I was folding laundry at 2 PM on my day off — which for a night shift person is basically midnight energy — when I decided I needed something trashy and fun to keep me awake through the mountain of tiny socks my kids generate. Desperate Measures seemed like a solid candidate. Dark retelling, a villain named Jafar, a woman trapped in a power game, dual narrators. Sign me up.
Here's the thing. I got exactly what I ordered. And maybe that's the problem.
The Jafar of It All
Look, I knew going in this wasn't going to be a medical thriller. I knew there wouldn't be defibrillator scenes for me to yell about. What I expected was the "Mystery & Thriller" tag to mean... something? Some actual tension beyond "will she sleep with him again?" (Spoiler: yes. Many times. In creative configurations.) The power dynamics between Jafar and Amelia are supposed to carry the suspense. And they do, for about the first two hours. Then you realize the pattern: rule, break rule, punishment (sexy), repeat.
The daddy-kink element is HEAVY. And I mean heavy. I'm not clutching pearls here — I've heard worse things shouted in my ER on a Saturday night — but if "daddy/baby girl" talk isn't your thing, this book will test you approximately every fifteen minutes. You've been warned. My only regret is that I was folding my seven-year-old's Spider-Man shirts while listening to some of these scenes. Context matters, people. If I'm being honest, Flipped is the only book on my Audible that feels safe around my kid — no daddy kink, just wholesome hand-holding and old-fashioned pining.
Lessa Lamb Carries This Thing on Her Back
Lessa Lamb as Amelia? She does the work. You get the fierceness and the vulnerability in her voice, and she sells the internal conflict of a woman who's furious about her situation but also... not entirely hating it. That's a hard line to walk in audio, and Lamb walks it well. Her voice shifts from defiant to breathless to genuinely conflicted, and you buy all of it.
Jack Calihan as the male lead. Okay. So. I understand why opinions are split because I went back and forth myself. His voice for this character felt off to me — like he was cast for a different kind of book entirely. There were moments early on where the "commanding, dangerous villain" voice came across more like a guy doing a bit at a dinner party. I didn't laugh out loud like some listeners apparently did, but I raised an eyebrow at my laundry basket more than once. By the midpoint I'd adjusted, but those first impressions are hard to shake in audio. When you need to believe this man is dangerous enough to own another person AND sexy enough to make her okay with it, the voice has to sell BOTH. He got about halfway there.
When the Cage Is More Interesting Than the Key
The premise is genuinely good. Woman loses everything, makes a desperate bargain with a powerful man, ends up trapped in a luxurious prison where the rules keep shifting. That's solid dark romance setup. Katee Robert knows how to build a world where consent gets complicated in interesting ways — the "I chose this but also didn't really choose this" tension is real and she handles it with more care than you might expect.
But the plot beyond the bedroom is thin. Like, night-shift-vending-machine-sandwich thin. There's supposedly a larger game being played with power and money and betrayal, and I kept waiting for those threads to tighten into something that would make me grip my steering wheel — or in this case, a fitted sheet. They never quite did. The "thriller" elements feel like set dressing for the next intimate scene rather than a story engine in their own right.
At 7 hours 41 minutes, it doesn't overstay its welcome, which works in its favor. But I finished feeling like I'd eaten dessert for dinner — satisfying in the moment, hungry an hour later. I had a similar sugar-rush crash with Afterburn & Aftershock — two novellas that deliver plenty of heat but leave you reaching for something with more substance.
Who Should Actually Hit Play
If you love dark romance with heavy kink, explicit content, and power-exchange dynamics — and you don't mind that the plot is essentially a vehicle for those scenes — you'll probably enjoy this. It's the first in Robert's Wicked Villains series, and her fans seem to love where it goes from here. I got a similar blend of steam and actual stakes in Neon Gods, where the dark retelling doesn't coast on sex scenes alone.
If you're coming for the "Mystery & Thriller" tag expecting actual mystery or thriller pacing? Baby, no. (And I mean that in the non-kink way.)
Carlos would never in a million years listen to this. My mom would disown me. My night shift coworkers would absolutely pass this around on a shared account and I am not confirming or denying that has happened with other books.
Chart Complete, Patient Stable but Unremarkable
Decent dark romance carried hard by Lessa Lamb's narration, undermined by a polarizing male narrator and a plot that needed more bones. Not bad for laundry-folding entertainment on a day off. Not something I'd burn a credit on when there are better dark romances with narrators who match their characters.
