SHATTERED AND HOOKED! **4.5 "no man owns me" stars**
“I always tell the truth, even when I lie”
HE’S ALIVE!!!!! … That ruggedly handsome, man-bun rockin’, muscled and tattooed beast of a killer lives to see another day. My Zeke. Whoop, whoop. When last we saw him in the explosive ending to the Truth & Lies series, Enzo’s self-sacrificing bestie and right-hand man went overboard to sleep with the fishes in the conclusive battle. Seems he washed up near-death around St. Kitt’s Island where he really is saved from drowning by a seriously skilled femme fatale named Siren. She dumps him on the island’s resident criminal creep Julian for medical help to save his life. Zeke thinks he dreamed her and credits Julian with his recovery, until he runs into her again a couple months later while working off his indebtedness to Julian as a matter of honor. The debt is nearly paid in full and Zeke’s about to bounce back to Miami and hook up with the Enzo clan (won’t they be shocked that he’s alive), but then Siren’s presence gums up his plans.
All I can say is – men are suckers for a woman. Will they never learn? Everything I breathe in and worship about Zeke – his protectiveness, his code of honor, his dedication to keeping promises, and doing the right thing – is still on full display in this opener to the SINFUL TRUTHS spinoff of Truth or Lies". All alone without Enzo’s crew as backup, Zeke only has his wits and skills and experience and money (lots of it, it seems) to rely on … and boy, are Julian and Siren a handful. You gotta give the boy credit for helping a damsel in distress though … especially one who says she can never lie. That should be a bonus, but only confuses Zeke the way she wields it like a weapon.
The girl is full of more hat tricks than a magic act and twice as slippery. She’s a really interesting girl with self defense skills, a brazenly fiery spirit, and quirks like never lying and having misphonia (visceral reaction to ordinary sounds). I mean she’s totally hot and deadly at the same time. When they’re thrown together under the most unexpected circumstances that make Zeke risk everything, it’ll take everything in his arsenal to survive her. Hate to say it, but Siren is one tiny, powerhouse beauty of a mindblower and has shoved Kai out of first place in my head. I never saw her coming, and neither did Zeke. The last series had the MCs playing the “truth & lies” game that gets a new twist here in the “truth or sin” game”. The start of their turbulent and wild adventure already has me in tortured knots. I really groove on adventure romances, and the author is great at churning the waters.
There are certainly gaps of logic in this story that don’t make sense and I had a real issue with characters manipulatively “breaking the 4th wall” in that vein, but I don’t care because I’m hanging on every word and will just go with it. None of these OTT romantic adventures are realistic, but lordy do they provide some real, escapist fun and smoking hot sex. The sexual tension had me broken out in flop sweat, and Zeke seriously loses his objectivity around Siren. She vows never to give up her heart to a man again, making it a nail-biting toss-up whether they’re moving toward once in a lifetime fireworks when he says “I want to own your body. I want to control your mind”, or are they doomed to romantic annihilation?
Is Zeke or Siren in control, and how far can Zeke trust Julian? Will Zeke’s honor code be his undoing? The twists and turns smacked me in the face in the ending with another trademark, jawdropping cliffy. That’s what you call getting schooled. I keep saying my heart doesn’t have the stamina to survive another exhausting series, but that’s a lie. I’m caught once again like a butterfly in a net.