Consequences, Book 1 of the Consequences Series, by Aleatha Romig.

I'm sorry Aleatha Romig... I couldn't finish your book. I got two-thirds of the way through and had to take a break and I haven't been able to come back since.

I could really tell that Aleatha Romig spent a lot of time researching into and weaving Stockholm Syndrome into her story. And it was those details that lost me. When I was given description after description of the mundane including Claire Nichols' shopping ventures, dining ventures, the drive to the those ventures, basically descriptions of the number of twigs on one branch of one tree in the massive forest of the blurring lines between domination vs submission and frank abuse, I got tired and couldn't continue the journey. Aleatha Romig does eventually venture into that formidable forest, but by that time I was so exhausted that I couldn't keep up.

I wasn't even really sure what type of story Consequences was supposed to be. Clearly this was not a traditional romance. Nor was it an anti-hero/heroine romance. Was this even a romance? Perhaps not. I'm hoping this might all turn out to be an epic story of Vengeance but the reviews of the second book have cast some serious doubt on that hope.

I might end up skipping the rest of the book and trying the second in the series since Truth has 5 stars. I'm not sure if I'm ready to throw myself into that world again.