We Still Don’t Know What Eva’s Deal Is: Bared To You Chapter Eleven

Eva discovers that her relationship with Gideon now constitutes celebrity gossip, and this bothers her. We have no idea why.

(We’re also experimenting with some new ad stuff here, and, honestly, it looks like a mess right now and I’m talking to people about fixing it. Thanks for bearing with us! Okay, let’s make fun of shit.)

Chapter Eleven

Now, when we say this bothers her, Eva uses words like “alarmed” and “painful”.

Anonymity was my friend. It protected me from my past. It protected my family from embarrassment, and Gideon, too.

Oh, okay! She has problems with the exposure because of her past!  Guess we’re never going to learn about it then because there’s a significant part of Eva’s character and the plot that Sylvia Day refuses to share with us.

Eva doesn’t want to upset Gideon, but he can totally tell she’s upset. It turns out that Gideon had semi-staged the paparazzi shot and the PR response so there wouldn’t be any bad news that put Eva in a scandalous light. Which is sort of nice of him actually?

“Why? Why would you do that?”
“You have your way of dealing with jealousy and I have mine. We’re both off the market and now everyone knows it.”

Almost sort of nice?

Eva meets Cary for lunch. Cary tries to calm her down about the publicity, and Eva talks about her secret. Secretly.

“Reporters are going to dig, Cary, and they’re going to find dirt. And since it’s juicy dirt, they’re going to splash it all over hell and back, and it’s going to embarrass Gideon.”

Once again, Eva only seems to care about the significance of her past (whatever the fuck it is) insofar as how it inconveniences other people. Has her therapist ever talked to her about this? Because they really really should.

“Baby girl.” He set his hand over mine. “Stanton buried all that.”
[…] Still . . . “I’ll have to talk to Gideon about it. He has a right to be warned.”
Just the thought of that conversation made me miserable.

Does this mean we’ll finally get to learn her back story? Probably not. We’re too far into the book to learn it now, so Day’s probably saving this revelation for the third act, which sucks, because it’s kind of integral to the entire damn plot because it’s actually what’s been driving everything.

Moving the plot along, Eva gives Gideon a blow job. Things get… scientific?

I gripped his straining thighs in both hands, frantically working my lips and tongue, desperate for his climax. His balls were heavy and big, an audacious display of his powerful virility.

Usually Day is way, way better at the sex scenes than James is, but the tone is kind of off here, and it really throws off the eroticism of the whole section. Do we particularly care about the degree of his procreative abilities? Like… okay, here’s the same excerpt, but I rewrote it so it’s about oral sex being performed on a female to oral sex instead of on a male.

I caressed her straining thighs, slowly moving upwards while frantically working my tongue, desperate for her climax. Her hips were firm and wide, an audacious display of her powerful child-bearing potential.

God, I hope my parents don’t read the blog today.

“Eva, you suck me so good.”

So “well”. Goddammit, it’s not “good”, it’s “well”. You do adverb-well, you can’t do adjective-good, unless your actions actually provide some benefit to society and provide noun-good, but somehow I don’t think this is the case here.

Gideon feels bad because he didn’t get Eva off too, but Eva explains that she just wanted to do it for Gideon and didn’t expect anything in return.

“I’m not keeping score with you, ace. And honestly, you’re the first guy I can say that to.”

Which is probably good personal growth for her, but we wouldn’t really know since Sylvia Day is keeping Eva’s past such a secret, now do we? Kind of robs us of, you know, the entire point of her saying that.

Eva goes home after work and calls her mom. You may remember the subplot where Eva’s mom had been tracking Eva’s location via her cell phone, so Eva replaced it and suggested they both go to therapy together. Which sounds promising, but it’s almost certainly just going to either be 1) more secretive discussion of Eva’s secret past and the reader will have no idea what they’re talking about, like most of this book, or 2) finally, actually revelatory about Eva’s secret past, which would be really lame if this subplot brings out information key to the plot. So it’s actually a bit of a lose-lose.

Eva third-wheels Cary and Trey’s date night. Yeah, remember how Cary was seeing a guy named Trey? And hooked up with someone at the fancy reception? And keeps talking about how good Trey is for him?

Trey seemed more grounded; not quite somber, but definitely not flighty. I thought he’d be a good influence on Cary, if they stayed together long enough.

Yayyy promiscuous gay man stereotypes! Hahaaaa… I’m kind of less sympathetic towards Cary now.

Gideon shows up and does his best Christian Grey impression. Or actually just copies his usual dialogue.

“You’re so soft and warm. Mine, Eva. You’re mine.”

And Eva is MAYBE FALLING FOR GIDEON who saw that coming?

But Is It Better Than Fifty Shades of Grey?

When we were halfway through Fifty Shades of Grey, we had learned what Christian’s secret was and so now fully understood the central conflict, so the rest of the novel could be about resolving it. Halfway through Bared To You, we don’t know what Eva’s secret is, have no idea what the central conflict is, and now the rest of the novel is about waiting to find out why any of it is happening in the first place, and not even in a cool post-modernist way. We literally have no idea why the plot is progressing. Or something.

The Winner This Round: Fifty Shades of Grey