Naked in Death

💬: “That was the biggest problem with getting used to someone, she thought. You were lonely when they weren’t there."

Robb, J.D.. Naked in Death (In Death, Book 1) (p. 347). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

📖Genres: romance, dark, thriller, mystery, crime, suspense

📚Page Count: 373

🎧Audiobook Length: 10h 17min

👩🏾‍🏫My Rating: ⭐️⭐️ 2/5

TW - <spoiler>Incest, Misogyny, Sexual violence, Blood, Cursing, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Stalking, Violence, Abandonment, Death, Grief, Hate crime, Child abuse, and Gore</spoiler>

Naked in Death is the first book in the "In Death" series by J.D Robb (who is actually romance writer, Nora Roberts). In the year 2058 Detective Eve Dallas is residing in New York when she gets a case where a senator's daughter is murdered and it's discovered that the vicitim was a full service sex worker. The case then becomes a high profile case and Dallas enters a world of politics in order to track down the killer. While the case is taking place, Dallas becomes enthralled with Roarke, one of the leading suspects. Is Dallas' attraction to Roarke leading her to disaster or will she find the murderer and close the case?

I think overall this story was okay, there were things I liked and things I didn't like. I really have issues with Roarke because <spoiler>he's very controlling and seems to not take "no" for an answer.</spoiler> I found it a bit disturbing how the sex workers in the book were talked about but I keep trying to remind myself that this was written in 1995 and there are going to be some characters who are against sex workers because of prejudice so their dialogue about the sex workers reflects that. I did like how this takes place in the future, and all the futuristic and scientific advancements and inventions in the story were clever and very interesting. I also like how I didn't guess what the ending was going to be until it was already in motion and being explained to the reader.

The spicy scenes in here were either the beginning of murder scenes or they were intended to be sexy but were lacking consent, and in these instances it was evident that this novel was written in the 90s. The love interest has the idea that he knows what the main character wants more than she does, and so he's not respecting her boundaries. In fact, the love interest keeps pushing up against Eve's boundaries in the hopes that he can bend them. I'm giving it zero chilies 🌶️🌶️ out of five chilies.

Overall, this novel had it's issues but it also had some interesting elements. I think the lack of consent when it came to the love interest was a big issue with the story. I really enjoyed the ending, it was action packed and even though I still had questions at the end I definitely didn't guess that it was going to end the way it did. Instead of giving this novel 1 stars for the lack of consent all throughout, I'm giving this 2 stars out of 5.

⭐️⭐️

2/5

I listened to this audiobook for free on [Libbyapp.com]