Alma Katsu - The Taker

Finished reading Alma Katsu - The Taker yesterday.
Still have no idea why i even bothered reading it to the end.
Maybe because it is a 'best-seller'. Or because it was heavily marketed.
My impression: putting all the sexual content aside, it could be about four times shorter and not a dime less interesting. Not to mention that it wasn't THAT interesting.
The story can be put like this: not very bright, but courageous and 'open-minded' village girl of 19th century is haunted by her attraction to unworthy, but handsome and rich playboy that takes pleasure in toying with women. As a result of succumbing to the temptation(which makes one third of the book) she gets banished by her family and sent to the big city's monastery to have her illegitimate child. But upon her arrival to the city she is forced into prostitution by rich noble, who later takes her as a private lover - an immortal sex slave.
She begins to lead a life of expensive whole and kind of enjoys it. Her master is cruel, but strongly attracted to her; she even loves him for some time.
Figures, the master is an alchemist that discovered the secret of immortality by switching bodies with young men. And as he sets to have his next victim be the playboy heroine still loves, she takes action to get rid of her master and free all the slaves - and the father of her unborn child
Though, in the end, playboy ditches her again and flees to live his immortal (by this time) life without her. He never loved her and all her sacrifices were for nothing.
So, the whole idea of the book was that no matter how she desired for her lover to care for her, it wasn't possible to make him care. In the end he stayed as self-indulgent and selfish as he was in the beginning, so everything she went through was for nothing.
Mad temptation isn't a good thing. Illusions about men aren't either.
Add to this accent on 'intimate life'. . .
All of that on 448 pages in hardcover, if amazon is to be believed. Published September 2011.

Still, it was mostly my stubbornness that kept me reading it. I don't like throwing out books or stopping reading in the middle. Yet, it was almost the case.
Sex sells, eh?