Enter the Black Oak by Monique Edenwood

 

I buddy-read ENTER THE BLACK OAK with my friend, Caro. I've been excited to pick up this book ever since my friend Meredith raved about it in her review. Secret sex cults and unlikable female characters are kind of my kryptonite, so when I found out that this book incorporated both of those elements here, I was super excited.

The beginning of the book is great, as it opens with Jess finding out that her husband cheated and it feels very emotional. I liked the way she went to her friends for support and thought through all her options. Even her ambivalence about breaking things off made sense because when you've invested that much time and effort in a partnership, sometimes the instinct is to salvage what you've lost rather than cut off someone you love like they're deadweight.

What made this a frustrating read for me is that the entire lengthy middle section is the heroine, Jess, getting strung around by Jack, her husband. When he's not treating her like absolute garbage, we're forced to listen to how hot he is (and she is) ad nauseum, and while you could argue that this is the unrealiable narration from a woman who is just as desperate to convince us readers as she is herself, it's not fun to read. At all.

Around 75%, the book finally gets interesting again as Jess explores the mysterious Black Oak Society for real. It actually reminded me a lot of that sex club scene in the TV show, The Fall of the House of Usher (which came after this book did, I'm not accusing the author of copying), and since that's one of my favorite shows of all time, that's a pretty big compliment. It made me wish that the rest of the book was like that: tense, suspenseful, sexy, with a slight edge of danger.

I ended up feeling frustrated because parts of this book were like a dark romance version of Jackie Collins, who wrote trashy soap opera type stuff, but she wrote it well, which made all her books compulsively readable even if they weren't what the lit-snobs would consider "high brow." I really liked those parts of the book. But the parts where men just consistently told Jess how much better she is than the other desperate sluts of New York, and her agreeing with them in between worshipping the bodies of men who treated her like garbage, were a lot harder to stomach.

I read the afterward by the author where she talks about why she decided to write Jess the way she did and I do like her points about writing a character who other people might not like, but would be able to relate to. I could see this book working more for people who are in or have been in relationships that left them feeling conflicted and angry. But this book was mostly a miss for me. I might pick up book two, though, because my friend Clarice has assured me that Sebastian is one of the best villains she's ever read and given my love of villain romances, that was enough to pique my interest.

2 to 2.5 out of 5 stars