I really enjoyed this read
Dark romances have a special place in my heart. My little heart just eats them up. Also, I love cats and this book had one so I fell in love. Lol. Dark romances and cats are the way to my heart. Who knew?
Let’s get into that cover. Ethereal, menacing. Hauntingly beautiful. Which is the best phrase to describe this story.
Alois and Isani (side note her, but these names for perfectly with both lead characters. Sometimes the names of the MCs make me irrationally irritated and I question why authors couldn’t google better names, but this one nailed it) are star-crossed lovers who are eventually tied to each other after one - and immortal supernatural- becomes unhealthily obsessed with the other. Cue the love bombing, stalking, yandere behaviour. All of which, in the real world, MAJOR red flags. In this story *checks notes* oh yeah, also MAJOR red flags.
Alois is the new French professor at Isani’s college where she is an ecology professor. He sees her, falls head over heels and promptly ensues in all of the aforementioned behaviours. Stalking, obsessing, etc. much to the chagrin of the Math professor and Isani’s best friend- Nito. Nito is one half of the best friend group with the other being Denise. The friendship is good, pretty grounding, but, I found a lot of their conversation cringe and found myself wincing at some of their verbal exchange. Regardless, they’re a tight knit group and that was displayed throughout the story. Would it be a friend group though, if one of the members weren’t hopelessly in love with another? Nope, therein lies Nito’s predicament. He has feelings for our girl Isani, kept his mouth shut and in swoops our DARK knight to feret her away. Forever. More on that later.
Alois makes a deal with Isani for 10 dates so he can get her to fall in love with him. In return, her students can use the greenhouse and land in his family’s mansion for their project. This is a big deal because prior, her class had no place to do their practical classes. She agrees and the countdown begins. We don’t really get an insight into the first 6 or so dates, but we know they’ve been happening once a week and Isani was falling faster than flapjacks my cats swipe after I’ve turned my attention away for a second.
Alois, goes FULL yandere creepy factor and starts watching Isani in her house in his wraith figure where she can’t see him. She feels his presence, but doesn’t know what it is. These scenes are done really well. It felt creepy, violating and increased my heart rate. I felt Isani’s paranoia at being watched, not seeing anything and start mentally talking yourself against the existence of ghosts and spirits. Little did she know…
Tierra perfectly captured the suspense, paranoia, fear, despair, panic, deep regret, longing and friendship in this story. I enjoyed seeing the themes come alive on the pages. Written well. However, some of the traits did not align with who were introduced to Isani to be and who she was. We were led to believe she was a scientific woman. She didn’t even entertain the notion of the world of the occult, chalking it up instead to an overworked amygdala. Keeping this in mind COUPLED with the fact that she had an abusive cheating ex, I find it INCREDIBLY doubtful that she would continue to be interested in Alois after he BLATANTLY displayed red flags. Especially after that restaurant scene. Even worse! As close as she was to her friends who were overprotective due to know her traumatic relationship history, I very much doubt that they would make excuses for the behaviour Alois exhibited. I’m calling BS on that. Author should have had them call out Alois on that and tell Isani to run for the hills. If they did that though, we wouldn’t have a story. So…
I might be in the minority here, but I like Alois. I liked him after he revealed the truth to Isani. He gave dark and I loved it. Lapped it right up. He protec, he attack, but most importantly, he got her back. I understood Isani’s reaction though. Realistic. Who would not lose their minds after learning all of this? Girl, tis naught but your own fault for moving at the bloody speed of light. Come now.
Why isn’t it 5 stars? The story was littered with typos. At first I could ignore it because when a story is good, typos are ignorable. However, they continued throughout. Steadily. Which started becoming a distraction. Sometimes entire letters either missing from words and at that point, I’m a little more than slightly annoyed.
Another reason was that it was hard to follow along and understand what was happening on the page at times. It felt like Tierra (author) started typing something, then her thoughts got jumbled and she never read through to fix the error of a jumbled thought. A scene that stands out with this is the scene with the handkerchief and Jared. I had to pause, squint, reread, then read aloud and I was still a bit perplexed by it.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. 4.5 stars. Loved the ending. I missed Alois. lol.