It Ain't Me, Babe

This is the beginning of her very captivating series is renovating it's the way the wheel turns and get me hooked into this book. I can barely explain what it is about without giving anything away, I love this MC.

MC romance isn’t my jam but I’ve had this series on my TBR for a long time and I do love Tillie Cole’s writing… She captures emotions so beautiful, and especially the raw and messy ones that leave you heart gaping.I fell into this story from the go and at not time did I want up give. MC men are crass talkers and their lifestyle and code of conduct is not akin to us mere mortals…This story is heart wrenching to say the least, and the plot was well executed overall. I had a few minor issues with the pacing and development, and eye-rolled several times over some things that happened mostly on the heroine’s part, but I understood her actions were from a good place and she’s naive to life outside the commune.The narration was incredible, especially that for Styx. As much as this book was easy to read, the narration blew my mind. What’s not to love about broken hero and one with a speech impediment.𝗬𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗻-𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗹-𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗲, 𝗯𝗮𝗯𝗲. 𝗬-𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗺-𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯-𝗯𝗮𝗱, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳-𝗳***!𝗻’ 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘇𝘆. 𝗠-𝗺𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗸𝗶𝗱, 𝗮 𝗱**𝗻 𝗺-𝗺𝘂𝘁𝗲. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗴-𝗴𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗲 𝗮 𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗴-𝗴𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗲 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲. 𝗬𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗶-𝗶𝘁, 𝗯𝗮𝗯𝗲. 𝗬𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗺-𝗺𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗳-𝗳***!𝗻’ 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱.”Every time Styx called Mae “Babe”, my heart fluttered!Like I already mentioned, I don’t read a lot of MC romance but for me- this is how it is done!4 ⭐️ for story5 ⭐️ for Narration4.5 over all

Full of twists and turns fighting for survival powerful heartbreaking keeps you wondering what next keeps you on the edge

I would give this 0 stars.I am unsure how this book has so many good reviews, I DNF at 42% because I can't stand to subject myself to the rest of the story.Spoilers ahead.I already have several complaints, mostly related to the treatment of women. This was my first motorcycle club 'romance' and if this is what they're like I doubt I will be exploring it further. I think the idea of mixing a brutal, outlaw biker with a former abuse victim could make for a very interesting dynamic but not done like this. This girl (Mae) is only just free of a cult that includes the constant rape and subjugation of girls and a month later she's ready to slide into bed with a crude, violent man (Styx) who, technically (because of not wanting to turn her over to federal authorities), is holding her prisoner. She is not allowed to leave. She does not know this man. She does not know anything about the world. It is not only unrealistic that she would be capable of a sexual relationship so soon out of captivity, it's also quite disgusting to think about it in terms of the fact that she has no knowledge of the world, of sex, outside of the cult and this sexually experienced and dominant man would have sex with this girl anyway. The balance of power is skewed so much in his direction, how can her consent even be considered consent when she doesn't know anything? A few pages before they do engage in a sexual act she doesn't even know what her own arousal is! And then offers herself in a submissive position to appease his anger because she doesn't know anything different from that. This leads to a pleasurable sexual experience after a few minutes of the male saying he wouldn't do her that way? How? The dynamics are not only unbalanced but gave me a bad, skeeved out feeling that this is just taking advantage of a vulnerable young woman whose consent may not be actual consent and simply be just because she doesn't know anything else.Prior to this you have Styx ordering one of his men to protect her because he doesn't want problems with rape, who are you protecting her from? Your own club? Am I supposed to be OK with a male protagonist who hangs around with rapists? And are we simply equating 'outlaw biker' with potential rapist? Is this what MC romance is? A rapist or band of rapists that change their ways for a woman they can own???? I say 'own' because that is how it's presented here, that the man owns the woman. I'm not feeling like this whole idea is really consensual.And can we talk about the constant naming of women as bitches, sluts and whores. I can cope with the idea that a heavily testosterone based environment may be crude, may refer to women as bitches but that doesn't make it OK, especially when the women are treated as easily discarded property. Styx calls Mae a bitch all of the time, he's supposed to love her right? And the girl (or slut in the books parlance) he was previously regularly having sex with gets shot in the head just after his rejection of her! Is this just a convenient way to rid her from the story? To me, DNF at 42%, that's certainly what it seems like. This poor woman, who has known nothing but this biker gang, these crude, brutal men that constantly use and discard her, is deeply in love with Styx and gets her heart broken just seconds before she gets killed. This is the life I'm supposed to root for Mae, a recently escaped sex slave, to have??I'd like to think that what actually happens, in the 58% of the book I will not be reading, is that the feds bust the club and actually take Mae somewhere she is truly free and can get the help that she, if the book was portraying it realistically, would need. They could also liberate the other girls and put an end to the sex slave holding religious cult and the motorcycle gang in one fell swoop. This is the happy ending I'm going to pretend happens as opposed to the Mae/Styx life together in the club ending it apparently has.Exceptionally small complaints in comparison to the treatment of women and the sheer incredulity of the idea that this is the life that a just escaped sex slave would not only fall into but adjust to with no acknowledgement of the deep seated psychological trauma she's contended with, are:The fact that I felt none of the characters could have me rooting for them. Ky was instantly easy to hate. The rest of them just made no impression tbh.I know there's a 'twist' later concerning the Rider character being a 'bad guy' (as if any of them are 'good guys') which, without knowing what the twist actually is, I can't say I'm surprised by. It was indicated early on that he'd never, never, never betray Styx. It was ladelled on so thick that my first thought was 'well, he's going to be the betrayer' so it was ridiculously obvious (or would be if I continued).The fact that, for a biker gang, they seem to not know anything about bikes. Mae's first time as a passenger on a bike she gets told to 'hold on'. That's her only instruction which is preposterous because that's not how it works. As a passenger on a bike you impact the bikes movement and balance. If you don't lean the way the driver leans, if you lean too far, or to the opposite side you can unbalance the bike and potentially crash.Also the gun knowledge seems a bit lacking considering they're gun dealers, as does any understanding of how the ATF actually works in terms of busts of weapons dealers. They don't want Mae to leave because it could cause them problems but ATF busts are typically done with months and months of intel so they'd already know Mae was not there prior to her arrival at the club. Even with that aside if Styx loved her, if he truly understood that his life is not what she needs, as is indicated, he would let her go anyway because her rehearsed, heavily religious answers would make it fairly obvious that it was not the bikers holding her hostage.I'm not sure how much of the poor grammar and spelling was an attempt to represent an accent/dialect and what was poor editing.Overall this is a potentially good premise with utterly appalling execution.

Tillie Cole knocks it out of the park again! Every book I’ve read so far by this women has been a five star read and the urge to buy and read everything she’s ever written is so high, not to mention her MMC are all slowly making their way onto my book boyfriend list!A chance meeting, fate orchestrated. River and Salome meet as children, on separate sides of a fence. River never forgot ‘wolf eyes.’ Fifteen years later River ‘Styx’ is President of the Hades Hangmen MC, a legacy that was thrust upon him young. Styx is a mute. Using his hands to talk, he’s had to earn respect by pulling no punches and proving himself to be a sadistic killer. Whiskey, bitches, bikes and the club is his entire life.Salome or Mae as her sisters call her has lead a life of captivity, not knowing the world outside the fence except it’s a world of sin. Her commune has strict beliefs, one is that beautiful women are the worst sinners, designed to drag men to the pits of hell. Mae and her sisters pay with their bodies. On her 23rd birthday Mae​ is to marry the Prophet but something tragic happens before and Mae has no choice but to escape.This story is so raw and heart wrenching, I loved it so much. There were moments I held my breath, shocking twists. Tillie’s writing ​has the ability to suck you in and live in the book. I need to read the entire series as there are so many characters I need to know more about.This story is so raw and heart wrenching, I loved it so much. There were moments I held my breath, shocking twists. Tillie’s writing ​has the ability to suck you in and live in the book. I need to read the entire series as there are so many characters I need to know more about.This story is so raw and heart wrenching, I loved it so much. There were moments I held my breath, shocking twists. Tillie’s writing ​has the ability to suck you in and live in the book. I need to read the entire series as there are so many characters I need to know more about.