Pen Pal

It's been years and the blurb and genres are still misleading. This is erotica veering into BDSM like spanking, anal, power play, and primal/animal play. This isn't dark romance. There's almost no romance at all actually until the last 10% of the book. None of the characters are really obsessive/possessive or even morally grey. Trauma and violence doesn't automatically mean dark romance. If you're looking for that from the title and the blurb it's not here. Instead we get a paranormal mystery thriller plot to get us from one sex scene to the next. It's really unfortunate that this wasn't a romance to keep me more invested. I was never really hit with any big emotional impact. I had the mystery figured out 45% of the way in. The twist is revealed at about 88% which is also when the more romantic stuff starts up but there's barely a love story to get choked up over. If this had been tackled differently I probably would have cried over these characters. Instead I mostly watched them have somewhat rough sex while calling each other bunny, lion, sir, and master a few too many times. This isn't a bad read, it just wasn't genre melded together, presented, or sold the right way for me.