I have to be honest: I’m conflicted about this one.

The Auction is the first book in Sadie Kincaid’s Wages of Sin series, and the premise genuinely hooked me. A complicated, haunted man who would give anything to save and protect the woman in his care. A strong woman in a dangerous situation — one who may need saving, but whose very presence becomes a kind of redemption for him. Beauty and the Beast filtered through organized crime and a gothic atmosphere. I was in.

And for a while, the slow build delivered. The story grew steadily more intriguing as the world took shape and the central dynamic between Imogen and Lincoln began to develop. Then it hit a tipping point — and the plot largely stepped aside in favor of a relentless series of increasingly graphic sexual encounters that, to me, felt more gratuitous than earned.

What frustrated me most was what happened to Imogen in the process. A character who started with real complexity — strength, resilience, a will of her own — gradually faded into a familiar archetype: the naive innocent who is somehow simultaneously experienced and eager, willing and endlessly accommodating. It felt like the story lost track of who she was.

Lincoln fares somewhat better, though he, too, falls into a pattern. He is, at his core, more noble than he — or perhaps the narrative — is willing to fully accept. But rather than letting that complexity breathe, the story traps him in a cycle of self-punishment that begins to feel repetitive.

I’ll confess: I skim-read a significant portion of the middle. The final chapters, however, pull the story back to its plot roots and end on a genuinely designed cliffhanger that makes you want the second book.

And here’s where my conflict deepens: it worked. I do want to know how the plot resolves. Whether that curiosity is strong enough to carry me through another volume of the same pattern — that, I’m still deciding.

If dark mafia romance with gothic sensibility is your genre, Kincaid clearly knows her audience and delivers what they’re looking for. For me, it was a book of tantalizing potential that I wished had trusted its story — and its characters — a little more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mira Books for a free ARC of The Auction in exchange for my honest thoughts and opinions.