Book Review | Vicious

It’s been a while, had a bit of a reading slump last month but luckily I’ve got back into the swing of it and this is one of the books that helped.

Vicious
L.J. Shen

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.

Goodreads | The StoryGraph | Amazon

I remember when I read The Kiss Thief, I loved it and I was desperate to dive into another of this authors books…fast forward four years (!!) and I have eventually got my hands on another to read. I was hoping that this one would be another wonderful bit of escapism, and it was.

Vicious was definitely a lot darker and way more angsty than I was expecting, but in the way that makes you not want to put the book down. L.J. Shen writes ruthless alpha males so well that there is always an element of love/hate about her domineering male characters, but admittedly, I usually end up more on the love side of the spectrum.

I did find myself veering a little too close to hate sometimes with Vicious, though, he almost went too far to be redeemable at some points, and had a lot more power than I would imagine possible even for a rich teenager, but managed to pull it back. There was something that was fascinating about him that kept me reading, and I spent most of the book hoping that Emilia would mellow him out.

Emilia was a nice character; she was a little too much of a pushover for my liking. She was such a kind character, but to the point of letting people take advantage. She does become stronger as the story progresses, but I feel I would have liked to see more fire between her and Vicious earlier in the story. I did like that they were so opposite in nature, though, it made for some interesting chemistry.

Well, hopefully I won’t leave it so long between my next LJ Shen book, perhaps as this is a series, I will dive into the next book and see what the other characters are up to.