Uncivilized by Sawyer Bennett

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Title: Uncivilized
Author: Sawyer Bennett
Series: Uncivilized #1
Published by: Indie
Release Date: September 8, 2014
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 380
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Erotica
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 #LetsReadIndie Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Beat the Backlist Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:

Blurb:

Savage man, loner, warrior… I am dangerous at my core. I have lived amidst the untamed wild of the rainforest, in a society that reveres me and where every woman falls before me in subjugation.

Now I’ve been discovered. Forced to return to a world that I have forgotten about and to a culture that is only vaguely familiar to my senses.

Dr. Moira Reed is an anthropologist who has been hired to help me transition back into modern society. It’s her job to smooth away my rough edges… to teach me how to navigate properly through this new life of mine. She wants to tame me.

She’ll never win.

I am wild, free and raw, and the only thing I want from the beautiful Moira Reed is her submission.

She wants it, I am certain.

I will give it to her soon.

Yes, very soon, I will become the teacher and she will become my student. And when I am finished showing her body pleasure like no other, she’ll know what it feels like to be claimed by an uncivilized man.

My Review:

3.5 stars — Well, I can honestly say this was not what I was expecting…  I was expecting a more straight up erotica, but we really got a lot more depth in this story.  And I think it made for a better story in the end.  But at the same time I seem to still be plagued by distraction while reading, so I had a hard time staying absorbed.  Not sure if it was the book, b/c I have lots of good things to say, or just the mood I’m in…I’ll likely give the book the benefit of the doubt and round up.

I was actually really interested watching Zach adjust to “the modern world”, and deal with his expanding feelings for Moira…especially when it seems like romantic love was not a concept that his tribe subscribed to.  His journey throughout the story kind of fascinated me.  Now, I’m not sure how realistic it all was…sometimes I would wonder at how he knew some things but didn’t know others, but I decided not to overthink it and just enjoy the story for what it was without getting wrapped up in the details.  There were times I wasn’t sure I would like his character.  He…well, I don’t know.  He’s exactly as the title suggests, but part of this “uncivilized nature” is that he’s been instilled with, almost, a different set of values.  I was a bit uncomfortable with the sexual roles of men and women in his tribe.  It’s kind of a difficult thing to read about as someone from a Western world.  It made me think about consent, if nothing else.  And he teetered on this line with Moira as well.  Now, obviously, we know she did consent from being inside her head…but the way a few of their encounters played out were on the line.  The thing I appreciate about actual BDSM (if it’s done right, as far as I understand it), is that there is clear, written consent, things are agreed upon beforehand, and there is a manner to stop things.  That’s not what happened in this book.  I don’t have bad feelings, it just made me think is all.  And that kind of went off on a tangent, whoops.

Anyways, my heart did hurt for Zach watching him struggle with his past and all the feelings that coming back to the US brought out in him.  I enjoyed the fact that his story was more than just the sex and romance…we explored what his role in modern society would be, and how he would feel value.  I found that interesting.  I also really appreciated Zach’s changing relationship with Randall.  It could have gone black and white, but Randall was truly an interesting character in his own right.

I actually really liked Moira as well, even as she contributed to my heavy thinking about the consent issue.  She seemed genuinely caring and empathetic towards Zach’s situation, and tried really hard not to push her own desires on to him, but to try to see his journey from his perspective.  And she could be feisty and give as good as she got when pushed.

As for their relationship…it was kind of a fun ride, b/c it started out heavily in lust, and we did actually get to see feelings develop on both sides.  I felt those feelings, I believed them.  I’m usually not one for sex without emotions, so I enjoyed their later encounters more than their initial ones.

All in all this book made me think, I just might not have been quite in the right frame of mind to enjoy it to its fullest.