~WRITING - PLOT - PACE~
My goodness, this book was good, but it was also crazy intense. There wasn't anything sweet or heartwarming about this story. It was dark. It was gritty. It was filled with seriously f-cked up characters and tons of nasty sex. The writing was fantastic though. But I had a few issues with the pace. It was a bit too long in my opinion and the last 30% really dragged for me. That said, the plot was incredibly engaging for the first 70% and even though the last 30% felt like a bit of a slog to get through I was still very invested in the story. My other issue was that although this can be read as a standalone there were times especially later in the book that we seemed to jump over important events with no explanation. Which left me a bit confused. I assume these events may take place in Cole's books (A TWISTED FAIRYTALE)? But it would have been nice had the author at least gave us a few lines of explanation. One minute a character is alive and well and the next scene they are talking about this character's death with ZERO explanation to what happened. This happened more than a few times and with some pretty HUGE and important events! It really took away from the story. Last, that ending??!! It slayed me.
~MAIN CHARACTERS~
HORSE...I don't even know where to start with this guy. My heart broke for him a million times during this book but he was NOT a good person. He did a lot of f-cked up sh!t and hurt a lot of people. But there was just something that shone through and made you want to hug him. His relationship with Cole was so good. So complicated. So twisted and messed up.
COLE...I liked him. His character wasn't anywhere near as developed as Horse's in this book and because of that, I struggled at times with understanding his decisions. I am guessing that since he has a duet (A TWISTED FAIRYTALE) dedicated to him and Elle that a good portion of THIS story is retold through his eyes in those books.
~SECONDARY CHARACTERS~
There were quite a few secondary characters that have varying degrees of importance. Some I loved. Some I hated. Some made me bawl my eyes out. Some I would like to read more about. All of them added amazing amounts of depth to this story.
~HEAT LEVEL~
Extremely High. My god was this book full of sex and sex scenes. M/M. MMF. MFM. A smidge of F/F. Loads of raw and raunchy sex. Cheating. Rape. Rough sex. Angry sex. Choking.
~ANGST LEVEL~
Very High. This book was kind of brutal to read. It was full of cheating. Push and pull. Unrequited feelings. Death. Torture. Murder. It was definitely not a unicorn farting rainbows type of read (lol). It will put you through the ringer for sure.
~IN THE END~
I enjoyed this one a lot and now I really want to read Cole's story. That said, it wasn't without a few issues (too long and events skipped over without explanation) and those things had me lowering my rating a bit. That said, this author knows her way around a story. She pulled SO many emotions from me. I was angry. I was crying. I wanted to shake the ever-loving hell out of some of these characters. I didn't even care that no one ever stayed faithful
