Playing Patience Review

Verdict: 0/5 Stars

‘Sometimes all you need is Patience.

Life’s been hard for Zeke. Being a punching bag for his alcoholic father has turned him into stone. Not even the dodgy trailer park he lives in can scare him. Fighting is his release and sex, drugs, and his guitar bring him peace, but deep down Zeke isn’t quite as hard as he makes himself out to be. When he meets Patience, she finds all his broken pieces and puts him back together, but she’s a ray of light in his shadowed life and the last thing he wants to do is bring her into his dark world. Playing careless is easy, playing the bad guy can be fun, but playing Patience is impossible, especially when she can see right through him. 

Zeke isn’t the only one who’s broken, and for the first time, in a long time, Patience feels alive. Her black and white world gets a shot of color when she meets Zeke. He’s unlike anyone she’s ever met with his tattoos, piercings, and blunt honesty. She wants nothing more than to let go and ride the wild side with him, but some wounds never heal and the broken pieces of Patience aren’t so easy to find.’

I have a confession. I actually harbour a secret love for romance, especially this type of romance. Okay? Okay. I like the whole bad guy thing, though bad girl doesn’t go a miss either. So, I was happy to read this. 

My GAWD was I disappointed. Actually, not disappointed. Angry. Where the hell to start, eh? Somewhere where I’m not floundering in a big ball of cringe, probably. I did actually get to about just half way through where I was no longer reading it for enjoyment, but I felt like I needed to carry on, for the good of humanity if I’m being dramatic. 

Zeke. Ah Zeke. He’s the bad boy, he’s “emotionless”, he doesn’t give a toss about anyone but himself. He’s into sex, drugs, and rock and roll. He’s a rockstar with no time for a relationship, and why should he have one when he can have lots of sex with lots of women? We know fairly quickly that we don’t like him, we get to learn this quite near the start (and just in case you didn’t notice, he tells Patience that he’s not a nice guy many times). It reminded me of that episode of the IT crowd where Moss and Roy sign up to OkCupid and their profiles read, ‘Shut up, do what i tell you, I'm not interested. These are just some of the things you'll be hearing if you answer this ad. I'm an idiot who doesn't care about anyone but myself.’ (That’s Roy) and ‘I'm going to murder you! You bloody woman.’ (That’s Moss). I mean, they’re taking the piss out of it, but in this book that is actually what happens O_O. Zeke’s basically a caricature. 

You can have a douchebaggy character, in fact, it’s refreshing to have a character that you don’t instantly like just for something a little bit different. However, Zeke is a misogynistic arsehole who never, ever has a good word to say about women. In fact, he doesn’t even call them women, he calls them ‘females’. What? That’s not sexy. That will never be sexy. Okay, so, he’s a douchebag, we hate him, everyone around him knows how much of an arsehole he is. That means that any woman wouldn’t even give him the time of da--WHAT? Oh they’re all falling for him. For what? No reason that I can think of. My problem wasn’t really with Zeke himself (not at first anyways), but the way women react to him. He also uses pretty outdated language, emphasised in one memorable quote ‘she looked hotter than shit’ I may have lol’d for about three hours. Also, he always talks about his mother, who wrote cheesy quotes all over his guitar (do we get to know what any of these are or…?), but he obviously didn’t respect her. He even says himself that he’s never respected anything a woman has said to him. So I didn’t even have sympathy for a dead woman. What the actual McNugget?!

Patience is the typical  rich girl from suburbia, except she’s being raped by her father (it’s okay though, turns out he’s not her dad, what a cop out). Some things that stuck out to me: her having little or no psychological effects having being raped by her own father for so many years, referring to one rape incident so severe she breaks her ribs as a ‘table ride’, talking about HOW SHE CAN NEVER BE TOUCHED BY ANYONE EVER and touching Zeke straight away. Firstly, though, you should know that Patience has no personality. So if you’re expecting one, don’t, cause you won’t find it. Also, she falls for Zeke when all he does is objectify her. Annnd she’s so straight-laced that she actually uses the words ‘drugs are bad for you’. Oh my goodness, I can’t even. I saw the other reviews talking about how they were glad it wasn’t insta-love, and I do agree, although I don’t feel it was anything love. I literally got no feeling from either of the MCs at all, the entire time. I can’t really say anything about her cause I didn’t get much from her. Also, she's judgemental and ridiculous, and so horrible towards her own gender. If they're not her then they're sluts, or stupid. Ugh.

I’m not sure how edited this was but there were a fair few spelling mistakes. The one that stuck out to me at first was when the judge bangs his gravel. HIS. GRAVEL. I dunno how the editor missed that one because I couldn’t get it out of my head for the next 400 pages. I’m annoyed I spent money on it, because I can go on Wattpad or Movella or Figment and get free things with spelling mistakes :/ And at least then I can be all ‘yo, there’s a spelling mistake here’ and the author be like, ‘thanks oh wise commenter’. 

New Adult. This wasn’t New Adult. New Adult was created to fill the void between end of high school (which both kiddiewinkles are still in btw) and ‘Imma grown up with a million children and divorce problems’. This is just an excuse Young Adult erotica. There’s a difference. So if you’re looking for actual New Adult, don’t waste your time.

What has this experience taught me? Always be dubious if a book has nothing but 5-star ratings.