seriously romantic: dirty girl duet by meghan march

the dirty girl duet is a spin-off to march's dirty billionaire trilogy, with greer karas, creighton's younger half-sister as our female lead. a more spineless, pushover of a heroine cannot exist somewhere, right? because greer is a ninny. allegedly, she is an attorney and is a capable human adult good at her job. except we see no evidence of this throughout the 500 pages of this two-part story. the story kicks off when greer posts an improper ad on craigslist after catching her idiot ex cheating on her. she posts using her real name, because her hidden motive is to reconnect with the guy that got away, cavanaugh westman.

cav is now a hotshot movie star. except he's also a misogynistic, violent asshole with a super sketchy criminal past and who acts unforgivably on multiple occasions in this story. the fact that greer keeps excusing him, forgiving him, and brushing off his, quite frankly, abusive behavior is beyond me.

it's all supposed to be alpha male stuff, but the things that cav does to isolate and terrify greer on several occasions are not okay. there is actually a scene where he binds and gags her while she is asleep and then tosses her into a duffel bag without revealing his identity at all to her at any point during the process. she thinks she's being sold into sexual slavery. he sort of admits that maybe he crossed a line. after that moment i could barely finish this duology.

making light of human trafficking isn't easy to brush off, terrorizing someone so deeply and excusing it as having been done in the name of love doesn't make things okay. we're supposed to buy that cav loves greer, but all i got from the novels is that he is a sociopath and she is a moron for being with him. i kept hoping that there would be some way to redeem cav, but there is nothing there. for every moment you'd think, maybe he isn't so bad, you'd learn something new about him and think, oh yes he is.

there's a lot of sex in this story, which is the only reason this is a duology because otherwise this could have very well been one book. the only saving grace is that this book will lead to banner and logan's story told in the real duet. having that as my prize at the end of this reading experience was the only way i was able to get through it.