Stacia in Progress

Update 11/29/12 Rating dropped - reasons will be noted in comment number 76. My original review for the book stands in order to comply with GR policy.Original 3 star review from 10/25/12Header removed because photobucket is not worth my time anymore. It pretty much said something about me trying to be objective.I promised that if I read this book, I would be fair and objective as per dictionary.com's definition (adj.) : not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice. Yes, I had a bit of a bias going into this book. I won't rehash my feelings in this review, since the points were already discussed out in the comments section. Part of me still feels shady about even reading the book, since I wouldn't have done it if Undeniable hadn't been compared to Sons of Anarchy (my favorite t.v. show). But I did cave and read the book, and I now I will give my thoughts.Warning : There will be some mention of the graphic level of content in this book. I have written a fairly spoiler-free review in terms of plot, but have mentioned certain things that happen in the book which I think people might want to know about before picking it up so they can decide if they want to even read this (such as the mention of rape scenes).Honestly, I can say that if the author had her feelings hurt by comments made by others prior to now, she might want to hope that this book never makes it big. Because I can easily predict that if this book makes it big, there are two things which will happen in true Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Beautiful Disaster style :1. People will go crazy about the book, name it as one of their favorites, and recommend it to everyone they know.2. People will pick up the book, think it's the biggest piece of sexist, abusive crap, and will write scathing reviews.So where do I stand? I'm right there in the middle. Because I understand that you can't profile a certain type of lifestyle without showing the gritty underlying truth, I wasn't personally offended by the fact that real-life issues came up in the story such as rape, cheating, degrading of women by calling names, etc. When you're dealing with club life, gang life, crime life, etc. etc. people aren't going to react the way someone living in mainstream society necessarily would. Children are born into a lifestyle, they are raised in it, and they grow up to continue the lifestyle, not always taught that they have other/better options. It's easy to sit back from the outside and scream at the female that she's being idiotic for allowing herself to be used and abused, but we're looking at it from a place of knowing that there are other options.I have the feeling that Undeniable will be hard for some people who might not find it easy to separate out their world view from someone else's world view. I also have the feeling that there might be people who will fully understand the concept of what is going on and could still rate this book low because some of the content isn't something that they'd want to read about. It's probably safer not to read the book if you know the content won't be your thing, but I don't get to make that decision for anyone else.For pure story readability, this was an engaging book. It was gritty, dark, violent, sexy, and disturbing. If this were a movie or t.v. show, I'd love every second of it. Not once was I bored. Even when things were happening that I didn't like, I was still fully into what was going on.As a cohesive book, my thoughts are mixed. There were errors everywhere. Never have I seen such apostrophe abuse - I'm not sure why so many words which needed to be made plural had apostrophes added to them. I also saw incorrect uses of words such as your and you're, as well as plenty of spelling errors. The excessive amount of swearing and crudeness didn't bother me given the subject matter, but I sort of sighed at how much of the book read like Kristen Ashley dialogue. I don't think there was any sort of copying or anything like that because I completely get that men who live a rougher style are going to speak in a more stilted manner...it was just too close for my comfort level at times.Final thoughts : Entertaining story that went a little bat-shit crazy at times. I think a few things went round and round to the point where they were beaten to death Deuce still being a jerkwad after they got together frustrated me in a way that it didn't when he was doing it beforehand. If my copy had some editing and a few areas reigned in at times, I might have gone slightly higher on the rating because Undeniable had me sucked into its web. I'd recommend this to people who can handle controversial subject matter and like it when true bad boys (read : assholes) are reformed. If you're looking for ultra-alpha males and lots of crazy, sexy time, you'll find it with this book. And if you're a SoA fan, just picture Deuce as Jax (hey, he had the shoulder length blonde hair!) and you'll enjoy it that much more. :)