Review: Keep Me Safe by Maya Banks

Our hero Caleb did something horrific to her, and she is never even mad. In fact I think I’ll spoil this , because it needs to be talked about.

The ending was so abrupt that with the amount of damage done to Caleb and Ramie, I have a really hard time accepting that as a Happily Ever After, or even a Happily for now. They need therapy. Years and years of therapy. His love is not enough to fix what’s wrong with her, and her forgiveness is not enough to rid him of what he did, let alone what the sociopath villain forced him to do.

I’m also over this author creating weak heroines. This is the second recent book where the heroine is so weak that the hero literally takes over running her life.

Now his family. My God, his family. What a bunch of dicks.

About 5 pages from the end, I DNF’d the book because of something one of his brothers said. Of course, once I cooled off, I finished it, but it wasn’t worth it. This is a book that starts of forcefully and catches you up in the plot, only to have horrible things ruin what could have been a 5 star romantic suspense. We’re left with a 1 star wanna be thriller. There is no romance at all. Whatsoever. A random dude who takes care of you and begins to run your life is not romance. There was no instalust to help this along and I truly felt the sex was completely inappropriate. (I’m so disgusted I can’t even make an inappropriate sex joke right now). Basically, when you’re traumatized and the hero knows you’re traumatized, the last thing you need is sex. Ugh. All hail the magic peen. She will be healed through sex. Blergh. I’m done for now.

SPOILERS AHEAD

So Ramie can psychically connect with someone, right? Well, she used to help the police track down kidnap victims. She’s trying to recover from her last case alone in a cabin in the mountains. Caleb hunts her down. He accuses her of being selfish by not sharing her gift with the world. He shoves his sister’s scarf into Ramie’s hands, and she’s instantly connected to Tori. Right as Tori is raped.

Ramie’s body shows all signs of everything she and Tori go through. For example, Tori is slapped, and Ramie’s head jerks to the side from the blow. She feels it too, she has a hand print on her face too. During this, Caleb realizes what he’s put Ramie through and feels sick, but when he sees her body realizes he’s watching her/his sister get raped, he can’t believe he put her through this. BUT it’s emphasized over and over and over that he hates himself for it, but he’d do it again.

OK, so as soon as she tells him where to find his sister, he calls his brothers and the cops and his sister is found. But he leaves Ramie curled in the fetal position, alone in the mountains, and says he’ll come back. Meanwhile, he basically caused her to go through a rape and he’s just like bailing on her.
During this past year, Ramie was hiding from a stalker. She goes on the run. She eventually contacts Caleb after a year and says “You owe me.” he’s near obsessed with her and comes and saves her and takes her to his house. She’s never mad at him. She is just like “Oh I understand. Of course you had to do that to me, you wanted your sister back.” At least a small part of her should be mad.

The next big thing is that the killer establishes a psychic link with Caleb and has him cut Ramie up. Like torture. Nearly to death.
And the ending happens in less than 10 pages. You can’t just have “I love yous” after that and have it end. Like it was no big thing. There needed to be a lot more afterwards. Therapy, more showing them healing, showing them trying to deal with the PTSD. I mean, how is an alpha male hero going to deal afterwards when he’s been forced to carve into the very fragile love interest? He literally tortured her. She nearly bled to death. The bad guy got inside his head and forced him to hurt the woman he loves. Seriously, how does he come back from that? Certainly not with “I love you, let’s move on.”

Short review for the tl; dr :

Big fat nope.

***ARC courtesy of William Morrow