Unsettling

One has to wonder about the author a little bit--maybe in his formative years he read Lolita and that really imprinted on him what a sexy relationship is like. I know it was only a story but I found it a bit disturbing. Rose is 14, and from a poor family. She is sold to a household as a cook/maid, and you probably have guessed, for nefarious other uses. There's the requisite ice-cold grand dame, withered and stone-hearted, the "master" who is evil to the core and ugly to boot, and of course, the anti-hero love interest who is more than twice Rose's age. There are some twists, later on in the tale, but I found a lot of it tedious and heavy with philosophy, and just didn't really care, as I'd divorced myself from the characters early on to avoid the sadistic force-feeding nature of the book. Not my flavor.