Immoral
Immoral (Jonathan Stride #1)
By: Brian Freeman
Ironically, I was shocked by the immorality in this book.
I would rate this book R for raunchy.
The first Brian Freeman book I ever read was The Night Bird (2017). And it is night and day different than this book. Apparently, at some point in the interim 12 years between this book and that one, Freeman matured and realized he didn’t need to have something sexual on every page to sell a book. Genius.
I started this Jonathan Stride series when book 8— Marathon— came out and found that one to be a really good book. I figured I should go back and read the series straight through. Immoral was so bad that I have no desire to wade through the series trying to figure out when Freeman changed his writing style. I will only be reading new books in this series from now on.
So what makes this book so bad?
To be clear, it’s not like I never read books that have swearing or some sexual innuendo. I prefer cleaner books but I realize to eliminate it completely would take out a lot of otherwise pretty good books. So I can look past mild content without giving a terrible review.
But this book was very explicit. And not just one or two pages of the book. Like literally every page.
Every single male character was a perv who cannot be in the same room with a woman and not think about sex. And every female character believed they were controlling all the men in the world by revealing or flaunting their body or sexuality. It was offensive on multiple levels— the detailed descriptions of said bodies and sex and the idea that men and women are so primal.
There is a pornographic image of the missing (17 yr old) girl (that she created) that becomes a piece of evidence and almost every time it is referenced it is given the descriptor ‘amazing’— even by our protagonist, the heroic Jonathan Stride. Regardless of the circumstances, it’s sickening to me, but to add to it that the girl is missing, presumed dead, maybe raped, and the characters are sexualizing her… who are these people?!
To top off the sexual content, there is also a hefty amount of f-words and other swearing, which is also uncalled for.
The books where I can look past some questionable content or some swearing, there is at least a very engaging plot or suspenseful writing that can overshadow the bad stuff. Unfortunately, this book didn’t even have that. I honestly would put the case at hand as secondary to the filth.
A brief synopsis, if you’ve read this far and have no idea what I’m talking about: A 17-year-old girl, Rachel, known to have questionable character and a history of manipulation, goes missing. The prime suspect being her stepfather (she may or may not be sleeping with), the secondary suspects being another teenager who has a crush on her and that guy’s girlfriend who obviously hates her for that reason. The plot is a jerking around of: did she just run away from a volatile home life and is playing games with everyone, or did foul play actually occur?
A little further than halfway through the book we have the courtroom drama as they prosecute one of the suspects. This was the best part of the book because it focused on the meat and facts of the case. But it was short-lived.
I can’t even tell you if the ending was shocking or predictable because I just wanted to be done with it and I didn’t like any of the characters. Book-8-Jonathan-Stride is a better dude, so I’m going to pretend this book is unconnected so I don’t taint his future self.
And one more note of warning: this book takes place in Duluth, MN and ends in Las Vegas where Stride ends up settling down for awhile per the summary of the next few books (titled Stripped and Stalked). So if things are this explicit in Duluth, imagine how raunchy his life/career gets when he moves to Vegas. The aforementioned book 8 (the GOOD one), he is back in Duluth. So let’s just skip the Vegas years and pretend they never happened.
So here is my recommendation: FLEE FROM THIS BOOK. And read one of Freeman’s other (newer) books! The hyperlink of his name here will take you to the other books of his I have read that all come highly recommended!
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