Book 49 99 Percent Mine

 

99 Percent Mine by Sally Thorne fulfilled the “Book with Flora or Fauna in the Title” for the PopSugar 2020 Reading Challenge. This was not my first choice for the prompt. I had about a dozen. Greg Bear (sci-fi), Sherryl Woods (romance), Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility) to name a few. In the end, I read the Sally Thorne as it had been on my To-Be-Read pile for a long time. (And I wasn’t ready to read White Fragility yet. I plan to for next year’s challenge. I’m hoping to change my behavior for the better. But I digress.)

99 Percent Mine is the second book by Sally Thorne. Her first, The Hating Game, is one of the best romances I’ve ever read. I loved it from beginning to end. I’m not sure what to do with her second title.

I had some issues with the book right away. But it was hot. Like smoking hot. Like a cold shower in the afternoon hot. The novel starred a Latino hero. I’ve been crushing on a certain Latino actor from a Netflix show for months now. Guess who I saw as the hero? (Yes, David Castañeda aka Diego from The Umbrella Academy. Don’t judge. He’s in good company with my other crushes—Jensen Ackles, Evan Peters, and Benedict Cumberbatch.) I kept reading as it’s my last book on the PopSugar challenge. I wanted to finish by the end of November to prep for the next year.

Anyway… what a read.

The book is a friends-to-lovers trope about Darcy Barrett finally getting her childhood crush, Tom Valeska, and finding some stability in her own life.

But there were issues…

Race seemed to be a problem. This surprised me as the book was published in January 2019. The Barrett family definitely had some “white savior” issues. The novel discussed how all the principal characters lived in the same neighborhood. But Tom Valeska was a poor Latino boy with a single mother who the Barrett’s took in and “rescued.” Yeah, that felt kind of itchy to listen to. Both of the Barrett twins treated Tom like their personal pet, while claiming at the same time he was their friend. They claimed he was perfect and would and could do anything for them. Just ask him, he’ll do it. The overtone was one of “Tom owes us so he pays us back.” At one point, one twin calls Tom the other’s slave. It was ugly and wrong.

Other people (reviews, colleagues, friends) had issues with the heroine. She was wild, promiscuous, broken, and lost. She was vulgar and demanding. I didn’t have a problem with anything but her treatment of Tom. She wound him around her finger and treated him as less than a person. She claimed how she owned him. He was ninety-nine percent hers. She couldn’t share him with her brother, like Tom was some toy. Throughout the book, she compared Tom to a wolf. She said he wasn’t human, only animal. Tom was never like that. Not even in bed. She saw him as her pet wolf. I didn’t care for that.

So, why did I finish the book and include it on the blog? Because the sexual tension was riveting. Even with her ugly words and her family’s horrific treatment. I’m white and middle class. That may be why I could finish the story and write it up here. I also really liked Tom. He was a genuine hero, despite his treatment. He was the kind of man every woman deserves, even if her family craps on him. Well, maybe not if they treat him so poorly. Honestly, I cannot see any of my friends of color liking the book.

I concluded this novel was another 50 Shades of Grey. (Interesting, they both had a number in the title.) A hot mess, that was very hot.

I give 99 Percent Mine by Sally Thorne Three Cute Chihuahuas.