Why Carter Reed was a trainwreck of a romance mafia book

🌸 Title: Carter Reed
🌸Author: Tijan
🌸Published: September 28th, 2013
🌸Genre: Adult, Fiction, Romance
🌸Preview: The lack of chemistry couldn’t save the poor attitude of our heroine.
🌸A no major spoilers review.

TW: This book contains material about sexual assault.

In Carter Reed, our main character, Emma, happens to come home early one day and finds her roommate being raped by her boyfriend. Emma has two options: either call the police and be killed by the mafia or kill him and have a chance to survive; she chooses to risk it all and kills him, setting up the rest of the story.

Emma finds herself going to Carter Reed, her childhood friend, who’s at the top of the mafia nearly ten years later.

Sigh. Okay. Let’s do this.

Carter Reed drove me insane, and not in a good way.

I don’t know why I kept reading the book. At around 15%, I put the book down for two days. But I wanted to give this book a chance because I love mafia books with steamy sex scenes. Instead, all I received was disappointment.

A lot of the issue with Carter Reed, in fact, has a lot to do with the old “show-don’t tell” rule, and Tijan sadly breaks this rule all throughout the book. It made it impossible for me to fully dive in and instead made me despise nearly every character.

I will admit that the first half was much more interesting and engaging if you ignore that issue. But halfway through, it all just went out the window.

If you’re going to throw the plot out halfway through, at least give me some nice sex scenes. But no. I didn’t even get that.

In Emma and Carter’s relationship, we never got a real sex scene, let alone a real reason for them to be in a relationship. The few sex scenes we did get were always cut off short.

Everything always felt like it was almost there. It could have been a good book, but it just never met the mark. It wasn’t even close.

Emma and Carter’s chemistry just does not exist in any way, shape, or form.

We were told about their time together for most of the story. We get maybe one or two scenes the entire book depicting the attraction between Carter and Emma, but it’s all based on the past, but also on things that went on during the book. It’s just all lying under the surface.

I felt like I was an outsider looking into the story.

Being on the outside looking in is not fun, especially as a reader. I want to feel like I’m right next to our main character(s), I want to cry and laugh with them, I want to be with them. But instead, it was like they had inside jokes I wasn’t privy to.

It didn’t matter either way. Both characters are a*******. Moreso Emma, surprisingly. Carter’s the mafia boss; you’d think he would be the biggest one, but nope.

Emma completely unlikable, shallow, and self-centered.

Emma is more than willing to cast out her friends on a whim and doesn’t question the fact that her best friend isn’t being protected with her even though she is directly involved in a mafia issue. *mind blown*

We also never truly get into Emma’s head. I don’t know what she’s thinking, so her decisions are confusing and we find out about them almost as an afterthought.

It’s absolutely bizarre to me that Emma’s friends would be cast out instantly by Emma just because…of Carter. Whom, yes, she had a friendship with ten years ago, but honestly, that is b******* and I was full Team Theresa.

Shown and not told, Emma and Theresa’s friendship shined throughout the story. Even though Theresa seemed like a character just meant to hype up Carter’s hotness half the time, I still liked her the most.

Ignoring his hotness, Carter’s reasonings for not protecting Emma’s friends did not make sense, while Emma just…accepted them.

The only thing that just never made sense to me was his inability to take in Mallory, Ben, and Amanda after the whole incident.

Carter took Emma in and explains to her why he can’t protect the others, and I’m like…what? It makes zero sense to me whatsoever, but apparently, it makes complete sense to Emma.

If I had been the main character of this story, I would have made sure my friends were completely taken care of. You’re willing to shoot someone for her, but you’re not willing to follow through? Smh.

Emma wasn’t going to let her claws out of this one.

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