Hope everyone had a happy new year and all that jazz. I can’t believe it’s 2013 already! When are we gonna ride around in those flying cars already, amiright? Better yet, when are they going to invent a memory eraser like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That would be a great blog experiment. Have them erase my memories of these books, and then I’d do my posts all over again and see if I keep making the same jokes.
Anyway, onto Bared to You (not Fifty Shades. It’s important we keep that straight as Matt demonstrated last week for us. God these books are easy to confuse.)
Chapter 9
Okay. So when we last left off, Gideon and Eva decided to be exclusive, but it’s unclear whether or not they’re in a relationship. After work, Gideon picked Eva up in his limo and they went to go…do errands.
The start of this next installment is just as thrilling as you’d expect–they go to the cellular store first. To purchase Eva a phone free of her stalker mother’s tracking devices. Day should read some Goosebumps, at least the cliffhangers in those books actually tried to be cliffhangers. The chapter endings in this book are like, “I made some toast,” and then the next chapter begins with, “I put butter on it.”
Hey! Look! Another comparison to be made to Fifty Shades happens within the first paragraph!
The associate who helped us seemed highly susceptible to Gideon’s magnetic pull. She practically fell all over herself the minute he showed the slightest interest in anything, quickly launching into detailed explanations and leaning into his personal space to demonstrate.
#
Why do we need to know every time another woman thinks Gideon or Christian is attractive? It’s just so pointless! It’s like Eva’s opinion can’t be trusted or something, like if she tells us Gideon’s hot we’re not supposed to believe it, but if a sales associate at a cellular store makes eyes at him, he’s obviously the sexiest man alive.
Yet another similarity to Fifty Shades is that Eva and Gideon argue over who will pay for the cell phone, just like Ana and Christian used to argue when Christian tried to pay for everything. Please, Bared to You, tell us more.
Jesus fucking Christ, I can’t go a freaking paragraph without another comparison! Christian and Ana always argue about the clothes she wears–Christian always seems to want her to dress like a nun when they go out in public. Gideon acts the exact same way in this when they head to the gym and change into workout clothes. Apparently he thinks Eva’s workout clothes are too revealing, so he gets pissy with her. Is this some weird fantasy most women have? That they find a man that is so possessive and jealous that he yells at you about what you can and can’t wear all the time? It’s perfectly understandable if you’re going out and wearing something really revealing that your guy might tell you it makes him somewhat uncomfortable, but it seems like literally anything these women wear that isn’t completely covering their entire bodies ignites fury and uncontrollable jealousy.
I was secretly pleased with my choice, which I’d made that morning before I’d known he’d be with me. The top was a triangle with long straps at the shoulders and ribs that secured with Velcro and could be worn in a variety of ways to allow the wearer to determine where her breasts needed the most support. It was specially designed for curvy women and was the first top I’d ever had that kept me from bouncing all over the place. What Gideon objected to was the nude color, which coordinated with the racing stripes on the matching black yoga pants.
“I like you naked in private,” he muttered. “I’ll need to be with you whenever you go to the gym.”
What a whore. Wearing a nude colored top! And what is up with what Gideon just said? How is Eva not completely turned off by him? Oh, don’t worry, she explains it for us:
I was perversely excited by his possessiveness after the hurt he’d inflicted with his withdrawal Saturday night. Two very different extremes—the first of many, I was sure.
I’m confused, isn’t this terrifying? It’s like if a guy punched me in the face, but then bought me flowers later. What thrilling extremes! Oh wait, I think they have a word for that sort of relationship…
Anyway, I’ll stop my assessment of their relationship and get back to the part of the book you’re really excited to read about: they gym!
Before he programmed his workout, I leaned over to him. “Don’t burn off too much energy,” I whispered. “I want you missionary style the first time. I’ve been having this fantasy of you on top, banging the hell out of me.”
His gaze burned into me. “Eva, you have no idea.”
Nearly giddy with anticipation and a lovely surge of feminine power, I got on my treadmill and started at a brisk walk.
Haha. Feminine power. Eva, you jokester.
Then we get the longest description of all of Gideon’s workouts, and I’m sorry, readers, I love you, but I’m not going into detail about this shit. But I will tell you Eva is in awe of that fact that Gideon works behind a desk but keeps his body in shape. I guess she’s easily amazed.
We do, however, witness Gideon referring to Eva as his girlfriend. Some trainer named Daniel tries to off her the “full experience” at the gym, which I’m going to assume features a good, hard fucking in the gym showers from the way Gideon reacts to Daniel about it.
Gideon appeared at Daniel’s shoulder. “The full experience is included,” he said, coming around and behind me to slide his arms around my waist, “when you’re the owner’s girlfriend.”
The word girlfriend reverberated through me, sending a crazy rush of adrenaline through my system. It was still sinking in that we had that level of commitment, but that didn’t stop me from thinking the designation had a nice ring to it.
So the full gym experience consists of fucking in a limo and then calling it a relationship? Sounds like a gym everyone should have a membership to.
After that, it’s time to get down to some sexy business, and Gideon at first tells Eva to be quick with her shower because she’s just going to get sweaty again, but then she’s all like, “Let’s just have sex now, you and your sweaty body are hot.”
Gideon’s response? It’s creepier than you could ever imagine:
Gideon’s jaw tightened and his gaze darkened dangerously. “I’m beginning to fear for your safety, Eva. Grab your stuff. There’s a hotel around the corner.”
Shouldn’t he stop and explain why he fears for her safety? This is an incredibly scary proposition. He’s scared for her safety, so she should go to a hotel room with him? This man is incredibly horrifying.
Gideon walked briskly and I hurried to keep up. When he stopped abruptly, turned, and dipped me back in a lavish heated kiss on the crowded sidewalk, I was too stunned to do more than hold on. It was a soul-wrenching melding of our mouths, full of passion and sweet spontaneity that made my heart ache. Applause broke out around us.
Not boyfriend’s take: Imagine being the person in a crowd who tries to start the applause for that kiss if no one else joined in.
Unsurprisingly, Gideon owns the hotel they duck into, so they can just run upstairs and start banging without going through the tedious motions of getting a room. No, seriously, he just pulls out a master key and they go into a room. What if someone was in that room? I hate this book.
Gideon goes down on Eva, and she cries during her orgasm. She says the orgasm broke down her walls or something. I don’t even.
Like, Ana, Eva has three orgasms in a row, while telling us how sensitive she is and how they hurt but are amazing. This doesn’t even sound good to me! It sounds painful, and at one point she asks Gideon to stop, and he’s like, “No, you’re going to come one more time.”
They start having sex, and this happens:
I gasped. He was big, hard as stone, and so damn deep. The connection was startlingly intense. Emotionally. Mentally. I’d never felt so completely . . . taken. Possessed.
He literally just stuck his dick in her. Bared to You, proving all you need for an emotional connection is a big, hard penis inside of you.
He buried his face in my neck and held me tightly in place, plunging hard and fast, gasping raw, heated sex words that made me crazed with desire. “I’ve never been so hard and thick. I’m so deep in you . . . I can feel it against my stomach . . . feel my dick pounding into you.”
Sex words. Not just any words, y’all, sex words. “I’ve never been so hard and thick,” oh come on, what man would ever say that aloud? It’s how you might describe someone’s penis in erotica, but I just can’t imagine someone actually saying that in complete seriousness. Then Gideon gives Eva a voice-activated orgasm, and he finishes as well. Pretty standard for these books.
Gideon heads to the shower, and Eva notices the drawer next to the bed is stocked with everything you might need for a quick, sexy encounter. Then she realizes it was kind of weird Gideon knew this room was unoccupied. She realizes quickly that it’s his room. How dare he keep sexual supplies in his room and have had sex there before! The bastard!
Eva thinks about what she learned in therapy about talking about triggers of negative feelings and working through them, but she says that the mind-blowing sex and the depth of her feelings prevent her from doing this (I’m not sure how the mind-blowing sex factors in…and also where is this depth coming from exactly?) She throws all the sexy items down onto the bed and just leaves. Dramaaaa!
“Eva thinks about what she learned in therapy about talking about triggers of negative feelings and working through them”
My favorite part of this is that we still haven’t officially been told what the therapy was for, despite it being glaringly obvious.
She (Sylvia Day) is just doing this so wrong. The book “The Giver” did something like this with what they called…release, I think? Something they did with problem babies.
In “The Giver”, which I didn’t even really like that much (same themes as “Brave New World”, but not nearly as interesting), they kept referring to babies being “released”. It was really, really obvious what it was the entire time. The reason it worked, and it DID work very well, was that the concept was so horrible that the entire time subconsciously you’re really hoping you’re wrong. Then when the reveal finally occurs it’s what you’ve been afraid of the entire time, and it’s like a punch to the gut.
This isn’t quite the same, but a similar principle should apply. Instead of talking as if the reader already knows she’s been raped, Eva should be making references to it. Instead of, “My therapist told me this would be a bad idea” it should probably have already established, directly, not through Eva acting as if we already know that something horrible happened in her past, that something horrible has happened in her past. Then with this in mind her issues can slowly point more and more to the idea that she was, at one point, raped.
If “The Giver” was like this book, then references to release would be something like, “Of course, everybody knows “release” is horrible.” Uh, no, actually, we don’t know that at all, thanks.
She just doesn’t know what she’s trying to do.
Maybe it’s just me, but that top does sound a little revealing for the gym. A triangle with straps? it sounds like a bandanna tied upside down. As a someone with big boobs, the description of that top does not sound supportive at all, unless maybe the straps wrapped around somehow? I would not be comfortable with someone wearing that to the gym. Maybe it covers more than I’m thinking?
I just hate that he feels like he has any right to tell her off for it and say he has to be at the gym with her at all times. The men in these books are the worst!
totally 100% agree. These guys are assholes, and part of the reason why women date assholes and why men act like assholes. I actually just had a conversation about this at work, because someone commented how lovely my husband was because he went grocery shopping and was making dinner (he gets home an hour and a half before me), and how there were no nice guys left.
Considering I already take stick from my mother about my clothing choices, the last person I will let that slide with is the person who’s supposed to love me and all that shizz (I assume that’s standard behaviour if it’s my boyfriend). So as soon as he tells me that my outfit is too revealing, that my style of dancing is too provocative, that anything has to change because it’s too whatever, then I’m outtie. Who the hell did he think he fell for? A nun Barbie doll?
I know! These books just keep alive the myth that we want jerks…we want nice guys who are assertive enough to ask us out or be honest about their feelings.
Whoops–that was meant to be a reply to Ali above.
Nessie– I agree! I’m open to advice from my SO but at the same time there’s definitely a line. I guess all men in these books just want nun barbie dolls? It’s unclear.
I also intensely dislike the Over-Tell with the “Don’t burn off too much energy,” I whispered. “I want you missionary style the first time. I’ve been having this fantasy of you on top, banging the hell out of me.”
Was all of that really necessary? why not just say the first part and something about a fantasy you can’t wait to play out in real life?
Yeah that part was almost great except the “banging the hell out of me” just is so off-putting for some reason to me.
Haha it’s fine, I’m not sure this is going to reply to your comment in the right place either, if I’m honest. If the readership weren’t growing so rapidly and these books weren’t accepted by those readers without critical thinking, I would just laugh about how silly and unrealistic the “perfection” of the described relationships are.
“She asks Gideon to stop, and he’s like, “No, you’re going to come one more time.”
Okay. This is rape. This would be uncomfortable and probably scary for anyone. But we are supposed to believe that Eva is a rape or sexual assault victim and she doesn’t get triggered and scared and absolutely completely turned of by this???? That makes no sense. Day can’t go on about how sexual assault hits close to home for Eva and have her think that having Gideon not stop when she tells him to would be sexy. or okay. ever.
Just like 50 shades, their male lead is assaulting eva/ana and they don’t notice. Worse, day/james doesn’t ever acknowledge that it is assault and instead writes it as if it were sexy, and readers are actually thinking this type of behavior is sexy and ok. i hate everything.
These are basically our biggest complaints about these books. Sylvia Day especially does a bad job not realizing how offensive she’s being.
Scummy said exactly what I was going to say but I’m so angry about it I’m just going to say it again: she asks him to stop and he says no? And this is a turn on? So many of these books tell you if he’s hot enough and rich enough that his behavior is not rape or abuse or whatever and, much like scummy, I hate everything!
And really, you have a fantasy about missionary style sex? Doesn’t that just mean you want to have sex? At the risk of discussing my sexual proclivities on these here interwebs, I don’t think a fantasy about missionary sex is very risqué. But maybe that’s just me.
And that whole scene at the gym with the trainer. Shouldn’t he WANT the trainers at his gym to do their jobs by getting people to sign up for those damn personal training sessions? Instead of playing the role of possessive, self important douchebag?
Sorry, sometimes I still try to be logical about these things.
Anyway, you guys have done an excellent job of making me fucking hate this book, that was only barely on my radar. So, kudos!