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I don't think Zia was blinded by lust. Though there were signs, many of them, but I think many of us are guilty of ignoring the signs if it concerns someone we like. She was definitely not clueless, as we see her suspecting and even going as far as hiring a PI. I think she was more or less in denial because she suspected something was wrong but just didn't want to believe it.

Just like every other thriller, I think Zia is just too naive to see anything. When she's away from Baxter, her last for him dissipates but she still does not seem to notice all the weirdness going on. Really how did Baxter enter into a contract without valid IDs?

I think she is blinded by pure lust. She delights in the sensations so much that she overlooks all the warning signs she gets concerning her lover. Couple this with the fact that she seems indifferent to the fact that she is sleeping with both of her lovers at the same time and you will see how lust plays a larger part.

SarahJean7 wrote: ↑11 Aug 2021, 14:53 I had a hard time believing that Zia would continue to be with Baxter after all the truly strange coincidences she was discovering about her new lover and the series he was writing. Was she really that dim when it came to seeing him for who he was or did lust make her oblivious?

For me, Zia is a smart and confident woman, so she is definitely not clueless. She is also not blinded by love. She was aware of all these strange coincidences, but she knowingly ignores it all. And, the reason for that is she might not love him that much to risk and spoil her life.

I think Zia wasn't clueless. Although her decisions were largely influenced by lust and love, which had made her oblivious to the red flags with Baxter.

I think she is blinded by love. You would think this was far-fetched until you read stories about serial killers in real life. Many had spouses who noticed strange things about them but could not connect the dots or accept that their lover may be doing horrible things.

The author detailed as Zia not clueless. She is just sexually blinded by lust which finalised her into boredom minus Baxter's sex. It is as compaired to other thriller, at first she was in love with Baxter before any other person.

I think it was a little bit of both. Zia's lust and her physical relationship with Baxter ended up with her forming an emotional attachment to him. This made her see only what she wanted to see. Thus, not caring about the red flags.

I think Zia isn't clueless. When you are in love with something or someone, you are blinded to see flaws. It happens to me. It happens to everybody. It is when you are out of love from that fellow you realised you've been blind all the way.

Clueless? No. Avoiding the obvious? Yes. Zia had put two and two together that Baxter wasn’t as perfect as he had seemed. For me it seemed as if she was simply trying to make him into something she felt she desperately needed in her life.

I think Zia was just blinded by love. Particularly since she was so tentative socially earlier on, once she got involved, she just couldn't or didn't want to see what was going on. She probably had an inkling, but she just ignored it.

I believe it's human nature to accept what we're seeing or feeling and brush aside things that seem "off" or something our brain is having a difficult time processing. I've accepted a lot of strange behavior and excused the behavior as the person being shy or just a bit different. Baxter seemed weird to me, but if I were in the same situation, I'm not sure if I'd react any differently than Zia.

I think physical connection is so…so important, that when you’re in a physical relationship with someone you overlook every red flag because of the intimacy it provides. I don’t think Zia was clueless but because of that physical connection, she just didn’t want to see any negative in him, whatsoever.

Zia is not clueless, she is just blinded by her sexual desires that were being fulfilled when she is with Baxter. Lust has overpower her intelligence at many ways to the point it doesn't seem to be love at all. She was blinded by red flags that she became a red flag herself.

The biggest problem with the book was the coincidences. The one in which Zia is rescued by Baxter on the streets in the Bronx was so far-fetched, how anyone could not immediately recognize the setup is unbelievable. Zia is a smart woman, but this character flaw nearly ruined the book for me. She wasn't blinded by lust in this incident. However, she sure seemed remarkably clueless.