Bared to You, by Sylvia Day

 Synopsis

“Gideon Cross came into my life like lightning in the darkness—beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I'd never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily...
Gideon knew. He had demons of his own. And we would become the mirrors that reflected each other's most private wounds... and desires.
The bonds of his love transformed me, even as I prayed that the torment of our pasts didn't tear us apart…” (Goodreads)

 My thoughts

The relationship between Eva and Gideon is a total emotional rollercoaster ride that rivals Disneyworld’s Space Mountain. Ups, downs, lefts, rights, turns, and spins. Sylvia Day’s story of confliction, compassion, and compromise left me feeling every possible emotion every single time I put it down. The raw sexuality was undeniably incredible and I loved it! There were no innuendos; everything was primal and yet exceptionally tasteful! Their dialogue, alone, made me shiver! 


I couldn’t decide whether I hated the book or thoroughly loved it. I would despise their relationship and yet, in the same scene only moments later, absolutely adore them. Eva narrates her love story in first-person and I was taken through each winding road that her heart and mind coursed through. Towards the end of the book, I really disliked Eva’s seeming self-absorption, but it was believable and real. Gideon spends the book alternating between utter vulnerability and supreme domination. His helplessness, at times, was in such stark contrast to his character that I was left uncomfortably reeling. I found myself feeling insecure in their relationship as a result. It didn’t help that I wasn’t entirely convinced of their relationship being more than just “friends with benefits”, and that it seemed Gideon did the majority of the work for it.


However, Ms Day does an incredible job of showing the segregation of sexuality and emotion in the beginning of the book and the gradual but dominating way that these two people learn to combine them. I really, really enjoyed the underlying almost imperceptible domination/submission angle, as well. It wasn’t about pain nor did it have to be physical; it was about security for both individuals: his in needing to have control over every outcome and hers in needing someone to “fall into”. 

 I’m very curious where the next book, Deeper in You, will take us when it comes out!


Posted originally on Reading Between the Wines Book Club, 
20 April 2012