The Life of Anna: The Complete Story

The Life of Anna: The Complete Story Summary:
When tragedy shatters Anna’s life at a young age, she finds hope in two men who take her under their wings. Life is perfect until her sixteenth birthday when her world is turned upside down. Her beloved Jack and Devin have turned into monsters that haunt only the darkest of nightmares; nightmares that soon become her reality.

The Life of Anna follows the naive and innocent Anna as she enters a dark world of greed, politics, and an evil puppet master who pulls the strings to her world. And beyond.

Readers be warned, for this journey is not for the faint of heart. You are about to venture into a world of dark plots, sinister villains, and deeply erotic taboo encounters. Are you brave enough to enter the Life of Anna?

The Life of Anna: The Complete Story Review:
This is not going to be a review like I usually do, instead this will be a rant. It is not going to be about one book but the series in general because I do not want to spend more time in this series. I spent three days that I wish I hadn't used for this and I wished I had listened to my earlier thoughts after reading other reviews.

I picked out this book because it didn't get horrible reviews from friends. It seemed a bit interesting and different as I usually stay away from dark or horror novels. It was horrific in the beginning but that is not why I hated this book. It is because the overall feeling I was left was meh. Why? Because of the plot, character development, everything else! It went from an interesting premise into a mess.

From here on I'll just say any problems in list form. Like I said above this is going to be a rant, it is not going to come off very pretty. I will be crude if I need to be so you have been warned. I will use trigger words because that is what makes up with story and may spoilers so you have been warned again.

Also, you might be questioning why I read the five books when I hated it. Well it had an interesting premise and the first book is pretty bad. I was hoping by the next book it would get better and then I found myself halfway through so I just completed the series. And no, it did not get much better after that. But I did like the ending because it was happy and Anna did deserve it even if I could never get into her head.

First, the sexual abuse and violence. In the beginning and for most of the first book it was necessary to show how Anna starts off and to root for her. It was horrific and left nothing to the imagination. It made me cringe and I watch horror movies like a chocolate addict would eat chocolate. But the abuse kept happening and happening. It was going until the last book, and by that point everything had almost been done. It was boring, still horrific but unnecessary to the plot. It did not prove any point or help the heroine complete her journey, it was just there as a shock factor.

Second, the warning that came with this book up. It came off as condescending saying that grown ups would be okay with this book. As if only babies wouldn't be able to read this without throwing up or having nightmares. Any person would be disgusted by the acts done in this series, and it wasn't as bad as I expected. I mean it was horrific, but was it throw up worthy? No. Nightmare Material? No. It was bad but once I put the book down, it was out of my mind. It seemed as if the author put it there to drive away any one or two star rating, which clearly didn't work. If you want to read a dark book that still gets you captivated read The Last Hour of Gann or Jigsaw Man. The warning also said that everything was done above the legal but that is incorrect. Anna loses her virginity at the age of 16 and has been having orgasms from Devin since she was three weeks old. That is disgusting.

Third, was the side characters. All of them, except Alex who acted like a moody teenager, acted like a horny teenager. Every single one of them wanted to have sex with her over and over again. And did they care that she was abused and forced to become a sex slave? Not particularly. Sure Wilhelm held off for a bit, Kurt had "nice" sex with her and Aaron held out for a couple hours, but come on! Alex was the only good character because he waited until she actually loved him and then had sex with her. Why was she written in such a way that EVERYONE, even the women, fell in love with her! And just because they were nice does not mean that they were right in having sex with her. I get that she is used to sex and needs it to deal but that is not an excuse for all those men to have sex with her.

Fourth, the BDSM labels. Now I may not know a lot about BDSM but I know that it is based on consent (willingly) between all the parties. That does not happen in this book. When she is a captive in the Manor, where most of this stuff happens, she is brainwashed or coerced into doing this acts. That does not count as BDSM in my books because this is definitely not consensual. Especially, the stuff that is done in the last two books.

Fifth, the word choice. After five books written with a limited vocabulary I am sick of the words like "cock" and "pussy" They were repeated at every sex scene, and every ten pages there was another one, and made them all seem the same. This also made the writing come off as childish.

Sixth, the lack of sufficient plot. The last two books were probably the best because we dived right in the Elder/Immortals world that proved to be incredibly interesting. But it was blanketed by the violence and emotional stuff. The first three books had almost nothing and could have been condensed into one book. I kept hoping that something would happen, get in some character development but it was like there was a switch that would turn on for character changes. Nothing to make anything actually believable (that sentence was nice).

Seventh, and I swear this is the last one, was Anna herself. What kind of 11 year old who is raised in an amazing home and has a really good education believes it's alright for a 16 year old to have a sex with a 30 year old. I know she had lost her parents and knew how to deal this with sex but still, common sense? And she can't understand German? It seems like a pretty distinctive language considering she had an education. And during the current time of this series she acted like a three year old. It made sense in the beginning because she would do whatever she could to please her master and avoid pain. I got that, but she never loses that mentality for the rest of the book. When she starts to grow some defiance in her, she throws a tantrum like a child, at everyone who comes in her way. That makes her lack a certain depth needed for a main character, development that should have happened throughout the series and failed to make me root for her. She was a mismatch of traits that could have worked but needed some definite work. There were more problems but seeing how this paragraph is already pretty long and you probably get the point, that's all I'm saying.

There were two good things about this series. The mythology was an amazing idea that should have been expanded more on. The other was the ending because Anna really did deserve a happy and peaceful ending.

Overall, this book is a two star read. The two reasons I liked this book gave this book a 0.5 star, while the rest of the story was a 1.5 star. The individual ratings are:

Enslaved: 1 star
Entwined: 1 star
Embraced: 1.5 star
Ensnared: 1 star
Emerged: 2.5 star (the ending)