“Dex was a temperamental bag of beaver dung.”īut holy hell, she held a grudge for fucking ever!!!! Once Dex realized he was a douchecanoe, he tried apologizing over and over again and she wouldn’t have it. But you know, something he could get medicine for.” “The snot-faced asshole that I only kind-of, sort-of hoped came down with an infectious illness in his private parts.

I really liked Iris’s inner thoughts about the dickish Dex when she met him and overheard him saying some not-so-nice things. But I am in my late 40s, maybe that’s why. Now it sounds like I hated it, right? I didn’t! I enjoyed a lot of it, it just all felt so….immature. It’s like every popular theme was rolled into one book. It really dragged for me at times.Īnd there were too many common themes competing with each other. Kristen Ashley is also highly descriptive and it works for her, in Under Locke, it felt like too much unnecessary detail and not enough story. While the main characters I think are mid twenties and early thirties, it felt like they were much, much younger, and the narration, while good, sounded crazy young too. The thing I love about Kristen Ashley is the maturity of her stories, and to me, Under Locke felt like a young adult/new adult attempt at a KA book. It’s been compared to Kristen Ashley a lot. I don’t mean to be snarky, I just found this to read like a YA book. Her loser deadbeat dad was in the MC, so she grew up around it, yet somehow she is in her 20s, sweet and innocent and doesn’t curse, doesn’t know how gorgeous she is and yup….she’s a virgin. She left a really bad life behind and needs a new start. Iris (‘Ritz’) just moved from Florida to Austin to live with her half brother. They are in a club, but never at a club, they run a tattoo shop.

But Under Locke didn’t really have the grittiness, nor was it really an MC book.

I do like the grittiness of most MC books I have read though, they are a nice break from the plethora of romcoms out now.

I don’t mind them, but some do run together a bit in my head. I have read and loved a few MC series, but feel like the 3-4 series have read are enough. So when I saw this was out in audio (16+ hours!), I grabbed it. But at over 800 pages, this wasn’t a book I could just squeeze in. Under Locke by Mariana Zapata has been on my radar since it released. Under Locke by Mariana Zapata Narrated by Callie Dalton Standalone New Adult Romance