Exquisite Captive by Heather Demetrios: Review

Title: Exquisite Captive
Author: Heather Demetrios
Publisher: Balzar + Bray
Buy this book: Amazon / Book Depository

Forced to obey her master.Compelled to help her enemy.Determined to free herself. Nalia is a jinni of tremendous ancient power, the only survivor of a coup that killed nearly everyone she loved. Stuffed into a bottle and sold by a slave trader, she’s now in hiding on the dark caravan, the lucrative jinni slave trade between Arjinna and Earth, where jinn are forced to grant wishes and obey their human masters’ every command. She’d give almost anything to be free of the golden shackles that bind her to Malek, her handsome, cruel master, and his lavish Hollywood lifestyle.Enter Raif, the enigmatic leader of Arjinna’s revolution and Nalia’s sworn enemy. He promises to free Nalia from her master so that she can return to her ravaged homeland and free her imprisoned brother—all for an unbearably high price. Nalia’s not sure she can trust him, but Raif’s her only hope of escape. With her enemies on the hunt, Earth has become more perilous than ever for Nalia. There’s just one catch: for Raif’s unbinding magic to work, Nalia must gain possession of her bottle…and convince the dangerously persuasive Malek that she truly loves him. Battling a dark past and harboring a terrible secret, Nalia soon realizes her freedom may come at a price too terrible to pay: but how far is she willing to go for it?Inspired by Arabian Nights, EXQUISITE CAPTIVE brings to life a deliciously seductive world where a wish can be a curse and shadows are sometimes safer than the light. (Goodreads summary.)

Basically what happened with this book.

I'd been debating whether to do a mini-review for Exquisite Captive or not. It's a book that I ended up having to DNF because I just didn't care enough to continue. But I did get to 83%, which I felt was far enough to do a full review and rate it. If it had failed to impress me by that point, I'm pretty certain the last 17% wasn't going to do anything to change that.

I'd been so excited to read Exquisite Captive, I'd downloaded it the moment I saw it on Edelweiss. It not only had a beyond stunning cover, it had a premise that sounded incredible. I couldn't wait to read an Arabian Nights inspired story about jinni, because how could that not be amazing. It seemed like a recipe for awesome, but I should have prepared myself for the fact that it might not live up to my expectations.

The longer the novel went on  the more
bored I got.

Exquisite Captive seemed to fall victim to the problem that I think a lot of the first books in a series struggle to avoid. And that's the problem of spending far too much time introducing the world, the characters and the back story to both. It ends up feeling like a massive information dump and I think the story suffers for it. I was learning so much about the different types of jinni, their world and what happened to them in the past. It's important to the story, you need to know it and at the beginning I was enjoying doing it. But it meant that not enough time was spent getting to know Nalia or feeling like she was much of a character. I was mostly just being introduced to the world, but that wasn't enough to keep me invested in the story.

My biggest issue with the story is that I felt like not much of importance had really happened, and I was almost at the end of the book. Nalia's story felt like it was really only going to be about a love triangle that you see coming from a mile away. I've just become tired of reading stories that focus too much on a person spending far too much time worrying about which person they like, rather than thinking of the things that actually matter. I could see that happening in this series as it progresses and I couldn't deal with it, especially when one of the love interests is just awful.

Nalia and Malek's ship needs to sink already.

Nalia's master is Malek, who's basically just a giant dick. Sorry not sorry, there's literally no better way to describe him. He's violent, controlling and abusive towards her. So it's understandable why Nalia hates him so much. But cue him kissing her one time and her kind of enjoying it and suddenly the story turns into the Malek/Nalia romance drama. That was when my interest started to fall dramatically. I lost all respect in Nalia as a character, this is a guy that has caused her unimaginable pain. But one kiss and suddenly she forgets it all. I know they try to come up with a defense as to why he treats her so terribly, but it doesn't justify it for me. For me it was turning into some weird YA version of a sub/dom erotica and I was not a fan. It just became really strange and uncomfortable to read, I wasn't okay with their relationship at all. Especially not when Malek comes out with things like this:

'When you came here, you were wild, a feral little thing. But I saw your potential - like a stallion that needed to be broken.' 

No, thank you. Now please go away and never come back. 

2/5 Butterflies

I really wanted to enjoy this book but I just couldn't. Learning about the jinni was interesting, but it felt like it took up far too much of the book. I never felt like I came to really know Nalia, and what  did know I didn't particularly like. I can see a love triangle aspect playing a bigger role in the second book and I wouldn't be able to handle that. Malek's character and his developing relationship with Nalia is just truly disturbing and wrong for so many reasons. I didn't finish the book, which is surprising seeing as I was so close to the end, but I just could not continue reading. It had an amazing sounding premise but just didn't deliver for me. 

*I received a copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for a free and honest review and received no monetary compensation for this review.