The Blurb:
Don't say it unless you mean it…
It's a simple concept, one I've said time and again, but something people don't seem to comprehend. You should choose every syllable carefully, because you never know when somebody will hold you to your word.
Somebody like me.
I'm not a good man. I'm not. I know. I have enough darkness inside of me to rid the world of every stitch of light. But there's one I could never harm, one light I couldn't bring myself to snuff out.
Karissa.
She thinks I'm a monster, and maybe I am. I taunt her with my touch, get a thrill out of torturing her soul. But I'm not the only one. The world is full of monsters, and I'm not the most dangerous one out there.
Not even close…
God help me, I love her.
I do.
And God help anyone who tries to take her from me.
I think the biggest hurdle for me as I began this book was wondering why on earth Naz is so invested in Karissa. She’s half his age, she doesn’t come off as particularly bright, and I found her point of view in Monster so grating that I almost didn’t even bother with this sequel.
…I’m so glad I did. This book finally delivers the point of view I had so many questions about: Naz. Do I necessarily get his obsession with Karissa? Well, no. I still don’t. But at least I was able to get a glimpse inside his mind about the whole thing. Naz’s view of the world is fairly condescending, negative, and paranoid. Which makes the way he looks at Karissa a lot more significant, because even when he thinks she may just hate him outright, he still thinks she’s beautiful, body and soul.
There is more effort to establish a level of intimacy in this one as well. Without spoiling anything, Naz has a crisis that forces him to put more trust in Karissa; likewise Karissa is put in a position where she has to decide if she’s going to stick by him or take advantage of his crisis and bail. The slow build-up is immensely more satisfying when told from Naz’s POV and really kept me turning the page, waiting to see if things were going to work out for them.
Now, let’s talk about those sex scenes for a minute.
I didn’t care for a lot of the sex as described by Karissa in Monster. It just didn’t sound particularly intimate or inspired, and they often weren’t detailed enough to even graze the surface of what should have been a bigger deal: Karissa is sleeping with a man twice her age. That, in and of itself, would have been enough to create quite a bit of intrigue, lest we forget he also, ya know, kills people for a living. But Karissa’s narrative was just…what you’d expect from a teenager, I guess.
Well, I’ll go ahead and say it: I can’t speak for anyone else, but I had a lot of questions about what being hate fucked by an armed assassin must be like.
So. Fucking. Delivered.
”Careful,” I whisper, my voice low and raw from the restrained emotion. “You know I like it when you fight.”
Naz’s descriptions are raw, passionate, and attach a level of emotion to things that was sorely needed if I was to believe these two would or could continue to stick it out together after how the first one ends.
I'm not sure why, but at some point I started picturing Misha Collins as Naz, complete with Castiel voice, suit, and trench coat.
All in all, I’m definitely going to pick up the third book now that I know we’re cooking with gas.
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