The first book to kick start my ‘Bookworm Sab‘ challenge is ‘Texting Dr Stalker’ by Pepper Winters (dark romance author).

I consider myself a fan of Pepper’s books, having first been introduced to dark romance through her ‘Monsters in the Dark’ series all the way through to her ‘Goddess Isles’ series, so when this book was promoted at a ‘green flag stalker contemporary romance’ I was intrigued and curious (mostly curious) on how this would be.

The plot of this book is about a doctor (Zander) who has always been in love with his childhood neighbour (Sailor), who has just survived being murdered by her abusive boyfriend. In an attempt to keep Sailor safe and as a comfort, Zander uses a burner phone to contact Sailor under an alter ego he names ‘X’.

At first I enjoyed the chemistry but as I progressed and saw Zander’s best friend, Colin, play the role of instigator, I felt really annoyed at how often Zander relies on Colin’s opinion and decision making.

It gets to a point where Colin gives Zander the tools to have a disguise, which Zander uses solely for the purpose of being closer to Sailor, and of course, they end up falling in love.

The red flags flared when Sailor asks X to sleep with her as a means of liberating her from the trauma she suffered. I was pleased to see Zander/X refuse this request, but when Sailor continuously asks him to the point of coercion and provocation it pissed me off.

Zander respects every one of Sailor’s boundaries but she’s so dismissive of his. It made me uncomfortable that he agreed to engaging in sexual activities, even having sex, with her, all while under disguise.

It went downhill when the big reveal happened in a really unsatisfying way, with Colin once more being involved. It felt very unclimatic, and disspointing.

While Sailor gets overly attached to X, she grows more distant with Zander (associating him with the reason her ex tried to kill her to begin with). Even though she tries her best to open up to Zander, we can clearly see she prefers X and because of this, she treas Zander as less. It broke my heart and was hard to read. It’s only when X decides to leave her, does she turn her sights on Zander (which annoyed me).

Pulling away from the plot for a moment, I found the use of British and American English jarring. It pulled me out of the plot and the characters.

Even though we eventually get our HEA (Happily-Ever-After), I’m not entirely happy with how we got there. I give this 3 stars.

I didn’t hate it…I just feel it could have been a lot better if Colin hadn’t been involved and Sailor’s character hadn’t been depicted as needy, desperate and manipulative in the end.