Guys, there’s only three chapters left of this book! Remember when we started reading this book half a year ago? Remember when my hair looked that shitty? Oh, how time slips by.
Chapter Twenty
After everybody got into a fight with everyone else in the last chapter, Gideon and Eva have an awkward reunion. They – and you’re not gonna believe this one – talk to each other about if they’re okay! It’s like it’s a healthy relationship where the partners talk or something!
“How are you doing?” he murmured. [...] “I don’t know how we’re ever going to fall asleep next to each other again.”
Completely out of the blue, Gideon asks Eva if she ever hears from her half-brother, and guys, I actually really like Eva’s reaction.
I had a deep-rooted fear that I might see him again one day, whether accidentally or deliberately. He was out there somewhere, breathing the same air
I mean, dang, that’s actually well-written and conveys Eva’s fear both believably and artistically. Where did Sylvia Day go?
“I had lunch with Magdalene in my office yesterday,” he said after we’d enjoyed a few initial bites.
“Oh?” While I’d been ring shopping, Magdalene had been enjoying private time with my man?
“Don’t take that tone,” he admonished. [...]
“Did you say anything to her about Christopher?”
“That was the point of the lunch. I showed her the video. [...] I took your phone up to my office and pulled the video off via USB.”
Ah, there you are, Sylvia Day.
I knew there was crazy in here somewhere
Okay, so what’s your favorite part of that? How Gideon is (still) all “don’t you get mad at me for having lunch in my office with a woman who I know is in love with me, that’s totes okay” to his girlfriend? How somehow “hey, I have this video secretly taken of you having sex, you should totally see this” is a thing that has actually happened in this book? How Sylvia Day had to specify that Gideon got the video off the phone via USB? Probably that last one for me, I love unnecessary details that nobody would realistically ever say but were totally just written to try to convince the reader that the author knows anything about technology. Now to emphasize my point, I’m going to go get an animated GIF off the world wide web by right-clicking on a Google Image search result via my Dell Studio 15 laptop’s right mouse button.
This is how I imagine the authors of the books we read on this blog most of the time.
Eva tries to explain that Gideon can’t just hack into her phone, Gideon’s all “I didn’t hack it. You haven’t set a password”, and Eva tries to explain why she’s upset by asking how Gideon would feel if Eva rummaged through his stuff, and Gideon’s all “I have nothing to hide”. So, yeah, well, these two were totally getting along and being healthy for, like, three pages. That’s probably a record.
He really didn’t get it. “Why don’t you see how weird this is?”
“Eva.” He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. “I spend a quarter of every day inside you. When you set limits outside that I can’t help but see them as arbitrary.”
I dunno, Gideon. It’s not like you have insider knowledge or anything.
Gideon explains that he went to therapy and they gave him medication for “atypical sexual parasomnia”, and, well, this is a real thing. I already doubt that Sylvia Day’s portraying it accurately though. Man, it’s kind of a bummer that you totally compromised your authorial credibility like half a book ago and now you’re introducing all this complicated stuff and we don’t even believe you already, huh, Day?
Eva gets lunch with her boss and her boss’s boyfriend and her boss is flirting with the waitress and then SURPRISE it’s actually his sister and they’re just screwing with Eva. Yep. We needed this scene.
Eva and Gideon go to a Gala or some shit and Gideon gets a dress that doesn’t really fit Eva and her boobs look too big.
“Seriously. Have your tits gotten bigger? They’re spilling out over the top of that thing.”
“I’m twenty-four years old, Gideon,” I said dryly. “I stopped developing years ago. What you see is what you get.”
“Yes, but I’m the only one who’s supposed to be seeing, since I’m the only one who’s allowed to be getting.”
Boo fucking hoo, Gideon.
They go to the Gala and Magdalene’s there and she’s super sad and Eva actually feels pretty bad for her now that her personal life has completely gone to hell. Then Gideon introduces Eva to a brand new character Corinne and he gets all giddy and weird.
“Corinne,” he greeted her, the natural rasp in his voice even more pronounced. He released me and caught her hands. “You didn’t tell me you were back. I would’ve picked you up.”
Eva notices shittons of romantic tension between the two, Gideon and Corinne run off (which isn’t weird at all) because I guess Sylvia Day couldn’t think of any other way to get Eva and Magdalene on their own for this TOTALLY OUT OF THE BLUE PLOT TWIST TO HAPPEN:
“I’m talking about Corinne.” She studied my face. “You don’t know. She and Gideon were engaged, for over a year. She broke it off, married a wealthy Frenchman, and moved to Europe. But the marriage fell apart. They’re now getting divorced and she’s moved back to New York.”
Gideon was engaged to another woman and didn’t tell Eva about it, but instead told Eva that she’s the only woman he’s ever felt seriously about and had consensual sex with? Holy douchebag male romantic lead, Batman! It’s like Gideon’s a really shitty person or something! Who could have foreseen this?
Bared To You continues to shit all over the Bechdel Test.
“You love him,” she said. “I didn’t see it. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for what I said to you the first time we met.”
“You love him, too,” I replied woodenly, my gaze unfocused. “And at that time, I didn’t. Not yet.”
“Doesn’t excuse me, does it?”
I gratefully accepted another glass of champagne when it was offered to me and took a second for Magdalene before the waiter straightened to move on. We clinked glasses in a pitiful display of scorned female solidarity.
The women continue to have feelings and then MORE PLOT TWISTS.
[Corinne] had to be talking about the advocacy center dinner, the night Gideon and I had sex for the first time. The night we’d christened his limo and he’d immediately withdrawn; then left me abruptly. [...] Oh my God. I glanced at Magdalene. Gideon had left me in a rush that night for her. For Corinne.
But Is It Better Than Fifty Shades of Grey?
When Fifty Shades of Grey introduced a new character in its last chapters in a transparent attempt to set up an arbitrary conflict for a sequel, it was Jack Hyde, Ana’s creepy pervert boss whose name is obvious symbolism that doesn’t even make any sense. When Bared To You introduces a new character in its last chapters in a transparent attempt to set up an arbitrary conflict for a sequel, we get Corinne and we get a love triangle, and you guys might not know me that well, but I eat that shit up like fucking M&M’s.
The Winner This Round: Bared To You. And M&M’s.
