Book Review

Madame X by Jasinda Wilder

Madame X isn’t going to be for everyone. There are quite a number of things it has that I know will be automatic turn-offs for people. It’s written in first person. It does end on a cliffhanger. It deals with abuse (trigger warning) – physically, financially, and psychologically. There’s no HEA in this book as it’s an ongoing series following the same heroine. And there are also themes of infidelity.

But, if you’re still with me, it’s also one of the most unique books I’ve read in a while. It sucked me in and broke my heart. The next book cannot come soon enough.

Madame X – or just X – is our heroine. She doesn’t remember anything beyond six years ago. A man named Caleb (I’m not going to call him the hero) found X battered and bloody, inches away from death. He stayed with her at the hospital. No one came to claim X and she had no ID. No one had been able to figure out who she was. So he took her to his home. He helped her pick out a name – X is named for the John Singer Sargent painting. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty gorgeous by the way.) He gave her a place to stay – an entire floor in a fancy building. He gave her a job – an etiquette instructor for the grown children of the rich and wealthy. He also became her lover.

However, X starts to see this arrangement as nothing more than a gilded cage. She doesn’t leave the apartment. She’s tried in the past and it often leads to panic attacks. She wants more with Caleb, though he can’t give her the relationship she wants. He’s also a horrible person, but more on that later. X doesn’t have friends or an outlet. Any hobbies are subject to being taken away from her by Caleb at his discretion. I nearly cried when he removed her entire library as a punishment. This poor woman doesn’t even own a television to keep her busy.

It’s truly heartbreaking once you begin to realize that X’s glamorous lifestyle – the clothes, the apartment, the powerful people she deals with – all come at a hefty price.

At first, I thought Caleb was meant to be the hero. This dark mysterious savior. But he’s not. At one point, he chokes X out of anger. This was the first time such a thing had happened. And X is appalled. I was proud of her when she tells Caleb that she does not and will not forgive him.

At one point, X finally does leave her apartment to attend a function as part of her work. That’s when her Cinderella story begins and she meets a kind man, Logan, though she refuses to give him her name. Once X gets a taste for someone other than Caleb, it becomes clearer that she wants to experience more. Not necessarily that she wants out, but she wants a choice. Of course, the knight in shining armor tracks her down and makes an appointment to see her at work, which enrages Caleb.

Which is where readers find out how horrible Caleb actually is.

Caleb Spoiler

The building in which X lives is many stories tall, though she only has been aware of three floors: her apartment, Caleb’s penthouse, and the garage. But there are many, many floors with many women in each one. As X is trying to escape the building, she discovers that Caleb is grooming these women personally to become escorts and/or brides for paying clients. And by personally, I do mean that he “teaches” these women how to please a man.

The one woman X meets seems to enjoy the arrangement as it was preferable to her previous lifestyle. The other women see Caleb as their savior to a better life. My coffee almost slipped out of my hand when I realized what was going on.

It’s a hard book to read because there’s very little romance. I struggle to even call this first book a romance in the first place. But something about it really resonated with me. It reminded me a lot of my previous abusive relationship, warring with staying because it was familiar or leaving because it was better, yet scary.

Reading this book was an emotional experience. Not a bad one! I love romance novels because they make you feel – mainly happy things, but sometimes they touch on the deeper stuff. Madame X relies less on action propelling the plot and more on self-discovery. You want what’s best for X. You want her to be happy. You want her to make good choices and think of herself and her health. But life isn’t like that. Sometimes, people need to learn on their own despite how much you want to guide them.

There were a few bumps in the plot for me. Some events seemed out of left field or completely random, and you will most likely get some whiplash in the last quarter of the book. I would definitely describe this book as erotica or an erotic romance because of the amount of sex, but oddly enough, there’s no romance in it. Not something that I found bad, but rather interesting.

However, these problems were merely outliers to an otherwise absorbing book. The ARC I received included the first few pages of the next book, which made the original cliffhanger even more cliffhanger-y, but I’ll explain the ending/cliffhanger for those that would prefer to peek ahead.

Cliffhanger Spoiler

X runs off with Logan briefly, but ultimately goes back to Caleb despite finding out all that crazy fucking shit. He gives her a choice: If she leaves, she leaves only with the dress he found her in. For some reason, he still fucking has it – the weirdo. It’s ripped and bloody and clearly not fit to walk around in. He’ll leave her an envelope with money to let her go wherever so wants, and she can take her books.

Or she can join him in his penthouse, naked. She chooses the naked option, though it’s obvious that she’s hesitant about wanting to be with this man. But it’s not a happy ending, so clearly there’s more that needs to happen.

The sneak peek at the beginning of the next book opens with Logan finding his way into X’s apartment with a note. In it is her real name and a cryptic message that Caleb knows more about who she is than he’s letting on, and that he’s most likely keeping information from her.

This is one of those stories that will leave you thinking about it for days afterward, regardless of whether you enjoyed it as much as I did. I also need book two to get here like now.

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Madame X by Jasinda Wilder

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  1. jw says:

    Oh dear, this doesn’t sound like my thing, but this is a lovely review.

  2. Tameka says:

    Thank you for that great review! I really like Jasinder Wilder’s books, Falling into You, Wounded and Captured. She definitely gives me the “feels” even without the HEA. I find her books captivating and a bit sad. She lures me in. I’m looking forward to this book. I will wait until Book 2 comes out, so the cliffhanger won’t bother me so much. Thanks again!

  3. Elyse says:

    I need to read this now

  4. Angie says:

    This is a great in-depth review. I’ve been wondering about this book, but I couldn’t find anything that gave a clear idea of what it’s about. This was helpful!

  5. Patricia says:

    Sounds like a psychological thriller?

    A very thorough and thoughtful review.

  6. Gail says:

    I read Madam X and you are on point with this review – it is NOT a romance. It gave me the creeps and I have to say that, by the end, I could not really relate to the heroine (though I do under stand the abused spouse syndrome I can’t relate emotionally). I had/have no interest in pursuing the next in the series. Wilder has written some stuff I enjoyed way more than X.

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