SYNOPSIS
Blake
I am a brother
I am a police detective
I am a contract killer
I don’t want to love
I don’t want to feel
I don’t want … EMPATHY.
They say some people are born with decreased activity in the front central lobe causing them a deficiency in empathy. Maybe that’s true about me but whether I was born this way or created in a moment of evil, empathy was something I didn’t possess until her green eyes met mine in the mirror and I couldn’t take her life.
I didn’t want to feel, didn’t want this woman in my life complicating how I lived but she was there at every turn. Sent to haunt me for my sins. Her light so bright she provoked a shadow from everyone she touched. When a job turns bad quickly altering my life forever I’m forced to feel. When nothing is making sense I’m forced to face truths I never would recover from. When life drowns you in its cruelty you don’t know which way the current will drag you or who you’ll become once you re-surface.
Melody
I was a daughter
I was a student
I was a victim
Did I have his love?
Did I make him feel?
Did I have his empathy?
When the actions of a soulless killer forces sorrow into my veins I never dreamed the man healing my wounds would be the one to leave the worst scar. His love would scar my soul. Scars are permanent; I will never feel the relief from them. Will I learn to live with them, remember why I have them and learn never to let him close enough to inflict more? Will I eventually cover them… like tattoos coating them with new memories, new love and new starts? I didn’t know these answers because the pain was too suffocating, the only thing I knew was they will always be under the surface lingering. He had scars too, from his sins. There is nothing that can cover them, they were too deep, too ugly, too dark and they marked us both forever.
Warning: This book will mess with your mind. It is a very dark, sexy, twisted romance novel. 18+ only.
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| 5 OMG so much action corsets |
Some people are born predestined to become evil, to mark the world with their darkness. Some paint the world in techno color, I paint it in red; blood red.
A dark romantic suspense, Empathy is my first read by this author and I was pleasantly surprised. The action was immediate and the intensity didn’t die out even at the very last word. Empathy revolves around three characters; Melody, Blake, and Ryan.
Blake is a disturbed soul with a duality: he is both a detective as well as a criminal. He believes he cannot feel empathy and has no emotions except for hate and lust. He collides with Melody and his world is forever changed. She will teach him that he does in fact have the capacity for empathy.
Ryan is Blake’s younger brother and isn’t as down to earth as he seems. Ryan hides behind a façade of mystery and perceived angst. Every girl at college wants to get inside his mind and pants as well. When Melody is a fellow student in a class he finally opens up to her, but what is he hiding?
Melody is a sweet, and sheltered young woman who develops a rough edge after coming home to find her parents slaughtered. Unable to erase the mark of darkness on her she contemplates why she was spared. She begins to move forward but a particular set of brothers will complicate everything further.
It's visible, a person's soul fracturing. You see their world collapse, their beliefs leave them. You see raw grief switch to anger and back again to inconsolable pain. Questions flitter through their soul. "Why has this happened to me?" The unanswered ache transforms their features. The shutters close over their eyes, dimming their light, shredding them of who they once were and altering them forever.
I didn’t feel this was a dark romance or dark erotica story. I found it extremely suspenseful and more of a thriller with dark elements. The story definitely threw me for a loop with its many twists but I have to say I’m not so sure whether I liked the twists or whether there would have been a different route that would have made the story darker.
Although I highly enjoyed the book, I did feel there were some areas that didn’t quite click. For being labelled as above average intelligence the brothers truly weren’t that smart when it came to common sense- Blake’s desk- are you kidding me?! Paper trail…just saying. And I would have liked a passionate and destructive love triangle- that would’ve put me over the edge! *fans self*
I almost feel thwarted by the author. How dare she write a character I adore and come to find out the character was a complete psychopath? I should have predicted he was so dark! See that is MY problem where these characters lacked empathy…I have too much.
I also adored Melody, she was so wholesome but not to a point that was unbelievable or unrealistic. She was a wonderful heroine and her character was thoroughly developed, in my opinion. She was reserved yet beautiful. Intelligent yet also naïve. Down to earth yet feisty. Naughty but also innocent. A wonderful combination of qualities that I as a reader can relate to.
The ending left a chill throughout me and I want to immediately jump into the next book. If there is one thing I cannot stress enough there was no plateau in this book, no twenty or so pages of light reading- from cover to cover it was intense, gory, sensual, and held me captive until I finished it.
5 stars because I enjoyed it so much and a book I’d highly recommend for many readers who enjoy crime, suspense, thrills dashed with angsty romance.
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