The situation is more complicated, but part of the abuse is that Gilles’s father told him that if Gilles ever loved anyone, his father would kill his lover. Later it gets revealed that Gilles has a reason for acting cold with Stregoni and shutting him out, and surprise – the reason is that he, a queer man, has been abused by his father his entire life. Overall, it is not at all a healthy relationship. It is then revealed that they’ve had this kind of sexual relationship for years, even though Gilles and Francois are always cold to Stregoni afterwards and he hates what they’re doing to him emotionally. The first Stregoni POV chapter (and the third chapter in the book overall) is immediately an out-of-context, explicit sex scene between Stregoni, Gilles (Aubrey’s cousin) and Francois (Gilles’s vampire Pet).
While it’s not clear from the blurb, this book actually has two POVs – the other is the physician and good friend of Aubrey’s family, Stregoni.
(This shit isn’t any better because Aubrey isn’t a girl, guys.) Namely, Ruthven keeps making advances on Aubrey despite Aubrey telling him to stop, and while it’s not entirely non-consensual, it gives an unhealthy message that you can ignore someone saying no because they don’t really mean it. Thankfully it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been (there weren’t any instances of Aubrey taking advantage of Ruthven, and as it gets gradually revealed, Ruthven is much more in control than you’d think), but their relationship still seemed unhealthy to me, although in a completely different way than expected. The main romance is between the main character, Aubrey and his Pet, which is already sketchy. I was drawn to this book because it’s a supernatural m/m novel with a beautiful cover, but in the end it mostly just left me feeling uneasy.įirst, the whole premise of the story is that in this world, vampires are kept by nobles as Pets – basically slaves. I received a copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I'm leaving my review up because it details some of the things that are very wrong with this book. while I did get some enjoyment out of Embrace (especially the second part where things improve a little), it has always felt fetishistic, and I'm going to remove my rating. Edit: I recently found out that the (female) author of this thinks that m/m is primarily for women and gay men shouldn't say anything about it, which, honestly 0% surprises me after reading this book.
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