dark romance personally. I think if I were to read any of the future books in this series, it would not be for the normal reasons of me wanting to see what happens next in the previous characters.  

Writing: The writing, as mentioned before, felt a bit forced. While there weren't many spelling or grammatical errors (only spotted a couple), the description and character definitions were lacking for the overall enjoyment of the book. The author, once again, felt rushed in producing the book and so cut corners in their writing that would have otherwise boosted the book into a more enjoyable bracket for me. While I can't exactly say that the writing was a mess, the plot's formatting did leave a lot to be desired.

Overall: I did not enjoy this book. At the 50% mark I strongly considered DNFing the book but after having already DNFed a book previously I felt I needed to finish this one so as not to appear as if I am being far too picky with my book selections. I was reading another book at the same time as this one and I found myself wanting reach for that one a lot more often than this one. However, I was determined to complete the read. I will say that I am a bit intrigued by the next installment of books in this series and the characters they are featuring so I will not discount me attempting to read this series again, but I do hope they are a better fit for me than the manchild Cage and the blindly optimistic Ella.