Review: Dark Money Love by Ace Fawn

Akira Kazama is a man that gets what he wants. A loan shark king affiliated with the yakuza, he practically runs the money game in Tokyo.

Sora Nakano wants to save his mother’s life. When he has no choice left but to take out a hefty loan for her medical bills, he becomes indebted to Akira.

For Akira, business is always strictly business. And when someone owes him money, he always collects. Except this time, he wants more than just money from Sora.

He wants his body.

They agree on an arrangement for Sora to pay off the debt, and it’s supposed to be a win-win situation for them both. But Sora never wanted to be involved with the dark, hidden side of Akira’s life, and when Sora is threatened, he must turn to Akira for help.

Will Sora save his mother and get out of this alive? Or will he spiral down the path of dark money love?

Dark Money Love is a dark m/m romance intended for mature readers only. This book contains explicit adult content, weapon use and graphic depictions of death. Reader discretion is advised.




A criminal falls in lust...and then love?

Dark Money Love is a novella about 35 year old loner loam shark Akira. He's affiliated with the yakuza and collects debt payments for them.The book literally starts off with a bang with Akira collecting from an older, desperate person. Someone is trying to get over on him and Akira seems to be apathetic. He looks through his victims and finds young, innocent Sora. He knows Sora has no way of repayment especially with the high interest fees so he plans on coercing Sora to pay with his body.

Major dubious consent going on in here, consider yourself warned. And there are BDSM elements as well. I hesitate to call it BDSM as there is no SSC or RACK agreements. :( 

 Poor Sora doesn't know what's going on a majority of the time, Akira just blurts out to pick a "safeword" and poor Sora was confuzzled. Sora is an innocent in every sense of the word. He has no home, no friends and no one to help him with his ill mother. 

We get glimpses of akira's world which seems interesting enough. Akira is kinda tsundere, he's cold but cares for just Sora, even from the beginning of their arrangement.  

The writing is competent, but it needed another edit. It's the little things that can irk my reading soul such as one character puts on a condom and then in the next paragraph he's cumming raw in his partner. Did the condom break? Vanish? Was there a switcheroo on his didgeridoo?

I think another 10-15 pages to flesh out the main characters would have gone a long way with helping Sora and Akira's burgeoning 'romance'. I hesitate to call their softer feelings for one another a romance because they didn't talk to each other as much. If they would have opened up more, I think I'd believe it more. I wanted to like this more. I'm on the fence because I like dark plots but I also like the writing to match the style it was going for.

Would I read more from the author? Maybe, if the plot is good enough. I dunno if this is previous fanfic or if the author is also a fanfic writer, but it read like it.



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