Stroke of Midnight by K Webster is the first book in the Cinderella series. Romance enthusiasts seeking a steamy, fast paced tale featuring the following tropes:
1 Forbidden Love
2 Age gap relationship
3 BDSM
will find this installment me right up their alley
Title: Stroke of Midnight
Author(s): K. Webster
Series: Cinderella #1
Published by Dangerous Press on October 27, 2020
Pages: 296
Genre(s): Dark Romance, Erotic Romance
Source: Purchase
Format: eBook
Purchase: Amazon|Audible
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A Cinderella Novel
Money can buy anything. And anyone. As the head of the Constantine family, I’m used to people bowing to my will. Cruel, rigid, unyielding—I’m all those things. When I discover the one woman who doesn’t wither under my gaze, but instead smiles right back at me, I’m intrigued.
Ash Elliott needs cash, and I make her trade in crudeness and degradation for it. I crave her tears, her moans. I pay for each one. And every time, she comes back for more. When she challenges me with an offer of her own, I have to decide if I’m willing to give her far more than cold hard cash.
But love can have deadly consequences when it comes from a Constantine. At the stroke of midnight, that choice may be lost for both of us.
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I picked up “Stroke of Midnight” because it was promoted as a Cinderella retelling and came highly recommended. However, it wasn’t at all what I expected. While I enjoy age-gap romance, this one didn’t sit well with me. The heroine had just turned eighteen, while the hero was thirty-six years old. What made it even more bizarre was the suggestion that the hero would have pursued the heroine even if she were under eighteen. The story also includes elements of humiliation kink, which led to several uncomfortable reading moments. While some readers may find this enjoyable, it is certainly not to my taste.
The heroine, Ash needs money to pay for college. Her father used up her college fund to impress his new wife. She gets a job as an office cleaner. However, she infuriates, Winston Constantine, the CEO, of one of the offices she was assigned to clean with her failure to perform the job effectively. Winston is a ruthless billionaire who takes crap from no one. One look at Ash and he starts thinking of ways to keep her around. Ash needing the money agrees to the humiliation and kink. But then the unthinkable happens, feelings began to develop.
As this is the first book in a trilogy, Stroke of Midnight ended on a cliffhanger. Now while not a fan of the tropes featured, I found the story engaging. You know when you see an accident about to happen, but for some strange reason you can’t look away from the disaster? Well, that’s what Stroke at Midnight did to me. Granted I skipped over the kinky scenes. It made me curious to know how things would play out for the characters, especially as it relates to Ash’s evil stepbrothers and Winston’s nemesis.
Several other things in this book may not appeal to readers who are triggered by sexual abuse. However, for those who have no issue, I say go for it. Now while I didn’t like the tropes, I am curious to learn how everything will go down, so I may check out the sequel.
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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
