Explicit Instruction by Scarlett Finn

DNF @ 21%

I hemmed and hawed over what to rate this. If I really forced myself to read this to the end, I might find something to redeem this book enough to give it an extra star. But reading almost four hundred pages just to go from "didn't like it," to "it was barely ok" isn't really worth my time, hence the DNF a quarter through.

Flick is having the worst day ever when she ends up in the bad part of town with a dead phone (basically, my socially anxious self's worst nightmare). She decides to go into a local bar to use the phone, despite the enigmatic warning a man standing outside gives her to NOT GO INSIDE. She disregards that warning and immediately realizes that she SHOULD NOT HAVE GONE INSIDE because it's filled with a bunch of hardened criminal thugs who sell drugs and traffic women, and she's about to become either a casualty or a product, depending on whether said enigmatic man of the warnings develops a soft spot for her.

So, I'm a sucker for bad-guy-gets-the-girl stories, especially ones about hit-men or assassins. I read buckets of those on Fictionpress back in the day, and they actually inspired me to write my own stories (because if they could do it, why not I!?). This book frequently showed up on the "Readers also enjoyed" tab of my own books and I was really curious about this book and wanted to support the author if I enjoyed it. Sadly, I didn't get on board with this one at ALL.

Why didn't this work?

1) Flick falls for Rushe waaaaay too fast.

2) This is basically an erotic fantasy book in that it's all about the sex, sex, sex. Maybe that will work for you if you can suspend your disbelief and just read something for teh hot scenes, but that's not something I'm interested in and I need a good story to invest me in the characters' chemistry.

3) The sex scenes just weren't that hot to me. I'm not a fan of raunchy, sloppy, crude sex scenes. They feel messy and gross. Some people are into that, and again, you do you. But me, I was about as turned off as a broken light switch missing an "ON" button. This book so didn't do it for me.

4) Rushe just didn't feel like a bona fide bad guy to me. He felt like a young guy trying on his Bad Boy Pants™ for the first time in his life and who wasn't sure if he liked the way they fit.

I'm sorry to say that this was a miss.

1 to 1.5 out of 5 stars