This is a review for both books in the duology.
I enjoyed these. Daddy kink is not my fave, but in a way, as someone who never really understood it before, I feel like these books did a good job justifying and explaining it to me.
The story felt like a fairytale, the protagonist going from absolutely awful circumstances to quite nice ones in just about no time at all. And things are nasty for Logan at the start of the story: his mother is awful, and his life is so, so bleak; his only chance to escape his awful home life is his football scholarship, which he'll lose if he gets on Academic Probation, which he'll be on if he fails this next Chemistry test. So he needs a tutor, and in comes Caleb ("Beast"), the LI, a classmate he used to bully, who offers to tutor him. Of course, Logan does not take this with grace.
This story goes exactly the way you'd expect it to, but nevertheless it's pretty darn hard-fought. We see every step of the journey, and I mean every step: the pacing in these books is extremely slow. The last 45% of the first book takes place in a single day, which also takes up a large chunk of the second. This book, which is more than 400 pages, takes place over less than a week.
But I don't actually care! Other than a couple instances, I didn't mind the slow pace. The characters had already known each other a while at the start of the series; we're just seeing their relationship change from adversarial to something softer, so it doesn't feel that crazy when they have their first kiss, have sex for the first time and move in together on the same day. Well... it's a little crazy. But if you lived in Logan's house, you'd jump to escape the first chance you got, too.
Despite being in high school, both main characters are 19 (they were held back a year), and the LI in particular acts much older - he's got the emotional intelligence and maturity of a 40-year-old, acting wise and calm beyond his years, even when Logan is trying to get a rise out of him. I guess he has to: what other kind of high-schooler could be called "Daddy" and not have it just be silly? (It still is a little silly, though, and I feel like the book wouldn't lose anything by making him a couple years older, but I understand the author wanted the longtime-classmates aspect, which requires them to be the same age.... But still...)
Outside of making Logan happy, we don't see too much of what Caleb wants. We don't get his point of view, so all we see are his interactions with Logan, and I feel like most of the "tells" that betray what he's feeling are his reactions to Logan, not what he says directly - when he gets unexpectedly touched by something nice Logan does, for example. I'm conflicted - I like this, but I want more, too. We can infer quite a bit from his backstory and from what he says about himself, though, so on the other hand I'm glad the reader wasn't just spoonfed everything about him. It left me hungry for more, though, because I found myself liking this weird, tall, chill nerd.
I love the stream-of-consciousness, conversational narration style - it made the books extremely easy to read. Maybe some people would find the MC's slangy, teenagery voice to be cringe, but I (as a non-teenager) didn't think it was bad.
There were some side characters with unexpected depth; the football-team-friends you think will be just typical immature high schoolers end up having an emotional arc of their own, and I was genuinely really here for their development. I don't think they have a book of their own but they definitely could, and I'd read the heck out of it.
Overall I quite enjoyed this. I'm off to read book "2.5" now, and I bet that will leave me hungry for more, too.
This is a review for both books in the duology.
I enjoyed these. Daddy kink is not my fave, but in a way, as someone who never really understood it before, I feel like these books did a good job justifying and explaining it to me.
The story felt like a fairytale, the protagonist going from absolutely awful circumstances to quite nice ones in just about no time at all. And things are nasty for Logan at the start of the story: his mother is awful, and his life is so, so bleak; his only chance to escape his awful home life is his football scholarship, which he'll lose if he gets on Academic Probation, which he'll be on if he fails this next Chemistry test. So he needs a tutor, and in comes Caleb ("Beast"), the LI, a classmate he used to bully, who offers to tutor him. Of course, Logan does not take this with grace.
This story goes exactly the way you'd expect it to, but nevertheless it's pretty darn hard-fought. We see every step of the journey, and I mean every step: the pacing in these books is extremely slow. The last 45% of the first book takes place in a single day, which also takes up a large chunk of the second. This book, which is more than 400 pages, takes place over less than a week.
But I don't actually care! Other than a couple instances, I didn't mind the slow pace. The characters had already known each other a while at the start of the series; we're just seeing their relationship change from adversarial to something softer, so it doesn't feel that crazy when they have their first kiss, have sex for the first time and move in together on the same day. Well... it's a little crazy. But if you lived in Logan's house, you'd jump to escape the first chance you got, too.
Despite being in high school, both main characters are 19 (they were held back a year), and the LI in particular acts much older - he's got the emotional intelligence and maturity of a 40-year-old, acting wise and calm beyond his years, even when Logan is trying to get a rise out of him. I guess he has to: what other kind of high-schooler could be called "Daddy" and not have it just be silly? (It still is a little silly, though, and I feel like the book wouldn't lose anything by making him a couple years older, but I understand the author wanted the longtime-classmates aspect, which requires them to be the same age.... But still...)
Outside of making Logan happy, we don't see too much of what Caleb wants. We don't get his point of view, so all we see are his interactions with Logan, and I feel like most of the "tells" that betray what he's feeling are his reactions to Logan, not what he says directly - when he gets unexpectedly touched by something nice Logan does, for example. I'm conflicted - I like this, but I want more, too. We can infer quite a bit from his backstory and from what he says about himself, though, so on the other hand I'm glad the reader wasn't just spoonfed everything about him. It left me hungry for more, though, because I found myself liking this weird, tall, chill nerd.
I love the stream-of-consciousness, conversational narration style - it made the books extremely easy to read. Maybe some people would find the MC's slangy, teenagery voice to be cringe, but I (as a non-teenager) didn't think it was bad.
There were some side characters with unexpected depth; the football-team-friends you think will be just typical immature high schoolers end up having an emotional arc of their own, and I was genuinely really here for their development. I don't think they have a book of their own but they definitely could, and I'd read the heck out of it.
Overall I quite enjoyed this. I'm off to read book "2.5" now, and I bet that will leave me hungry for more, too.
