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SpicIness🌶
It’s like Wattpad on crack
Introducing The Reading Gals—a book review series where the writers behind Paper & Lore read books together and share our unique perspectives of the super spicy reads. From Katee Robert’s Neon Gods to Ruby Dixon’s Ice Planet Barbarians, we’re covering plenty of literature. So grab a glass of wine and come along with us as we dissect these thrilling reads! But forewarning, there are spoilers ahead.
What started as a joke manifested into reality—we are reading spicy books together. And by spicy books, we mean downright hot and heavy reads that have you running into your kitchen for a cold glass of water to cool you down. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But make no mistake, the book we’re reviewing today is scorching—so much so that the novel begins with a content warning for consensual non-consent. Buckle up friends, you’re in for a wild ride.
If you’ve found your way onto the book side of TikTok, known as ‘BookTok,’ you’re likely familiar with the name Katee Robert. She’s a New York Times Bestselling author who has published over 60 novels, which all fall under the suspenseful romance genre. From her Wicked Villains series to the Dark Olympus trilogy, Robert does not shy away from dreaming up viciously hot tales that make the Fifty Shades of Grey installments seem tame.
One of these steamy reads is Robert’s first novel in the Wicked Villains series—Desperate Measures. The short book that can be easily read in a day is a risqué 21st-century retelling of Disney’s Aladdin. (Something about ‘risqué’ and ‘Disney’ being in the same sentence feels all too illegal, yet here we are.) In this story, Jasmin doesn’t end up with Aladdin. Instead, she’s taken by the hot and sadistic Jafar who’s on an egotistical power trip after dismantling and taking over the empire Jasmine’s father, Balthazar Sarraf, created.
Much like in the animated movie, Robert’s version of Jasmine is confined to the walls of her father’s palace. Being caged in, Balthazar forbids Jasmine from pursuing higher education, contributing to his affluent business or even having a say in who she marries—yup, it’s one of those ‘father sells daughter into marriage’ tropes. But being promised to another man doesn’t stop the chemistry from erupting between Jafar and Jasmine. Even from the beginning of the book when the reader is thrust into this imaginative realm of feuding empires, the heated tension between these two enemies is so tangible it oozes off the pages.
Jafar, who was once Balthazar’s second-in-charge, has always had his sights on Jasmine and stakes his claim over her once he successfully overpowers Balthazar’s empire. Jafar gives Jasmine a choice: either walk away with nothing more than her freedom or race him to the palace’s entrance for both her riches and freedom. However, if she loses, Jafar vows to claim her as his prize just as he’s done with her father’s legacy. The answer should be obvious to the 25-year-old: choose her freedom, forget about her inheritance and start a brand new life without a man telling her what to do.
But here’s the problem: her choice isn’t all that straightforward. Jasmine fears the idea of living on her own with none of her riches in a world she had been sheltered from her entire life. So out of desperation, she chooses to play Jafar’s wicked game and soon realizes that he is far too cunning. Before she even knows it, she’s already become another man’s property—just in a different cage. After all, Jasmine is merely a trophy for Jafar to flaunt his seizure of Balthazar’s empire. Or is she? The raunchy chemistry between the two, domination of each other and literal gunfire shed to protect themselves from external betrayals seems to suggest otherwise. Oh, and of course the sex. A whole lot of it, all described in salacious detail.
It is this sensual writing that keeps you hooked throughout the entire course of the novel. If you’re anything like us, you may go into this book expecting to come across a few spicy scenes sprinkled into one or two chapters. Let us tell you right now: there are more erotic acts explicitly detailed in this entire tale than actual story plot. Seriously, the plot is very much lost in this book, especially during its pretty disappointing ending. However, this isn’t exactly a bad thing. If we’re being honest, most people aren’t reading this novel for the storyline anyways.
But since we’re reviewing the story for much more than just its racy parts, we’ve got to talk about the novel’s dramatic build-up that seemingly has so much potential yet falls completely short of the ending readers deserve. Talk about edging, eh? For much of the book, Jafar clearly enjoys dominating Jasmine and she certainly gets a thrill out of it too. He occasionally takes her out to The Underworld, an underground sex club ruled by the owner Hades and his right-hand-woman Meg—yup, there’s some serious ties to Greek mythology weaved into the story. But for the majority of their enemies-to-lovers relationship, Jafar keeps Jasmine couped up in his luxurious home guarded by his heavily armed men. So when Meg and Hades offer Jasmine a second chance to claim her freedom, she doesn’t hesitate.
She trusts the pair who promises her a life of her own, and not-so-unexpectedly, they betray her in order to satisfy a deal they made with the man Jasmine was arranged to marry all along. See, plot thickened. So where exactly is the problem? Well, it’s the fact that once this conflict occurs, there are only a few chapters of the book remaining. That’s where the conundrum arises: how can this entire betrayal be digested by the reader, glorified by the villains and eventually resolved by the heroes in the span of three chapters? The answer is that it really can’t be, and it showed in the lackluster writing. And because of this short-lived conclusion, the reader is left with terrible whiplash as the story takes a sharp 180 and then abruptly ends. But not without one last erotic hoorah, of course. The plot may not have had much of a climax, but Jasmine sure did.
So is this book the best novel you’ll ever read? No, absolutely not. But is it fun, spicy and likely to give you a daddy kink? You betcha. If that sounds like a well-spent afternoon to you, this book is a total winner. Happy reading! 😉
Paper & Lore 