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Publication date: April 10th, 2023
Pages: 213
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Synopsis:
Love has never been enough within these walls
Alexzander
Every day feels the same. Beaten down, conditioned to hurt others, and unable to feel anything resembling love. My existence is a hollow shell of what it could be, until I find her.
The woman I capture turns my world upside down. She's unlike any victim I've taken before, and her will to survive leaves me intrigued. As I get to know her, I start to understand what's right and just how much my life has been wrong. But I can't let her go, no matter how much I want to.
Ophelia's become my obsession, and I know that I'll do anything to keep her with me. Our bond is twisted and complicated, built on a foundation of captivity and control. It's not healthy, but I can't help how I feel.
She's mine, and I won't let anyone take her away from me.
Trigger Warnings: All, honestly. But... Non-con between MCs, heavy non-con scenes/discussions/pasts, abuse, dateline level captivity, Stockholm syndrome, mention of CA and CSA, Familial SA (side plot point), alcoholism/substance use, through fucking, skull fucking (actually), a REPULSIVE brother captor, another female captive (minimal interaction, no cheating between MCs once FMC is taken), murder, cum jar, cum eating contest, suicide, trauma bonding, some stalking, making checkers WEIRD.
Captured is a dual POV dark horror romance standalone novel with an HEA.
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Review:
Alexzander has been raised to be a monster. All he knows is what he has been taught by a monster of a father. The only source of light and love in his life was his mother who was also a captive of his father. It was only after that light was snuffed out that Alexzander allowed himself to lean into the teachings of his father and join his brother in their mission of destruction. All he knows is how to use women for his own means and then discard of them when he is finished with them. While he doesn't take as much sadistic pleasure in it as his brother, he also doesn't rage against it. Things start to change once he takes Ophelia, a waitress at his local diner, as his own. Suddenly he feels a possessiveness that he had never felt before. He doesn't want to share her with his brother. He wants her all to himself. And in doing so he has to protect her from finding herself in his brother's clutches. But somewhere along the way he starts to question everything he had been taught and wondering whether what he was feeling for Ophelia would be enough to make the monster within him repent.
This book is one the darkest and most fucked up reads I have ever delved into. It laughs in the face of trigger warnings without being over the top. Most books in this sort of genre try to push the gauntlet and make things as awful as humanly possible so that it feels forced and disingenuous. Lauren seemed to tiptoe across that tightrope with expert skill. The things that happened were truly horrendous and there were a few scenes were I was openly gagging but it was written with such skill that I just couldn't put it down.
Alexzander was the ideal male protagonist that you absolutely hate to like. You question your own sanity just by rooting for the main characters in this book. Alexzander was handed a raw deal. He was raised in a home that was just a den of survival. He adapted to survive even though he knew what was happening was wrong. However, anytime he pushed back he was slapped down and tortured until he was compliant again. He was not so much different from the women his brother and him took captive. Perhaps psychologically speaking that was why he did what he did. It was a way of punishing himself for going along with it all? It is that kind of questioning that makes Alexzander such a conundrum of a character.
Ophelia was fairly generic. There wasn't anything truly special about her other than the fact that she had also been conditioned to withstand hardcore sexual abuse from her home life. I felt bad for her and really didn't know what was worse: what she withstood all her life up until being captured or what came after? I think Alexzander was such a deep well to dive into that Ophelia got a little overshadowed.
Alexzander was the ideal male protagonist that you absolutely hate to like. You question your own sanity just by rooting for the main characters in this book. Alexzander was handed a raw deal. He was raised in a home that was just a den of survival. He adapted to survive even though he knew what was happening was wrong. However, anytime he pushed back he was slapped down and tortured until he was compliant again. He was not so much different from the women his brother and him took captive. Perhaps psychologically speaking that was why he did what he did. It was a way of punishing himself for going along with it all? It is that kind of questioning that makes Alexzander such a conundrum of a character.
Ophelia was fairly generic. There wasn't anything truly special about her other than the fact that she had also been conditioned to withstand hardcore sexual abuse from her home life. I felt bad for her and really didn't know what was worse: what she withstood all her life up until being captured or what came after? I think Alexzander was such a deep well to dive into that Ophelia got a little overshadowed.
This book is not for the faint at heart. You need to go into it with an empty stomach and a preparedness to see some grade-A fucked up shit. But MAN was it a great read. I will never look at mayonnaise the same though.
