Desperate Measures by Katee Robert
When Jafar finally makes a power move, it’s Jasmine who is left spinning in the middle. She doesn’t have an ounce of power and is simply a symbol of who owns her father’s territory. All Jasmine has ever wanted is her freedom, and she gambled that away when she accepted Jafar’s offer… and lost. Now she’s trapped in a new situation while looking for a way out. The only problem? Every day she spends with Jafar is another day she falls deeper and deeper in love with him. Now she’s left deciding what is more important: her freedom or her heart.
I have been loving Katee’s writing, so when I saw she has a book following Captain Hook, I knew I had to start the series it came from. Since this is a spin-off series of sorts, I knew I needed to start the series in order. That had me reading about Jasmine and Jafar’s unlikely romance. The twist in the coupling caught my eye, so I was excited to start this! Unfortunately for me, this one is mostly a miss for me.
It was exciting to follow Jasmine and Jafar in this world that is very different from the different versions I’ve seen of the source material. Jasmine is an independent and strong character who knows what she wants while never being allowed to control anything in her life. She’s been extremely sheltered by her father, who has never allowed her to leave home. The only thing about this is that the details about her life seemed pretty conflicting to me. On one hand, her dad has controlled everything part of life and she’s never had access to anything he didn’t allow. On the other hand, she was somehow sneaking romance novels and adult toys past her dad and his men who were all keeping a close eye on her. It just didn’t make sense to me how so much of this even worked without her ever getting caught.
Then we have Jafar. He’s calm, collected, and extremely dangerous. I feel like we were being told a lot about how dangerous he was without really actually seeing that side of him. I do think he made for an interesting character, but there was just a lack of character building with him for me. Even now, I couldn’t tell you much about his character in this world other than he’s smart, calculated about his appearance, and very much in love with Jasmine. Most of what we learn about him is how he views and feels about Jasmine while we never learned much about his past and what makes him tick outside of love.
However, there’s an excellent cast of characters all turning up as background characters. I’m most excited about learning more about Meg and Tink, who will clearly have their own books in the future. It was also interesting to see Hades outside of the Dark Olympus series. I haven’t read the short story that ties Hades and Persephone into this series. Though, it appears that this book happens before Hades and Persephone meet, so it was interesting to see how different Hades was while he was on his own! We also got a glimpse at Captain Hook, who is the character that had me reading this book.
That said, maybe I expected too much plot for a romance book, but what can I say? I’m very spoiled by the Dark Olympus series! It’s not a bad book by any means. It’s pretty well written and will be just what a lot of people are looking for. The romance itself is pretty good, but I kept being taken straight out of the book by Jasmine and Jafar’s kinks. Calling someone “daddy” and such is not my thing at all, so there’s really only one spicy scene that was fire. If you read the book, you’ll know which one it is when you get there since mentioning which characters it’s between would be a spoiler!
All in all, this isn’t a bad book. The romance scenes kept taking me out of the story because the whole “daddy” kink is not my thing. Jasmine’s dynamic with her father and his control over her was not adding up to me, and Jafar wasn’t as developed as I would’ve liked him to be. However, it’s well written and there’s a scene that continues to support the need for a future full-length lesbian novel in one of Katee’s series. It’s entirely possible that there’s already one and I just don’t know about it yet! In the end, this book made me more excited about the Captain Hook novel all while not being pulled into this one.
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