***4 ‘I’m becoming the charade’ Stars***
I’m going to start off by stating that I did not read The Artists trilogy nor The Dirty Angels trilogy, I have them, but we all know how real the whole “So many books, so little time” thing is, but I will admit that I really want to now and will hopefully get there one day, but until then...
Holy. Hell. Black Hearts is all kinds of dark smexy romance mixed with a good dose of mystery and suspense. So many secrets, so many lies and so many little games in play that I the anticipation of what would come next and by whose wickedly devious mind, kept me turning the pages.
Keeping this unspoilery as possible is gonna be damn hard, but here goes nothing. Vicente is smoking hot and devious, which comes as no surprise to anyone considering who his papa is. He sees himself as a cut above and in many ways he is and yet despite all he thinks he knows, he doesn’t know it all. I do love me a devious and morally sideways mind and Vicente fits the bill and yet there is a bit of gooey goodness in him, but only a bit.
Violet is an enigma in the sense that she doesn’t even really know who she is. She’s set herself apart from everyone for various reasons and yet has a backbone of steel, if she should ever need it. I liked Violet, I did. She has a lot of layers, many of which she has never explored, but I loved the way she looked at the world. It wasn’t with rose colored glasses, she saw the light and dark and loved them both.
Vicente and Violet’s romance gets hot and heavy quickly, though there is no insta-love, but as things progress and despite the uneven terrain it’s being built on, they both find that the other has that something that they both never knew they needed. So seeing their relationship develop and the shifts in perception they have based on their time together had me cringing because I knew the devastation that would come once the truth was revealed and yet that dark, twisted part of me couldn’t wait to see it and see what they would do.
This my first time reading a Karina Halle dark romance and dear lord did I love it! The characters are well written and intriguing and holy hell are the sex scenes all kinds are dark, smexy goodness. But it was all the little intrigues that were woven into the fabric of this story that kept me turning the pages to see what would happen next. I had my suspicions on a couple of things and I couldn’t help but do a whole “Ha! I knew it!” punch in the air thing when one thing I guessed at was revealed. As I said in the beginning I haven’t read either trilogies that this one is a spinoff of but I wasn’t lost, I simply want to read them even more now. Ms. Halle does a great job at giving you the important pieces without interrupting the flow of Vicente and Violet’s story. There is a cliffy of a sort, it is a duet so it’s to be expected, and it was done perfectly and makes me wish I had Dirty Souls sitting on my Kindle to read right now! But, alas, that isn’t the case so I will be practicing patience as I wait for it to eventually appear.
~ Copy provided by the author ~
For Vicente Bernal, truth is all he’s known. The son of an infamous drug lord, Vicente was born to help run the family business, which means he’s been raised on a throne of sordid pasts and dirty laundry, violence and pride. But when Vicente stumbles across someone he’s not supposed to know about – a woman from his father’s checkered past – he sets out to California to find her behind his father’s back.
What Vicente doesn’t expect to find in San Francisco is Violet McQueen, the woman’s twenty-year old daughter. Beautiful and edgy with a vulnerability he can’t resist, Violet tempts Vicente from afar and though he promised himself he’d stay away from her, curiosity and lust are powerful forces. Besides, Vicente has always gotten everything he wants – why shouldn’t he have Violet too?
Soon his wants turn into an obsession, one that sweeps Violet into his games as they fall madly, deeply in love with each other, the type of first love that can drive a person mad.
But it’s a love with tragic consequences.
Both the truth – and the lies – not only threaten to tear them apart, but threaten their very lives.
Someone has to pay for the sins of the fathers.
And they’ll be paying the price with their souls.
NOTE: Black Hearts is book one of the Sins Duet, with the sequel, Dirty Souls, releasing in March 2017.
These books can be read as a standalone – though they are a spinoff of the Sins & Needles and Dirty Angels trilogies, Black Hearts & Dirty Souls are set 20 years in the future and follow new characters. You do NOT need to read TAT or DA to enjoy or understand this duet.
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