Blog Tour & Review - The V Girl: Second Edition by Mya Robarts

Title: The V Girl: Second Edition
Author: Mya Robarts
Publication Date: July 1st, 2014

Category/Genre: New Adult Dystopian Romance

In post-apocalyptic North America, sexual slavery is legal. Lila Velez desperately wants to lose her virginity before the troops visit her town and take it away by force. She makes plans to seduce her only friend. Lila does not love him, but he is the only man who has shown her true affection, an affection she is willing to take as a substitute for love. 

Lila’s coping mechanism to cope with her mother’s loss is her secret. A secret that will bring her closer to Aleksey Fürst, a foreign, broody man who she distrusts because of his links to the troops and his rough, yet irresistible appearance. He offers Lila an alternative to her plans, a possibility that terrifies her…and tempts her in spite of herself. 

With threats looming at every turn and no way to escape, Lila fears that falling in love will only lead to more heartache. The consequences of laying down her arms for Aleksey and welcoming hope might destroy more than her heart. They might force her to face the worst of her nightmares becoming a reality. Is love possible in a world that has forgotten what the human touch is?

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Buy Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Kobo

Mya Robarts is a bookaholic who regrets nothing.

She spent years trying to become a contemporary dance choreographer. Eventually she realized that she enjoyed writing her stories rather than dancing to them.

Robarts is obsessed with books that present damaged characters, swoon-worthy guys, controversial topics and happy endings.

Author Links: Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

3.5 “Intense topic & alpha male” Stars

Trigger warning: Rape. Graphic, horrible and scary.

Sometimes you come across books that deal with heavy topics in a way that is so “in your face” that you need to take a moment every now and then to just breathe.  That’s what happened with “The V Girl”.

Like the blurb promises, you have a world plagued by a vicious civil war where soldier have a horrible free pass to rape women (and other men). A horrible, horrible world where no one is safe from the torture of being violated. While some seem to hide from the truth by hoping nothing will happen to them, Lila Velez wants to take matters in her own hands – as much as possible.

Lila is aware she can’t stop this war (this isn’t that kind of book and she isn’t that kind of MC), but she can control when she’s going to lose her virginity. She refuses to hold on to something that will eventually be taken away from her.

Honestly, I think that’s a very smart and brave thing to do. In a time when so much is out of one’s control, getting to choose when and how one will share one's body and say goodbye to one’s V-card sounds…empowering.

Lila’s plan to lose her virginity is quite simple: get her best friend to agree to sex with her before the soldiers visit her town. She has some time to get that to happen, but what should be an easy plan turns into a completely humiliating situation when her friend refuses her offer.

Though Lila isn’t willing to go down without a fight, we soon learn she might be “fighting” the wrong guy. That’s because super sexy, alpha male in all his hotness and broodiness Aleksey comes to town just in time to show Lila her best friend might not be her only option.

Aleksey is that world’s “peace police” – a cop/soldier part of an organization that is supposed to supervise the troop’s visit to town and make sure nothing too crazy happens. Like rape. Except rape isn’t that crazy in that world. When people see their virginity as a liability, when rape is something overlooked by authorities, we know the world is truly f* up, huh?

Of course Lila pretty much hates Aleksey’s guts when they first meet, because she assumes he’s just like any other soldier. Like the men who raped so many women she knew. Like the men who took her mother away.  Little by little, Aleksey proves to Lila and to the readers that he’s nothing like that. He respects her and understands her decision to lose her virginity – so much so that he offers his help.

So we have a hot, powerful and super sexy man offering his expert sex services and a MC who’s desperate to get rid of her v-card. Everything is set, right? Not really, because Lila can’t trust Aleksey, and until she does, she’ll hold on to her initial plan and to her virginity.

That’s when the romantic plot of this book kicks in, because from that moment on we get many interesting and hot scenes between Lila and Aleksey while they fight their attraction and wait for Lila to be ready to accept his offer. Let me tell you, there are tons of really hot moments until that happens.

For some reason, I went into this thinking it was YA – maybe because of the “coming of age” on the cover, but there’s no way this is anything less than new adult. I mean, there’s sex (someone talking, thinking or doing it) practically every other page.

And I’m not only talking about hot, consensual sex. I’m also talking about disturbing scenes involving people using sex as a weapon to hurt and torture other people… did I call it extremely disturbing yet? Like I said in the first paragraph, the author doesn’t pull punches. She puts it all out there and lets you, as a reader, take it all at once or in small pieces, whichever you prefer. Either way, it won’t be a calm scenario.

In truth, it shouldn’t be calm or easy. We’re talking about a violence that goes beyond physical pain. The psychological damage that victims of rape have to endure are larger than most people seem to understand, and the author portrayed that well not only by showing the consequences of her mother’s rape in Lila’s past and present, but also by making her so fearful of the future that she chose to just “get rid of” her virginity. Lila’s struggle might seem a product of fiction for those who don’t have to worry about leaving their houses every day, but there are many places in this world where girls feel (and are) unsafe outside their homes – or even inside them. So, no, as a book with rape as a central topic, this one wasn’t too hard on the readers. Reality can be a lot worse.

Overall, I enjoyed how the author treated the theme, how she portrayed her characters and how she wrapped up the story. Shocking, but an interesting read.

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