Review: College Bound by Lilia Ford

Print Length: 228 pages

Publisher: Liliaford Romance LLC (October 23, 2014)

From Goodreads.com: Aka the totally lurid tale of the convenience store sex slave!

After a vicious fight with her slut-shaming jerk of stepbrother, Natalie storms out of the family McMansion, never imagining that would be the last time she’d be allowed in the house. A string of truly rotten decisions follows, until she finds herself suspended from school, friendless, broke, and camping out at the minimart where she works. Worst of all, her college applications are due! 

Thanks to a helpful teacher and her own stupendous brilliance she manages to get into her top choice college. Unfortunately, dealing with the financial aid forms proves to be too much for her supersmarts and she is about to lose her spot because she cannot get the money together to pay the deposit. 

Enter Gareth Boyd, an old family friend and all-around manipulative bastard, who makes her an offer: sleep with his (totally hot) roommate, Jamie, and he’ll pay for everything. 

How hard can it be? 

Warning: This story features an eighteen-year-old heroine with a foul mouth and horrible judgment, a criminally unscrupulous man intent on taking advantage of her, and multiple scenes of bondage, spanking, ménage, and one potentially triggering scene of attempted rape. The novel is an erotic fantasy in which characters manipulate or disregard notions of proper consent in ways that would never be acceptable in real life. 

Due to explicit content this novel is for Adult Readers Only

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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

I'm still not sure how I feel about this story. On one hand, I enjoyed the author's style. Oftentimes it didn't feel as though you were reading a story so much, it seemed like something you could picture a girl writing about in her diary, or telling another close girlfriend over drinks at the bar. It had a different feel to it in that way then some of the other BDSM books currently available. There was also a very interesting twist to the story as far as Gareth's business dealings, but it felt like that was barely even touched on. It had the potential to open up this story and really take it to a whole new level, but just as soon as it was fully introduced? That particular story-line was over. 

Now lets talk about the characters shall we? The only character I even remotely liked was Daniel, who seemed to be the only person genuinely worried about Nat's well being and state of mind. 

As for Natalie, Gareth and Jamie? I didn't care about them, or their problems. I felt that Natalie was a weak minded pain in the ass who needed to grow up and stop flying off the handle at every little thing and purposely doing things to make her life worse. Gareth is nothing short of an abusive manipulator who I couldn't like even if I tried. To begin with, he leaves her bound and gagged for SIXTY-FIVE minutes as a "punishment"almost immediately after she signs the contact. Not only does she still not fully comprehend what she's getting into (and how could she), there is absolutely no after-care whatsoever or thought to her well-being or emotional/physical state of mind. And that is no way to earn the trust of anyone, much less in a Dom/sub relationship. He even goes so far as to have cameras installed in her bedroom AND bathroom. Because there is totally nothing more romantic than watching someone use the toilet am I right?  

Then when she meets James aka Jamie just a few short days later and they immediately begin having sex? She's still left bound and gagged, leaving her no real way to consent. To hell with the contract Gareth basically coerced her into signing, she still should have had the option to "safe-word" out at any time and that was taken away from her. Again, not a good way to build trust. Also, I know this could be a major sticking point with some other readers, I believe that it should be mentioned that there is also explicit male on male sexual content in this story.  

Overall, I am sure there will be people who can overlook the things that I mentioned and who will enjoy this story. I however, will most likely not be reading anything more from this author.

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own. 

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College Bound is available from Amazon.com