Locked Review

Who is Sebastian Lock?

The bar Sophia Pearce is in doesn’t look like much. The wine is bad and the decor worse. But when a sudden attack of curiosity leads her to sneak past security and into the back room, she discovers something unimaginable. The most lavish party she’s ever laid eyes on, in the most unlikely of places.

But that’s nothing compared to what comes next, to the man she meets back there. Sebastian Lock. Gorgeous, commanding, and radiating charm, he is exactly the sort of silver-tongued rake Sophia has sworn to avoid. Unfortunately, he doesn’t care much for her promises.

Every instinct tells her to run, but the chemistry between them is as inescapable as gravity. Soon, he’s opening her eyes to a whole new world of pleasures, pleasures she never thought she’d enjoy.

There’s just one problem. Sebastian is more than he seems. Between the famous company he keeps and the almost paranoid secrecy of his employers, he’s a puzzle Sophia can’t quite solve, and his insistence on keeping things casual forces her to confront the demons of her past.

Can she learn to trust again? Or will Sebastian’s privacy tear them apart?

I’d been meaning to read LOCKED by Maya Cross for ages and when I finally did, I forgot all about the fact that it’s a 35,000 word novella and so it only took me an hour to read.   I don’t mind short stories but to be honest, I felt short changed as a reader, especially when I realised there were more books in the series.  Why write a third of a story when you could spend time writing an entire book and publishing it all in one go?  There’s a cynical answer to this but I’m not going to go there.

The thing is, I did actually enjoy the book.  I thought it was really well written and very well edited (I did not spot one mistake at all) but ultimately I was disappointed for two reasons, one of those I’ve already explained. The second reason was a major problem I had with Sophia’s actions towards the latter half of the book.  Sophia had only met Sebastian a handful of times, usually when he turned up unexpectedly at her workplace or a social gathering she had attended and when their relationship became intimate, for me it was too much, too soon.  Sophia was blindfolded, gagged and bound by her wrists and her ankles, and it was only the second time she had been intimate with this guy.  Now, either that’s a terrifying hostage situation that nobody wants to be in, or it’s a consensual act between adults who TRUST each other, and these two just didn’t have the time to build up that kind of trust.  Sophia might be hot for Sebastian but she barely knows him and quite frankly, anything could have happened to her.  It made me think that she wasn’t just blinded by lust, but that she was stupid and that’s a real shame. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not immune to the likes of Sebastian Lock, he was charming, polite, courteous, sexy and also downright kinky!  I know attraction can take over and make you do outrageous things but I just wasn’t feeling it in this book and I think that’s because of how short the book was.  It pains me to say this but had it happened later on, it would have worked.

Having said all that, I’m still going to give the sequel LOCKOUT a go because I’m curious and I believe in giving authors a second shot.  Keep your fingers crossed.

LOCKED was published on 25th March, 2013.  To find out more about Maya Cross and her books, please click here to visit her website.