Black Lies by Alessandra Torre Published by Alessandra Torre on August 14, 2014
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 293
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Apple Books
Brant:
Became a tech billionaire by his twentieth birthday. Has been in a relationship with me for 3 years. Has proposed 4 times. Been rejected 4 times.Lee:
Cuts grass when he's not banging housewives. Good with his hands, his mouth, and his body. Has been pursued relentlessly by me for almost 2 years, whether he knows it or not.Go ahead. Judge me. You have no idea what my love entails.
If you think you've heard this story before, trust me - you haven't.
This book was a mindfuck, and I can’t really say that I enjoyed it. First up we meet Layana. She’s a completely spoiled, pampered rich girl, who grabbed her trust fund and ran on her twenty-fifth birthday as a giant fuck you to her parents. As far as I could tell from the little we got of them, they weren’t terrible people, they just expected her to do nothing more than be someone’s trophy wife. So she took off. Ok. I can get behind that.
She meets and starts dating tech-genius-billionaire Brant and her whole life goes off the rails. We get a sense early on that there’s something a little off with Brant, but we’re not given enough information to figure out what it is. Then when Layana finally figures out what’s going on with him, Alessandra Torre keeps the information from us for another 50 or so pages, which got annoying.
To be fair to Alessandra Torre, the twist was one that I hadn’t seen before in a romance novel. I just don’t think she carried it off. View Spoiler »So – he’s not getting any therapy, he’s not getting any coping strategies, just random pills that he swallows without question. Sure.
In the blurb, we hear about Brant and Lee. But the narrator and Alessandra Torre are quick to assure us that this isn’t the story we think it is. She’s right – it’s not. View Spoiler » So now Layana is in love with both of them and doesn’t know how to get out of this situation. Of course she doesn’t! No one can get out of this situation without intense, ongoing therapy, possibly including some inpatient work. The fact that everyone just ignore this and tries to keep it from Brant is a really awful plot point. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Layana finally breaks the news to him, and in order to deal with the resulting psychotic break, his aunt ties him to a bed and keeps him drugged. This was so bonkers ridiculous I couldn’t even deal with it. I wanted to DNF it at this point, but I’d gone this far, and I was determined to finish. I did. You can probably figure out how it ended. It was the only way it could end, but its very predictability made it boring to read. By the end of it, I just didn’t care. These people were all so nuts I wanted Brant to take his considerable fortune and fly off to an isolated island without any of them.
About Alessandra Torre
A New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author, Alessandra Torre has written thirteen novels, three of which have become New York Times bestsellers.
Her first book, Blindfolded Innocence, was a breakout hit, rising to the top of the ebook charts on Amazon where it attracted the interest of major publishing houses and garnered Torre her first print deal with Harlequin HQN. Less than twelve months later, Torre signed a second print deal, this time with Redhook (Hachette) for the Deanna Madden series, an erotic suspense trilogy.
From her home on the Emerald Coast in Florida, she devotes several hours each day to various writing projects and interacting with her fans on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Happily married and with one son, she loves watching SEC football games, horseback riding, reading and watching movies.
