Sharing Hailey by Samantha Ann King

So, I was in the mood for some ménage. And after reading another one of King’s books – Waiting for Ty – I decided to give this M/F/M story a try. And I wanted to like it. I really did.

Sharing Hailey is genuinely well-written with a thought-through story-line. But I just couldn’t get into it.

The story is about Hailey who’s been seriously attracted to two of her brother’s friends for years. Just after breaking up with her boyfriend, she goes to Hawaii on vacation with her family – and her crushes Mark and Tony. Needless to say, things get hot in Hawaii. But then Hailey’s abusive ex shows up.

There are a few things that had me disliking this story. The first one was that Hailey kept referring to herself as a slut for getting involved with two men. Someone slut-shaming themselves is a serious turn-off.

Secondly, I just didn’t feel for the characters. They didn’t turn into the three-dimensional individuals they needed to be to be engaging. They were all very superficially depicted without any real personalities. Hailey had two settings; horny damsel in distress or scared damsel in distress. Mark and Tony were in turn either horny or protective. Or both. And all three of them were just so bloody serious and broody all the time, except when they were shagging. Infatuation, love and sex are supposed to be fun. It wasn’t.

Third, ménages where two of the participants ignore each other isn’t sexy. Or even worse. If they get all angsty if they happen to touch. For a threesome to be hot, all three need to be involved and attracted to each other. Two guys going at it with one woman and entering a three-way relationship, it doesn’t appeal at all if the guys aren’t into it with each other too.

And finally, and probably because I couldn’t really care about the characters that much, the end chapters had me bored to tears. Stories with abusive exes usually end with this final showdown and then there’s some kind of epilogue and a HEA. But Sharing Hailey didn’t. Instead, after the final confrontation with Hailey’s ex, there was quite the aftermath where Hailey, Mark and Tony needed to come to grips with some issues. And it was so boring I barely managed to finish.

Sorry. But those are my honest feelings about this story. I’m disappointed since I’ve read King before and liked her writing. Not so this time though. Despite that, it’s a perfectly fine story – for someone else. To me there was just too many off-putting circumstances that I couldn’t see passed to appreciate the story behind.