RUINED SINNER
Series: Hellfire Club #4
Genre: New Adult Romance
Author: Becker Gray
Release Date: August 24, 2021
It’s no secret that I hate Phineas Yates, but what most people don’t know is that I have a very good reason why.
One hot summer, he broke my heart in the worst way, and I promised myself then and there that I would never fall prey to the sinner of Pembroke Prep again.
Even if it meant re-inventing myself into a girl I barely recognized.
There is a fine line between duty and desire.
I’m not just any girl, I’m a princess. When my family begs me to get engaged to save the family name, I’m trapped with no way out.
In a panic, I blurt out the ultimate lie and create myself a fake boyfriend.
Which means I need someone to foot the bill immediately.
The problem? The only person willing to help me is the one person I never want to see again: the careless, heartless, hot-as-Hellfire playboy himself.
Phineas Yates.
The even bigger problem? His help doesn’t come for free. And this sinner won’t be satisfied with anything less than my absolute ruin.
The way I saw it, Aurora Lincoln-Ward owed me. She owed me for the two years we’d spent apart. And I wasn’t going to let her get away with making amends with her body, oh no. She was going to pay with her heart.
Well, here I am, in my typical way of doing things backasswards, reading book 4 first. What?
In my defense, I have the first three books and have every intention of reading them. It’s just that when I saw the blurb to this one, my impatience got the best of me. And…well…I have zero impulse control, okay? God! Get off mah tits!
But I digress. New Adult is my jam. I live for a good NA romance with a good splash of enemies to lovers and hate lust. So it’s no surprise that I read this in one sitting. I enjoyed the writing style and I liked the concept of the book. Girl has crush on boy who seems to crush on her back, boy screws up so the girl spends two years hating him and making him pay. Then girl is in a bind with her family pushing an arranged marriage on her and the boy blackmails her into a fake relationship by giving her the appearance of a boyfriend she needs for her family, while asking for her time and maybe her body in return. And don’t get it twisted, the girl is quite eager to give him her body, so there’s that.
So why 3 stars? A few reasons. The conflict was just too childish for me. Now look, I realize that I’m reading about teenagers her. I get it. But that doesn’t take away from the main conflict being too childish for me. Aurora spends two years making Phin pay for his mistake. And while I get the emotion, her reaction was SO extreme to the point of changing herself. I could have dealt with all that, but then the main conflict at the end was just too much. It was not only childish but just came out of nowhere. It was my least favorite conflict to read about and this is entirely a personal preference thing, so don’t take my feelings as gospel. But I suppose for me, I wanted more character development. Aurora just felt a bit two dimension for me. It was difficult to connect with her and her reasons because of it.
Obviously I still enjoyed it, my quibbles aside. And it certainly hooked me on the series and has me wanting to read the rest. So if you’re looking for a steamy NA with some hate lust, this may do the trick quite nicely.
