Amity Book Blog: REVIEW - Dirty Bad Wrong

TITLE: Dirty Bad Wrong.

AUTHOR: Jade West

SYNOPSIS:

They call him Masque.
I call him God.
The man I want to consume me, own me, break me and corrupt me.
Yet I've never seen his face.
His body ripples like an adonis, sculpted in steel and dripping in sin. His flesh is inked with the mark of the chimera - one body, two very different halves.
He plays hard.
He plays rough.
He has no limits.
He's so fucking dirty bad wrong.
But I love him for it.

***

Lydia Marsh is always the strong one. The girl who never breaks, and sure as hell never cries. She's got it all - the perfect little life in cosy suburbia, with her perfectly nice boyfriend, and their perfectly sufficient sex life. She's even got her perfect little career plan all wrapped up at Trial Run Software Group.

But when it all falls apart, and Lydia's pretty, green eyes are fixed on a brutally sexual stranger - the man they call Masque - she comes to suspect that being strong isn't all it's cracked up to be.

For now Lydia wants something she's never wanted before...

And she wants Masque to give it to her.

**Warning - this novel contains graphic sex, and hardcore elements of BDSM. There are scenes of violence (consensual) as well as sexual practices some readers may find offensive.

If you aren't turned on by dirty bad wrong sex then please walk on by. Thank you.***

MY THOUGHTS:

Wow, that was one hell of a whirlwind of dirty, bad and wrong stuff, all wrapped up in an additively good package.

Well the blurb alone had me wanting this book huge amounts. I absolutely love boundary pushing content, and stories, and get stupid excited when another one is talked about.
This book seemed to rock my newsfeed when it first came out, but as per usual I couldn't read it, as I had so many others to read first. But finally I managed to get started, and I literally could not put it down!!

Lydia Marsh is at the end of an epically bad relationship, and she had reached her limit when awfully boring, and dull boyfriend, decides to get drunk and nasty with Barbie from work. Then thinking he has got her pregnant, spills all to Lydia. Lydia wisely bolts, and fast.

While at work, she realises how crap her life is, and is spotted having a breakdown in the kitchen, by gorgeous, dark and totally mysterious hottie from management. James.

This sparks off an epic battle of wills from the pair of them. It's obvious they are stupidly attracted to each other, but Lydia is post break up, and James is, well he is completely wrong for her, and does not get involved with work colleagues. Ever.
So this all sounds like a regular story right? Wrong, dirty, bad, wrong.

So, Lydia needs a place to live, James has a friend in need of a flatmate. Lydia takes it and meets Becs. Awesomely quirky, funny, and perfect character Becs.
It's upon moving in with Becs, and meeting her girlfriend/submissive. Lydia begins to learn about a whole other world, that lives in the dark. A world where pain can be good, and bring on pleasure. A place where she can learn to free herself, and be herself, and fully enjoy life.

But I'm really at a point where I can't summarise anymore, I don't want to potentially spoil anything. And it really does go on a crazy roller coaster ride from here on in.

So I'm just going to give my thoughts on this story.

Firstly, the characters are all fantastic. I loved James and Lydia. He is obviously incredibly in control, full of secrets, and hides a side to him, that is actually pretty scary, but in a really good way.

Lydia starts off really lost, and I wondered what she would actually end up like, once her character developed. But, I really loved her, I loved how eager she was to try anything, and didn't shy away from anything. She had balls of steel in my eyes, and I actually admired her strength, on so many levels.

I've already said I love Rebecca (Becs) she was an incredibly good characters, dead funny, sexy, and brings stupid amounts of colour and excitement to Lydia's life.

So the background. Explicit is the club, where Lydia finds out a lot about herself and her limits, what she wants, and who she wants. It's the home of many characters, and where we find Masque. There isn't a great deal I can say about him, he is most definitely a character, that needs to be experienced for ones self. And uh yeah, he actually scared the crap out of me, and shocked me silly. And I like to think I'm pretty unflappable. He really is like the title states, incredibly Dirty, Bad, Wrong. Obviously sexy, powerful, Dominant to the extreme, and knows what he is doing, but hell if I would let him have free reign over my body. I would definitely run a mile, and not look back.

The writing, and content. Well I thought this book was incredibly well written, I couldn't put it down, and nearly pulled an all nighter on it. I had already read about author Jade West, before I started reading this, and was aware that she has the experience to back up the content of this story, and in my mind I think that stands out. I read a lot of books within this sub genre, and running around these types of themes, and you can tell the difference between good ones and bad ones. It's obvious that JW knows her stuff, and isn't just pulling info off the internet. The detail and background on this story, is incredibly thorough, nothing is skimmed over, and the reader can fully get lost in the incredible atmosphere. The tension within the words, is immense, I actually felt nervous while reading some parts, never knowing how far things would go, or what would happen next. But that was awesome, and I loved it.

Have to make a point of course, about the fact that this is a book based in the UK!! Whoop for UK based books, I never find many, and it really makes a huge difference, to picture places I have heard of, or to imagine characters with accents I know. Plus it's quite exciting to think of other places, existing quite close by. But hidden away.

So, to round up. Fantastically good story. Great background. Gritty and intense content. Most definitely heed the warning on this book, it really isn't for the faint hearted, some of the content even surprised me, and I'm hard to surprise. So yeah, be warned. But other than that, amazingly good! Stupidly great ending too, which was awesome! I felt completely satisfied with the ending, and did the normal happy sigh. I actually thought this was a story that was being continued in book 2, so it was quite a surprise to find it was a standalone.
But still, I'm so excited for the next book now.

Stand out quotes or passages:

I want him to break me. I want him to hurt me. I want him to own me. And then I want him to love me.

A huge tattoo in jet black, curling all the way around his ribs. A multi-headed beast, tribal and malevolent, dancing on his flesh as though it owned every part of him. So this was the man with the chimera: the design on Rebecca's wall, the design I'd looked at every fucking day since I moved in. My eyes shot to his face, searching for the identity of the man who wore such a mark, but there were no answers to be found there. The man was masked, most of his features hidden behind black leather.