My Secret Romance Book Reviews: Review: Number Thirteen by Bella Jewel

**AUTHOR NOTE - This is NOT a BDSM Romance**

We're thirteen girls, captive, slave to our master.
A master we've never seen.
Obedience will become all we know in our shallow existence. It is the only emotion we're permitted to feel.
When we're bad, we're punished. When we're good, we're rewarded.
Our scars run deep. Yet we survive, because we have to...
because HE teaches us to.
All of us are special, we feel it with everything we are.
He has us for a reason, but it's a reason we don't know.
We've never seen his face, but we know that something deeply broken lies beneath the darkness. With every touch, with every punishment, we know it.
Then something changed.
He showed me who he truly is.
Now I want him.
I'll go against everything I know to be with him.

A monster.

My monster.

Loving him is a sin, but a sinner I am. I won't stop until I see every part of him. Even the parts he keeps locked deep down inside.

I am Number Thirteen, and this is my story.

My Review:

Normally I would go over each of the characters when I do my review, but for this one I am not going to do that. I would normally break down what I loved about them or hated, but for this review I am just going to explain the emotions I felt while reading this book. Let me be very clear. This is a dark romance, there is no BDSM elements at all in this book. There is a Master and there are thirteen slaves. These girls all have dark pasts, some worse and darker than others. There are rewards for good behavior and punishments for bad behavior. The punishments aren’t pretty. They are there for a reason. At times I wanted to hate the Master, especially when he would punish Number Thirteen, or when he wanted to earn her trust but not give his to her.

When the Master finally began to open up, show who he was, you understand better why he is who he is and why he does what he does. This isn’t about ownership, this is about healing and understanding. He feels for the girls in his own way, and the girls feel for him, some feel hate others feel relief and one feels love. There is a feeling of a Stockholm syndrome going on but I don’t think that was truly the case. I began to feel for everyone involved, especially the Master and Number Thirteen. At times I cried, others I swore and felt my blood pressure get high, and at the end I felt at peace.

I love Bella Jewel’s books, each one I have read has made me a bigger fan of hers. Number Thirteen is different from her others. Like I said before it is dark, but it is beautifully healing at the same time. I can’t explain it. There is beauty that comes from pain, beauty that comes from healing, and beauty that comes from trust. I was drawn in and couldn’t put it down. I can understand that some people wouldn’t want to read this book, it isn’t pretty, but please give it a chance. If you stopped it, pick it up and start it again. I am not sure if Ms. Jewel plans on making this a series or writing a follow up because there is enough left open that she could and I hope she does.