Review: Naked Ambition by Lisa Henry (Grim and Sinister Delights)

Naked Ambition by Lisa Henry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Horse rating: 🐴 of 5 horses

He was drowning, all right, and Taylor had just thrown him a lifeline. And next he was going to tighten it around his pretty little throat and pull.

This was a very well done dark MMM(ish?i don't know, it depends how you count) retelling of the Emperor's New Clothes. I would not consider it a romance. Maybe it's erotic horror.

I tried to write down things that should have been in the content warnings since I couldn't find any for the book:

Content warnings: dubcon, noncon, sexual assault, drug use, drug addiction, noncon drug use

Characters:

Taylor:

All his life Taylor had wanted to create, and it turned out that his masterpiece was going to be destruction. There was probably something profound in that, maybe even a lesson, or at least something that someone with a more philosophical bent would have pondered for a while, but Taylor wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. ... Perhaps the better philosophical question was whether or not destruction was a type of creation as well. Taylor liked to think that it was.

Taylor is an incredible character. Most of the book is in his POV, and he has such a strong voice I could feel his emotions. His visceral hatred and jealousy of Christian really came through the page.

Connor:

“How do you ruin a dead man?” Connor asked curiously.

 
Connor, Taylor's boyfriend, was a great secondary character as well. He fit so perfectly with Taylor in their scheme, and was all around strong as well, even though we weren't in his POV ever. We got to know him just fine through Taylor's POV.

Mike:

The man’s gaze slid right off Mike, undoubtedly immediately categorizing him as unimportant and dismissing him. Mike might have been offended, but he was pretty sure it was an accurate assessment. Mike was no corporate shark. He was barely even a go-getter. 

Mike...well. He was set up to be a boring character, and wow yeah his POV was boring. I never managed to care about him at all. Relatable in his "none of my business/I'm just here for the paycheck" vibes. He did work well as that outside perspective on the whole Taylor-Connor-Christian/workplace progress, but outside of that he wasn't anything.

Christian:

Christian we get like...two chapters of POV I think? It only serves to confirm how Taylor and Connor are interpreting and manipulating him. He was as strong as an overcooked noodle - he clearly had some serious emotional baggage, and collapsed very quickly in the face of everything.

Christian was pathetic and pitiful and boring, and he deserved to be punished for that alone.

The romance??

I guess technically there's a romance. Sort of. Mike and Christian. In Mike's POV he's sort of caring about Christian at times, but it's not like he knows him. He waffles a lot on that too - he knows he doesn't know Christian, but still feels weird about stuff. It makes for a great outside perspective like I said earlier, but less so for a romance arc.

All of this Mike-Christian romance occurs in the last chapter of the book. Literal last chapter. It just doesn't fit.

In fact, I felt like the last chapter was too overly cheeseball to fit with the rest of the book, it felt jarring and out of place. Plus we never really see them interacting (it's done in a gap between second to last chapter and epilogue chapter). It felt like it was forcing the HEA to be more overt without it really fitting.

If this book had ended on the second to last chapter (Christian's POV), it would have ended with a glimmer of hope and resolution, which I think would have been a better tonal fit considering the bleak and destructive vibes the rest of the story had from being almost entirely Taylor's vengeful POV.

Still, overall, this was a very compelling read all the way (until the last chapter) through. Incredibly distinct and strong characters, especially Taylor. Definitely a winner in this multiauthor series.

 
Naked Ambition on Amazon

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