VICIOUS
Series: Sinners of Saint #1
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Author: LJ Shen
Release Date: December 27, 2016![]()

Emilia
They say love and hate are the same feelings experienced under different circumstances, and it’s true.
The man who comes to me in my dreams also haunts me in my nightmares.
He is a brilliant lawyer.
A skilled criminal.
A beautiful liar.
A bully and a savior, a monster and a lover.
Ten years ago, he made me run away from the small town where we lived. Now, he came for me in New York, and he isn’t leaving until he takes me with him.Vicious
She is a starving artist.
Pretty and evasive like cherry blossom.
Ten years ago, she barged into my life unannounced and turned everything upside down.
She paid the price.
Emilia LeBlanc is completely off-limits, my best friend’s ex-girlfriend. The woman who knows my darkest secret, and the daughter of the cheap Help we hired to take care of our estate.
That should deter me from chasing her, but it doesn’t.
So she hates me. Big fucking deal.
She better get used to me.
My obsession. My muse. My enemy.
It’s official. L.J. Shen is a witch. How else could the woman possibly crawl inside my mind and create a story that seriously felt custom written for me?
Uber angst? Check!
Hot alphahole hero? Holy hell, CHECK!
A heroine that’s the perfect blend of innocent but with a steel backbone? Check!
An enemies to lovers story that left me practically salivating? CHECK!
A sexual chemistry and a burn so good it makes you want to slap yo mama? CHECK!
An addicting, obsessive read from cover to cover? ABSOLUTELY FREAKING CHECK!!!
This guy is going to break my heart if I let him.
The Four HotHoles rule All Saints High. All the guys want to hang out with them and all the girls want to sleep with them. It doesn’t matter that women are more disposable to them than a pair of socks, they’ll gladly give up their dignity for a night…or a few hours in their bed. Vicious is the most brutal of the four. He’s a coldblooded asshole that practice bubbles over with barely surprised rage. And the target for the brunt of his anger is Emilia, his classmate and daughter of the hired help living at his father’s mansion.
Vicious was vicious. It was too bad that my hate for him was dipped in a thin shell of something that felt like love. But I promised myself I’d crack it, break it, and unleash pure hatred in its place before he got to me.
Emilia was a heroine you can’t help but like. They say the line is thin between love and hate and that’s definitely the case here. She wants to hate Vicious and he surely gives her plenty of reason to…and yet, he’s like a magnet drawing her in.
Shen did a phenomenal job with character development, that you don’t just read what they’re feeling, you feel it. That couldn’t be more true with Emilia. I clicked with her from the very first page. Here’s a heroine that’s down on her luck, down to her last penny, barely making ends meet working two jobs to support herself and her sick sister, but she still has this undercurrent of strength that you can’t help but respect.
Intersected with flashbacks to their high school years, the story develops in the present. Years after Emilia left All Saints High and Vicious behind. But circumstances soon bring her face to face once more with a man that made her teenage years a living hell.
I want to fuck you and watch your face while I do. To see how you drown in me as I hurt you as much as it hurts me to have to see your goddamn face every day.”
Now if you’re an angst lover like me, you will gobble up everything about this book and be left begging for more. The sexual tension between Vicious and Emilia crackles with electricity. I loved that added burn of hate lust between them. The woman definitely gave him a run for his money and for all his thinly veiled insults that he throws her way, you can see just how much he craves her underneath it all.
You’re pissing me off,” she said quietly, her eyes still searching my face.
“And that’s turning me on,” I retorted, my voice flat. “So you might wanna tone down the hate glares if you don’t wanna find yourself being fucked on this desk with the blinds still open.”
The writing was absolutely brilliant. Shen simply gets better and better with each book she writes and she truly outdid herself with this one. She gave us four heroes that you not only click with but obsess over. Sure, this book is focused on Vicious and I loved every page of it. But I also loved the three other HotHoles and if the set up for two of them is anything to go by, I already know I need their books.
As for this book? This is what obsession is made of. This book. These characters. This romance. It was too delicious for words. Simply. Addicting.
This is not a relationship. It’s two people fucking the obsession out of each other.”




My obsession. My muse. My enemy. 









The angst! THE ANGST! OMG THE ANGST. I love a good dose of the double A. Angst and alphaholes that is. Nom nom nom. And boy did this book have both of those in spades. I’m not even kidding. And it was SO delicious.







And this is just the first book! Lol! We might combust when The Knight comes out.
SOMEONE LIKE YOU


If you’re anything like me, then you’ve been both eagerly anticipating and dreading Lincoln’s book. Anticipating it because you love those irreverent playboys, and dreading because you’re afraid that you’ve been building up your expectations in anticipation. Lincoln’s story was the one I’ve been waiting for since
Daisy is Emma’s (from
What you see is not at all what you get with him and soon the pieces begin to click together towards the heartrending secret that he keeps. My heart went through a ringer with him. It’s impossible not to fall for him, not to feel his pain, not to want to soothe and heal him. In between the easy friendship that Lincoln and Daisy instantly develop, there was such a deep emotion interspersed with a hidden craving. God. GOD but I loved these two together.
Someone Like You was an incredibly powerful, poignant and emotional romance. It was a story of second chances and healing. It was a stunning story of finding your strength again and moving on. It’s a story of courage and love. It was absolute perfection and reminded me all over again why I first fell in love with Lauren Layne’s writing. The woman can make you feel, laugh, and love all in 228 wonderful pages. If you’ve enjoyed the rest of the Stiletto and Oxford series and you’ve been anticipating Lincoln’s story as much as I have, this is a must read. But have a box of tissues ready, because you won’t come out of it unscathed. Be ready to shed some tears and swoon over the perfect imperfection that is Lincoln Mathis.
THE PAWN



This was easily my favorite by this author to date. Gripping. Captivating. Magnetic. Dark. Erotic. It was EVERYTHING I love about a dark romance. It’s not gratuitous violence and scenes thrown in for pure shock value. It’s a mind fuck. An incredibly written, twisty, and delicious mind fuck that I couldn’t put down from beginning to finish; with a heroine you’ll want to root for, and an anti-hero that you’ll want to hate only slightly more than you love him.
Growing up in privilege and money, Avery had an enchanted life. She idolized her father, she looked forward to her future and starting college, she had a doting boyfriend that she suspected only wanted her for his status, she had little worries aside from questioning her relationship…until it all crashed down on her…
If you’re a fan of this author, and you love a well written dark romance, this is one book that you do NOT want to miss. I may go crazy in my wait for the conclusion, but I don’t regret a moment of it because I have the best book high after finishing this. All of the stars!


BLACK SWAN AFFAIR


It’s official. I’m ruined. Utterly and totally ruined by this incredible book, by these beautiful words, by the heart wrenching story, by the devastating angst…this…EVERYTHING.
Yep. That about sums it up.
Have you ever read a romance where you didn’t know which man to root for? Where your feelings were so up and down you felt like you were in a never ending spiral? Where you spend the entire time glued to the pages, utterly incapable of tearing yourself away for even a mere second? Because I just did.
Mesmerizing, maddening, heart rendering; this book owned me to the depths of my dark soul. I devoured every page, I screamed, I cried, I raged. I was enraptured.
CARESSED BY ICE





DOWN SHIFT

See that pile of goo right there?
Goo I tells ya!
SPARKING THE FIRE


That’s it! Stick a fork in me, I’m done! I am a pile of dead and melted goo, all at the hands of a broody, silent, former Marine turned firefighter. I would like my headstone to read that my ultimate demise came from the hottest BILF I’ve ever read, and I regret nothing. NOTHING.
I am head over ovaries in love with this series. I’d set my house on fire just to get my very own Wyatt Fox to come over and put out my fire…uhem.




LOVING YOU EASY

Well hot diggity damn that was freaking AWESOME! No seriously, y’all! That was quite possibly my favorite book in this series. And let me just tell you, I’ve been a huge fan of this series from book 1, so that’s really saying something. I must have read this entire thing in one pervy glee filled sitting. I couldn’t put it down for even a second. This book was everything I love as a romance reader. Yes, like all of Roni’s books in the series it was smoking hot, but it was also so much more than that! It was a little angsty with some suspense and mystery thrown in. The characters were incredibly endearing that you simply can’t help but fall for them right away. And then there was Hayes. *dreamy sigh*
I loved everything about this book. EVERYTHING. I loved how different each of these three characters were. I loved the relationship between Ren and Hayes and how they feed each other’s strength. I loved the bond they share going back to their teenage years. I also loved how quirky and endearing Cora was. She wasn’t a bombshell and she knew it. Yes, she certainly had her insecurities, but they didn’t define her. She was such a strong character and I loved how that played into the later part of the story. This is no damsel in distress and I adored that about her. Ren was enigmatic from his very first appearance, and you didn’t even know his name then. I couldn’t get enough of him.
Some of my favorite characters from previous books had a cameo, which I always appreciate. And I loved a few of the new faces we got to meet here. I was captivated by the budding romance and I was so invested in the lives of these characters that I couldn’t bear to put the book down for even a second.



















“Wyatt didn’t want it, but without his permission, his heart started beating again. 




























