Tormentor Mine
Obsession Mine
Destiny Mine
Forever Mine
by Anna Zaires
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A lethal mercenary bent on vengeance. The innocent woman standing in his way.
Dr. Sara Cobakis’s quiet suburban life is turned upside down when a darkly handsome Russian assassin breaks into her home and tortures her for information. But the nightmare doesn’t end there.
Because Peter Sokolov returns, and this time, he’s determined to keep the pretty young doctor for himself.
No matter what it takes.
Story Score: 7.75/10 | Spice Level: 5/6 | Overall Score: 4/5 |
Anna Zaires has been on my author list for a bit…and the first one of these was on the $5 Audible sale.
Um, I binged listened. I started it and I needed it. This book (#1) messed with my head. I’ll have you know that the head messing got messier as I’ve went, although I think I’ve found my footing again, now that I’m currently in book #3.
BOOK 1: Ok, so Peter is a Russian special forces soldier who’s family is caught in an ill-advised sting operation and is tragically killed. He loses his shit. He leaves the forces and goes after all the men involved in the operation. Unable to find one man, he breaks into Sara’s house and waterboards her. Fucking waterboards her. Then when she isn’t telling him what he wants (the location of her husband), he drugs her with truth serum. Then he kills her husband. Later, he is still pulled to Sara and she becomes his obsession. He comes back into her life and basically blackmails her to do what he wants - which is pretty much playing house with him.
Sara has probably the most honest reactions I’ve ever read in a book like this. She is undeniably attracted to Peter and he plays the part of a house-husband SO FUCKING WELL…but he’s forcing himself into her life and he tortured her before and she’s scared for anyone else in her life. She sincerely is going through a giant mindfuck of a situation and she’s trying so hard to deal. She’s a smart lady, she’s a doctor, and OB-GYN, and she’s rather logical. But Peter is worming his way into her head and heart and when the FBI is closing in, she tells him.
BOOK 2: Well, then Peter drugs her and kidnaps her, whisking her away to a secluded house in Japan. She tries to escape; it doesn’t work. He is relentless in his determination to make her love him and if he can’t, well, she’s still going to be his-even unwillingly. This man is fucking OBSESSED. There’s a reason the author called this one Obsession Mine, I suppose. She tries being awful. She tries to be pleasant. It’s an unwinnable situation. Honestly though, at a certain point, her brain is so fucked up that the story isn’t so fun anymore. Her brain is BROKEN and I’m both sad and TIRED. Eventually Peter and his guys take a job that requires all of them to go and they take her to a man’s house to have her watched. She runs away and gets into a car accident.
BOOK 3: Not long after returning to Japan from this adventure, her mom is injured in a car accident and he lets her go home. This is where I’m at right now…[Insert break in the review]
Okay, I’m midway through book 4 now.
BOOK 3 is…hard. She goes home for 9 months while Peter puts a grand plan into the works. She starts living her life again even though she’s holding out hope that he’s coming back for her. Yes, she wants him to come back for her. She’s desperate for him. The FBI keep pulling her in for questioning and she’s telling them that she was his captive while simultaneously telling her parents that they’re madly in love and he’s coming back for her. After that 9 months, Peter completes his goal and comes back, plopping himself right back in her life. He moves in, tells her that they’re getting married within a week, and starts controlling or guiding all aspects of her life except her job.
I couldn’t take much more of her bullshit. She loves him, she shouldn’t, she feels guilty. Rinse and repeat. OVER AND OVER. Also, Peter is such a highhanded tool most of the time. I don’t understand what the author is even going for here. He may be one of the most toxic characters I’ve ever read and I feel like that is saying something.
BOOK 4 immediately feels better. They got married in the last 50 pages of book 3 and by book 4, she’s calming down. Thank God. As soon as they got married, I started praying that the drama would move from between them to outside their relationship and it does. Henderson, Peter’s ultimate assassination goal, gets mad that Peter is living freely and happily so he sets him up to take the fall for a terrorist attack. When the SWAT team comes to collect him, he’s supposed to be killed, but we still have ¾ a book left, so he isn’t. They’re now on the run. Henderson has some major connections though, so…now they’re back at a drug lord’s compound regrouping with ally-adjacent characters. Once again…this is where I am. [Insert another break in the review]
Alright, finished. I feel weird about the rest of the book. Peter suddenly feeling bad about everything he’s put Sara through was…weird. Sara going through PTSD and being a dumbass about it was frustrating. Nonetheless, they have a HEA so, yay them!
-SPOILERS-
This book has me fucked up. Like, I always wanna just be like “just give in and be with him!” but Sara’s struggle is so much more honest than that. I’m torn on how I feel about Peter too. He hates Sara for being his enemy’s first and he often wants to hurt her, dominate her, break her to make himself feel better. Most of the time he fights that inclination, but every now and then, he doesn’t and it kinda breaks something inside me. His love for her in the first one is truly obsession by book 2, and by 3 it’s complicated. She is curious about his darker side, but I’m not so much. Sara has the most complicated feelings. She hates him, but wants him, so she hates herself for wanting him, and she wants away from him, but she feels like she needs him. This is the most legitimate and sincere book of Stockholm Syndrome on the planet. I don’t even know where I want it to go from here.
Ok, in Book 2 Peter is trying to get Sara pregnant against her wishes and I am fucking out. Sara has gone from a sincere character to a broken shell of a person and I feel like it’s probably accurate, but dammit. Don’t bring kids into this fuckfest. I’m so fucking proud of her for running away from Lucas Kent’s house because she doesn’t want him taking away her body autonomy when it comes to pregnancy. Thank God!
Then, the author fucks it all up.
Peter finally realizes that Sara would rather kill herself than have his child (right now) and he’s having a crisis, which is nice. But she wakes up and CLINGS to him like he’s her savior and I’m pissed. WTF?! No! I’m mad, y’all. I’m mad.
Then she goes home. 9 months is a long time. She has time to start sorting through some of her bull shit. She does! But does she? No! Fucking…I wanna put all the curse words right here. Work on yourself, woman! Figure your shit out! I don’t care if you love him, fine. But you can’t even handle that and you need to come to terms with it!
Alright, now, deep question that I’ve asked several people: One of the most common reasons that people engage in CNC activities is to alleviate themselves from bearing the shame and blame of what they want. I.e. they don't want to be into being gagged...so they have someone take away their choice so they don't have to feel guilty for having it. How long do you think that that is an acceptable solution? At some point, don't you think they should work through their shit and just accept that they like it?
Sara has fallen in love with him, but she hates herself for it. So she makes him angry a lot so that his dark side will come out and he will "force" her and she doesn't have to feel bad about giving into him. Other than forcing her, he also punishes her sometimes which she feels like she deserves for giving into her feelings for him.
At some point, shouldn't she just come to terms with loving him?
Now I also get that women brat to get punished because they like it. And I understand if you're bratting in different ways to get different punishments.
But can that “make me because I’m feeling guilty and don’t want to admit anything” go on forever?
I’m so annoyed. I love CNC in books most of the time. I love it based on enjoying the fear/arousal, I love it for the challenge, I love it because sometimes you wanna fight and if you lose, you lose…but I’m not okay with CNC and punishment as a way to alleviate guilt. This is bullshit for me. If you love him, fucking love him. You’re a grown ass woman. You don’t HAVE to answer to anyone that you don’t want to, so just fucking decide. And if you don’t want to love him badly enough, leave. Yeah, he may hunt you down, but like…commit to something here. It is such a cop out to have someone constantly taking away your blame. You’re a waste of a person. Own your shit.
Again: I’ve never had Stockholm Syndrome, so maybe it’ s a different kind of thing. And her brain is absolutely broken. BUT. BUT! If you’re going to love him anyway, just fucking DO IT ALREADY.
Also, these sex scenes aren’t feeling good to me. Using anal sex as a punishment makes me want to vomit. I get that it is an intense feeling, but it shouldn’t hurt every time, the whole time. Also, the shower scene that made her relive the waterboarding bothered me. I’m not a push through the trauma kind of person for those things. I wanted him to care for her. To notice. To help. Besides, as much of a headcase as she is most of the time now, I do not think she would’ve been able to manage that.
Book 4: I love outside of the relationship drama. Thank God it’s something other than their feelings. I am jealous as all hell that he fucks her three times a night every night. So damn jealous. I wanted to cry when her family died though. She sincerely loved her parents and they were excited to be grandparents, which they all just found out that morning, and then, boom! Gone. I’m so sad about it. The PTSD that Sara experiences because of her parents’ deaths and killing that officer are tough. Like it makes sense that she doesn’t deal with it well, however, Peter suddenly becoming weak in the face of her trauma was not ideal. I loved that Yulia was a badass though and I like that Sara kept her head. It was a bit anticlimactic though. I’m starting to wonder if there is such a thing as a climax being big enough though?
4 Book Series | 1,066 Pages | Trope Challenge: Antihero |
“You are what I want.” Tugging my hand out of her hold, I fist it in her hair and wrap my other arm around her waist, molding her against me. She sucks in a sharp breath, her peaked nipples brushing against my chest, and my cock throbs, hard and ready against her stomach as I say thickly, “You, Sara, are everything I want. I don’t give a fuck about the past, or what is or isn’t meant to be. We make our own fate—we choose our own destiny—and I chose you. I don’t care if the whole world thinks it’s wrong, if I have to fight an army to hold on to you. I found you, I took you, and I’m keeping you—and I’m never going to set you free.”
- Peter, the Tormentor series by Anna Zaires
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