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Claim Me, Love Me by Jaiyde Thomas
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
What a hot mess, emphasis on mess.
Claim Me, Love Me by Jaiyde Thomas is a BDSM m/m romance. It features Josiah, an out and proud frick boy who’s blind; and Caleb, his Uber driver, who’s closeted and suffers from anxiety and intimacy issues.
I wanted to like this book as I felt for Caleb and Josiah, but this book missed the mark in so many areas.
First, there was zero chemistry between Josiah and Caleb. They become obsessed with each other after exactly one meeting and then declare their undying love after only knowing each other a few months. I honestly don’t see what they saw in each other as they didn’t interact much, and when they did it was mostly to hook up (more on this later).
If this weren’t eye-roll-inducing enough, so much of the “conflict” in this story could have been easily solved had they just talked to each other. Also, they both needed a ton of therapy, but like in so many bad romances, Caleb’s and Josiah’s issues magically get better through the power of love (cue eye roll).
I don’t know much about BDSM, but I do know informed consent is a big part of it, and that was completely lacking with Josiah and Caleb. Josiah constantly sprang things on Caleb and expected him to be cool with it. And not to kink shame, but I found the whole Sub/Dom thing as depicted in this book to be abusive like crazy.
If someone isn’t comfortable doing something, as Caleb makes clear to Josiah several times throughout the book, then you should respect their boundaries. Yet, he kept pushing Caleb to do things he wasn’t ready for.
But the biggest offender in this book is the writing, especially the dialog. It’s just so bad. Like every time someone talks, they always say the other person’s name. Also, so much passive voice. And I lost count of how many times I cringed during Caleb and Josiah’s Sub/Dom conversations.
The common thread between them all being it didn’t ring true and felt forced.
I kept reading, hoping things would get better but they got worse, and I found myself skimming the pages, especially the mechanically sex scenes devoid of any emotion or sensuality.
And while I’m on the topic of sex scenes, there’s a scene where Josiah gets wasted and has unprotected sex with multiple people, then he later talks about how he doesn’t want to risk passing anything to Caleb so they should hold off on sex until he gets his test results. Yet they then have unprotected oral sex.
Make that make sense.
This book was just a hot mess, and I can’t give it more than 1 star. Skip it.