She’s in for the fight of her life…with the man who only wants to be her lover.

Fighter Mia Anderson has faced the dark side of life and survived. But just getting by is no longer enough. To fund her new life with her baby sister, she’s determined to beat the reigning king of the male fighters in New York’s underground MMA circuit, Tray “Fox” Knox.

Tray refuses to fight a woman, until he learns Mia’s tougher than anyone he has ever known. He soon realizes he wants more from her than blows and blood, and he’s willing to hit below the belt to get it. He’ll fight her, but if he wins, she spends the night in his bed. All night long, his rules. No tapping out.

Mia agrees, certain that he’ll lose. What she doesn’t realize is that Tray loves to fight dirty…and that this match may end up being the most important one of their lives.

Warning: Please be advised this book contains content some may find triggering (past sexual trauma) and also contains graphic sex and language that may not be suitable for underage readers.

Pretty enough shell, empty insides. Now my shell wasn’t so pretty anymore, yet I still used it to accomplish what I needed to.

I’ve had this on my TBR forever, but have been putting off reading it due to mixed reviews. I finally decided to bite the bullet, and am kicking myself for not reading it sooner. I LOVED IT. I can see how this may not be for everyone, but I loved everything about it; the writing style, the story, the characters, EVERYTHING

Gritty. Emotional. A little dark. And entirely enthralling.
Shadowboxer takes the reader beneath the bustling city of New York,

into the dark corner of underground MMA fighting.

But here’s the kicker, both the hero AND the heroine are fighters.

Mia Anderson is used to doing whatever it takes to support herself and her younger sister. She lives in the shadow of her devastating past and uses the physical pain to drown out the memories. She fights and she’s not afraid of taking punches. But she wants out of the underground MMA circuit, and her ticket out is to fight the reigning champion of the male fighters, Tray “Fox” Knox.

I bruised faces and occasionally broke bones for a living, but I’d never left a woman feeling bad about herself. My dignified Long Island upbringing hadn’t left me even though I now lived in a walkup in Brooklyn.

While Mia was the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, Tray seemingly has it all…he just doesn’t want it. Going against the grain and everything his rich parents wanted for him, he turned to underground fighting to beat his demons. But he draws the line at fighting a woman. Mia is desperate, and as infuriating as the sexy fighter is, she’s determined to ignore the sexual chemistry that instantly ignites between them and convince him to change his mind.

Guys like you, you think you know everything. You’ve got the world by a string, and it only ever unwinds the way you want it to. That’s not how it is for the rest of us. We have to fight for what we want. We have to bleed.

Mia is a character that’s difficult to understand at first. The book is a bit of a slow build, but it really takes off after the 30% mark. The more you find out about her past, the clearer her actions and thoughts become. My heart absolutely broke for her and what she had to go through. As much as I wanted to hate her for her treatment of Tray at times, I just couldn’t help but feel for her. Sure some of her methods of survival weren’t exactly orthodox, but I thought that Cari Quinn did a phenomenal job of painting a picture of a truly broken woman with an extra tough shell.

As for Tray? I fell in love with him from the first few pages. He was this perfect combination of a dirty talking badass

and a man that falls for the last woman he would expect to capture his heart.

My lungs seized up and I couldn’t haul in enough oxygen. She surrounded me, drenching me in everything she was…that had somehow become all I wanted.

I was completely enraptured by this story. It wasn’t a light read, though I wouldn’t exactly call it dark. It was somewhere in the middle, but incredibly entertaining.

While Fox gives into his attraction and feelings for Mia, Mia fights her feelings as long as she can. Her past has always paved her future, and her past was not a light one.

I wore my scars on my body because the internal ones had scabbed over and gone numb. If all I was destined to feel was pain, at least it was mine. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Stuff like this didn’t happen to girls like me.

I devoured this book from beginning to finish. Cari Quinn throws in some unexpected twists and turns, and all of it packed a hell of a punch. I couldn’t get enough. By the end of the book I was so invested in the couples relationship, I simply didn’t want it to end.

I am absolutely dying for the next book in this series. Mia’s sister and the baddest of the bad boys, Giovanni? I’m practically salivating for it.

If you enjoy MMA books that are different from anything you’ve read lately, emotional, gritty, and STEAMY AS FUCK, I can’t recommend this enough! I know I’m the odd one out within all the mixed reviews, but I really encourage readers to give this a shot. Who knows? You just may love it as much as I did!

The Amazon bestselling Impossible Series continues!

A woman shattered…

He took me and broke me.

I am plaything, a possession.

If I did ever have a name, I don’t remember it now.

Slaves don’t have names.

Salvation found in obsession…

He stole me away from the man who tormented me. He saved me and took me into his care. 

His touch keeps me sane.

His control keeps me grounded in reality.

He demands that I reclaim my humanity, my autonomy.

He forces me to piece the shards of myself back together.

I am utterly devoted to my savior, but his brand of rescue might leave me more broken than ever.

How can I ever become truly whole again if I can’t learn to let him go and take control of my own life? 

Do I have a hope of finding freedom when he refuses to release my heart?

Or is this new form of captivity just what I need to survive?

WARNING: Given the nature of this story, this book contains graphic violence and references to sexual assault, which some readers may find upsetting. It also contains sizzling scenes of (consensual) BDSM!

NOTE: Knight is part of the Impossible series, but it can be read as a standalone story without spoiling the other books.

3.5 Stars

Your name, girl.

Tell me. Now.”

Fear flashed across her features.

“F-fucktoy,” she whispered tremulously.”

This book was very different from anything I’ve ever read in the past and I struggled with my rating because of it. I’m a big fan of Dark Romance and BDSM and I’ve read plenty of it, but this was a mix of a few things and yet…not.

Knight starts off with Smith’s POV during the FBI raid of a BDSM club. Being a Dominant himself, it’s not something that’s out of his normal routine, but what Smith finds there manages to test even his carefully mastered control and anger. Because among the the faceless bodies in that place, he sees her. A woman that is clearly a sub, but even more clear a victim…but of what, he doesn’t know yet.

I didn’t have a name. If I did ever have a name, I didn’t remember it now. I was a slave, and slaves don’t have names.

The rest of the book gets told in her POV.

She knows herself only as slave. A woman so broken, she’s shattered, all at the hands of a monster that has put her through hell. Slave has suffered atrocities that are so painful, just the mere memory has the power to bring her to her knees. She doesn’t know the woman that she once was, she doesn’t remember her…nor does she want to. She’s no longer that woman. She’s buried that in the recess of her mind never to be accessed again.

I’ll be honest, the first 30% of so was very slow. It was difficult to read, and not because it was bad. Julia Sykes’ writing is captivating, and I enjoyed the way she painted a very vivid and painfully dark experience that Slave suffered. Slave is as broken as they come. Broken down to a mere shell of who she once was, she was as fragile as glass.

Smith knows that no medicine can help Slave in the state that she’s in. As a Dom, he knows the control and rules that she so desperately needs and clings to in order to maintain her fragile grasp on reality. So he takes it upon himself to give her that.

Julia Sykes did a fantastic job painting a very realistic picture of a woman that is beyond damaged. I understood her almost obsession and utter devotion to Smith.

I also enjoyed the progression that she goes through from Slave to a semblance of the woman she once was.

Although I wouldn’t call this a dark book, the things that Slave goes through were horrendous and not easy to digest. You have to prepare yourself since it’s no light read. However, it’s also not an action packed and high paced one. The progression is slow moving and slow building, which ultimately makes the story, yet also makes it difficult to get into right away.

Although slower paced that what I’d normally read, it managed to constantly keep me on my toes not knowing what would happen next. Julia manages to throw in some BAM moments that kept me guessing and on pins and needles almost afraid to see what would come next.

The overuse of endearments like “sweetheart” and “girl” did grate on me at times, but nothing that diminished my enjoyment. The love story is not an orthodox one, that’s for sure. What begins as as a clingy obsession turns into something much more eventually.

I really loved the way that the author build the heroine back up throughout the book. She goes from slave to her true identity in a very realistic way. This was not something that happened overnight and you feel that emotion and pain right along with her.

I can’t say that this is something I ever see myself going back to, but I did enjoy it. And I will definitely be continuing with the series as I’m invested in the story and very curious to see what the next book brings. Particularly with the “Mentor” still not caught.

Mainly told in Slave’s POV, the prologue and epilogue we do also get Smith.

**ARC courtesy of author in exchange for an honest review**

Love is like an avalanche. It hits hard, fast and without mercy.

At least it did for me when Sculpt, the lead singer of the rock band Tear Asunder knocked me off my feet. Literally, because he’s also a fighter, illegally of course, and he taught me how to fight. He also taught me how to love and I fell hard for him. I mean the guy could do sweet, when he wasn’t doing bossy, and I like sweet.

Then it all shattered.

Kidnapped.
Starved.
Beaten.
I was alone and fighting to survive.
When I heard Sculpt’s voice, I thought he was there to save me.

I was wrong.

(It is highly recommended to read “With You” the novella first).


*Warning: This book contains some disturbing situations, strong language and sexual content. Over 18 years.

We’re only broken when we’re apart.”

Holy shit. Wow. I had no idea what to expect from this book, but I was not expecting it to be as good as it was. The best advice I can give you is to go into this absolutely blind. Don’t read reviews as even some of the most minor stuff can be spoilers. I will try to sum this up the best I can without giving anything away.

One minute Emily is in love and giving her virginity to a man she loves and trusts implicitly. She’s been dating Sculpt, the lead singer of a band and underground fighter, for months now. She’s looking forward to more time with him, to plans, to hope…

The next minute she wakes up in her own personal hell.

Kidnapped.
Starved.
Beaten.
I was alone and fighting to survive.
When I heard Sculpt’s voice, I thought he was there to save me.

I was wrong.

At this point of the story I was completely and utterly lost. It was a state of “what the fuck” and “what’s going on”, but I read on

And the plot just thickened.

Logan, or Sculpt, went from being her dream to her personal nightmare in just a blink of an eye and the crack of a whip.

I’m scared.”
Logan stared at me with eyes that were cold, dark, and without a spark of…anything.
“You should be.”

Nashoda Rose wrote a captivating story that gripped me from the very first chapter. You experience every feeling, tremor, and lost hope along with the heroine. You want Logan to turn out to be the good guy, for this all to be some sort of trick, but is it really?

You need to fear me, not hate me.”
I did. I feared him. But I think I hated him more. No. I knew I hated him more. For what he’d done. For what he was doing. For the betrayal. Most of all, for tarnishing something so beautiful and making it ugly.

Emily was a heroine that I should have by all intents and purposes been annoyed with, but yet something about her just clicked for me.

As for Logan? Well, not much I can tell you about him without giving anything away. But what I can tell you is that by the end of the book you would have fallen for him. Hard.

There is a strong distinction in the writing and feeling of the first and second half. The first half having a much darker and grittier feeling to it, while the second half is more emotional. What happens to lead from one to the other? I won’t tell you that. That’s something you have to read to find out.

This is not a dark romance, but precisely as the blurb says it’s a romance with dark elements in it. It will suck you in and keep you riveted to the pages until the very last one.

Nashoda Rose definitely has herself a new fan after finishing this book, and I cannot wait to find out what she has in store with the next one.

Writing style: 1st person POV (dual POV’s in the 2nd half)