I always feel a bizarre need to defend myself when I read New adult or
romance, I don’t know why. I bought this because it was like a dollar on
Amazon. Whatever. I’m just going to work on my own pretentiousness and stop
defending what I read. So I read Prick, by Sabrina Paige.
The book
This is about Katherine Harris and Caulter Sterling. They went to the
same boarding school where Kate was the preppy, smart, virginal, straight-A,
valedictorian Senator’s daughter and Caulter the manwhore, drinking,
philandering son of a movie star. To get rid of her pesky virginity Katherine
hooked up with Caulter at the end of senior year, because he will fuck anyone
he sees, and really wanted her. Then they go home after graduation and discover
they’re going to be stepsiblings. Yeah. And they despise each other, but are
very turned on by each other, and angry sex ensues.
Thoughts
Before I say anything else, Caulter is the stupidest name ever. It
annoys me so much. It gave me pause every time I read it, because I’m not sure
how to say it. It’s so annoyingly stupid. That is now out of my system.
Okay, so the good. I liked the situation. It was funny that these two
people who hooked up were suddenly going to be family. Obviously, they’re
adults and won’t actually be siblings, but it’s still an awkward situation. I
also thought it was really funny, they have some great banter and fighting.
There is obviously a lot of sex in it, because it’s basically new adult
erotica. It was hot and rough, and I thought it was pretty well written. Also,
something I appreciated was that while Kate was a virgin when she hooked up
with Caulter she wasn’t completely ignorant in the ways of sex, she was on
birth control, she masturbated and had a vibrator, so it didn’t fall into the
trope I worried it would fall into. She was a bit naïve and unsure, but she was
still in control of her own sexuality. She also gave back whenever Caulter was
a suggestive, gross prick, she parried him and was cool.
The not so good; Caulter is very stereotypical badboy manwhore. It was
almost ridiculous. He clearly enjoyed making Kate uncomfortable with his nudity
and suggestive jokes, and it was to the point that it was ridiculous. Like
these things would never happen. Unless you live in a porno.
My biggest gripe is that the way the book handled consent was not great.
When Caulter and Kate spend time alone together and he wants to have sex with
her he just takes control and overrules her. I should say, she never expresses
that she is being violated by him, but she does say “no, we shouldn’t” and he
still fingers her for instance. She does want to have sex with him, and I think
that if she freaked out and cried he would have stopped. But I really don’t
like the trope that even if girls say no they still want to have sex and you
just have to ply her with digital or oral stimulation and that pesky consent
doesn’t matter. She says no and Caulter doesn’t respect it, and while, as I say,
she doesn’t seem to find this to be a violation, he just sees it as foreplay,
and that is just not okay. Also, Kate pretty much forces Caulter to have sex
without a condom, which is also NOT OKAY. He wants to use a condom, and she’s
just like, no we don’t need that, buddy, I’m on birth control, you want this,
you know it. Seriously, Kate and Caulter need to have a serious conversation on
consent and boundaries.
Finally
While I liked a lot of it, I liked Kate for the most part, she was
snarky and funny, and whatever. That's a ringing endorsement. Caulter has a stupid name and is a bit too
stereotypical for it to be okay. The consent issue really bothers me. So those
were the thoughts I had. And now I’m done.
