I chose this week’s selection because its cover features a Na’vi chick sending smoldering looks, and it shares the same title as G-Unit’s first album. Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone made a porno of 50 Cent poppin’ them thangs, Avatar style? You’d watch it because you’re a dipshit.This is the most fucked up paperback I’ve ever read, made even worse because I was expecting more typical romance drivel. Beg For Mercy is not about love in the hood, nor is it about Mr. Darcy ripping bodices. It’s about torture porn, cigarettes on flesh, rape, drugs, sodomy, and execution. This shit is dark. And I mean dark like “accidentally” reading your uncle’s diary when you’re five years old and seeing scrawls of dead women and notes about suicide.
Megan Flynn is the typical modern heroine derivative—totally gorgeous and capable of kicking ass, yet ultimately reliant on her man to save the day. Psychology Today claims that these women are expertly crafted so that readers can easily slide into their skins and indulge in vicarious fantasies. Any woman who gleefully transposes herself into Megan’s body will be rewarded with the fantasy of screaming “You son of a bitch cocksucker! I’m not gonna let you kill me!” to her potential rapist while watching him slit the throat of her naked companion.But I’m getting ahead of myself. The book begins with Megan freaking out because her brother, Sean, has been arrested for rape and murder. The policeman she’s been lusting after was responsible for locking Sean up, so Megan dumps his ass and embarks on her own vengeance crusade, hoping to find the real murderer before Sean’s looming death penalty.She gets pulled into a seedy underworld of high-end prostitutes, VIP nightclubs, and expensive drugs. Alden demonstrates her aplomb with street substances, helpfully cluing us in that “Molly is ecstasy cut with coke, or occasionally heroin.”Meanwhile, readers are treated to the POV of the serial killer himself. Just like John Wayne Gacy and Ed Gein before him, this creature is haunted by memories of his abusive childhood. And following the precedent of Edmund Kemper, Richard Ramirez, or even Patrick Bateman, he’s also immensely fuckable.
3 HOTTIESIt’s almost as if Alden is slyly baiting her readers with a dilemma: which scenes will find your hand snaking down your pants? The ones where Megan and her cop-lover sizzle over each other, but can’t do the dirty deed out of Sean-related guilt? “He settled between her thighs, letting her feel the rock-hard ridge of his erection straining at the fly of his pants, leaving no doubt as to how much he wanted her.” Yawn.Torture, on the other hand, is the best kind of kinky eroticism.Foreplay: “He exposed her breast, the texture and color of warm cream. He took another deep drag of his cigarette, then pressed the tip against her tits.”Desire: “She’d opened her eyes and was staring at his cock, tears streaming from her eyes.”Climax: “He slashed the knife across her back in the same instant he drove into her. He clenched his teeth as he struggled for restraint.”I was so tickled by the thought of housewives nervously flicking the bean to this shit that I almost didn’t notice that Alden had thrown a curveball. Turns out the serial killer was MEGAN’S EX-BOYFRIEND. Under a dramatic psychic break, he had confused every chick (including Megan) for his dead sister.He kidnaps Megan and they have some blood-smeared ex-sex. At the last minute, the cop swoops in to save the day, arrests the dude and whisks Megan to the altar. Sean is freed a day before his execution, and sparks fly between him and his criminal attorney (that’s the next book, Hide From Evil).
Rating: 5 dildos. Another winner. Halfway through this novel I realized that Jami Alden is a genius. Beg For Mercy is no ordinary romance novel. It’s a subtle invocation of Jungian philosophy. The alternating POVs demonstrate startling synchronicity. The serial killer’s traumatic past follows the archetype shared by his brethren. Themes of death, eros, and libido tap into our collective unconscious. I think she’s trying to make a statement about our inner commonality. Psych!MICHELLE LHOOQPreviously: The Cat's Fancy
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3 HOTTIESIt’s almost as if Alden is slyly baiting her readers with a dilemma: which scenes will find your hand snaking down your pants? The ones where Megan and her cop-lover sizzle over each other, but can’t do the dirty deed out of Sean-related guilt? “He settled between her thighs, letting her feel the rock-hard ridge of his erection straining at the fly of his pants, leaving no doubt as to how much he wanted her.” Yawn.Torture, on the other hand, is the best kind of kinky eroticism.Foreplay: “He exposed her breast, the texture and color of warm cream. He took another deep drag of his cigarette, then pressed the tip against her tits.”Desire: “She’d opened her eyes and was staring at his cock, tears streaming from her eyes.”Climax: “He slashed the knife across her back in the same instant he drove into her. He clenched his teeth as he struggled for restraint.”I was so tickled by the thought of housewives nervously flicking the bean to this shit that I almost didn’t notice that Alden had thrown a curveball. Turns out the serial killer was MEGAN’S EX-BOYFRIEND. Under a dramatic psychic break, he had confused every chick (including Megan) for his dead sister.He kidnaps Megan and they have some blood-smeared ex-sex. At the last minute, the cop swoops in to save the day, arrests the dude and whisks Megan to the altar. Sean is freed a day before his execution, and sparks fly between him and his criminal attorney (that’s the next book, Hide From Evil).