ARC review: Beware of Me (Dark Obsession, #4) by Cynthia Eden

3 stars! ***

Author: Cynthia Eden

Title: Beware of Me (Dark Obsession, #4)

Walk on the wild side with New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Cynthia Eden's dark new romantic suspense, BEWARE OF ME.

Criminal. Killer. Monster. Ethan Barclay has been called many things in life, and he usually doesn't care what people say about him. He's tough, hard, and brutal when he needs to be. But even the most dangerous of men can have a weakness. Ethan's weakness has--and always will be--Carly Shay.

Their pasts are tied together--twisted and melded by blood and death. Walking away from Carly was the hardest thing that Ethan ever did, but it was also his one good deed. He knew Carly deserved far better than him, and he wanted her to have a perfect life, a life that didn't involve paying for Ethan's sins.

Only now the secrets from their past have been revealed, and Carly's life is on the line. Ethan's enemies, Carly's enemies--the predators are closing in on them. But Ethan isn't going to let Carly be threatened. He will move heaven and hell to protect her. He won't lose Carly, not again, and for those foolish enough to try and take her from him...they are about to see just how deadly Ethan truly can be.

Beware of Me is a fourth book in the Dark Obsession series. I read only this one and it can be read as a stand-alone. There were few details missing which wasn't particulary confusing, but it made reading a bit more.. challenging.

Carly has deep, dark, twisted secrets. Those came back to haunt her couple of years later. She was involved in a murder in order to save the man she loves but many people want her dead now. And they aren't afraid of using guns, bombs and any other painful mean to hurt her.

Ethan has left the woman he loved go, because he felt that she'd be safer without him. But they found her. He comes back - to win her back, to protect her.

If it only were that simple. Carly is furious with him and doesn't want him around. She'd killed for him and he droped her like a hot potato. She stands her ground for a day max (if I had to guess, it took her circa thirty pages to let him back in).

It gets more complicated. People disappear and appear again - well, at least some of them. Everyone is against everyone and they just want to stay alive for another day.

This book was too much. There was too much drama, too much blood, too much abducting, too much guns, too much policemans ignoring law, too much criminals, too much twists, too much going round and round and roud, too much thinking it's already over when it wasn't even in half.

I wasn't impressed with the book. I wasn't annoyed or disgusted by it either. But I'll probably forget what it was about in an hour.

That's probably the result of writing way too many books. Cynthia Eden wrote over fifty books in maybe ten years? That's five books per year which let's be honest is too much. Those books can't be all good. Maybe the first ones, but now? It was mild, not original, shallow.

I think it was written the same way a student writes his papers - he starts a day before it has to be turned in and writes every thing that comes to his mind, just so that it has enough words or pages. It's passable but just not excellent. It doesn't stick with you, it doesn't plant roots in your head. It just.. is.