Five years after watching her father murdered before her eyes, Saylor Mitchell is hunted by the same killers who took him, and saved by the one man who knew him best. Blue is a reformed assassin with a violent past he can't outrun, and the only person who can teach Saylor to fight back against the Crow, the gang responsible for her father's death. As his lessons turn into obsession, Saylor must decide how far she's willing to go for vengeance, and what she's willing to become to get it.
My Review
This book had everything I want from a dark romance: a broody assassin, a gothic mansion clinging to a cliff, a town full of reformed murderers who just can’t quite kick the habit. I was hooked in the first pages. Then somewhere around the midpoint it just fell apart.
Saylor watched her father get murdered five years ago, and now his killers are back to finish the job. Enter Blue, her father’s best friend, a “murder sober” assassin who saves her and then basically keeps her. The setup is great. The execution is not.
My biggest issue is the romance itself. Saylor and Blue go from strangers to obsessed in about five seconds flat, no slow burn, no tension, just insta-lust that skips all the good stuff. I wanted to feel that pull building. Instead I got a switch flipped.
The “training” premise (Saylor learning to kill so she can avenge her father) sounded so fun on paper, but it’s mostly just Blue fending off assassination attempts while Saylor stands around. Where were the actual lessons? Where was the tension of her learning to become something she never wanted to be? Instead we got endless therapy-session-style conversations with Blue that stalled the pacing instead of deepening anything.
The banter, which should carry a book like this, landed flat and a little cringe more often than not. And the plot crawls for two thirds of the book before slamming into a rushed, predictable finale that undercuts all that gothic, murder-town atmosphere the setup promised.
Grimlock as a setting deserved a better book built around it.
Thanks to Libro.fm for the gifted ALC.