Laces by Tempi Lark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Welcome to Hawthorne Asylum.
Welcome to hell.
This place isn’t run by the doctors who make you talk or the orderlies who force you to swallow your pills.
It belongs to them, to the Infamous Four.
Tabloids, talk shows, documentaries—their faces have been plastered everywhere. Not because of their impressive rap sheets, but because of how they look.
And when I arrive, they take notice. Especially their king: Lincoln “Laces” Caster.
He’s dark and disturbed.
He’s controlling and possessive.
The exact kind of boy I should stay away from if I want to clear my name and get out of here.
Laces
Hannibal Sketcher and friends!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: ❤️💙💜💛💚
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📙📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌎🌏🌍🌎
Character development: 👤👤👤
The setting: Hawthorne Asylum
The Hero(s): Lincoln Castor “a.k.a. Laces” – he rules the Asylum. Laces likes to sketch pictures of dead women. Things like one of the nurses hanging from the Eiffel Tower with her intestines pouring out of her body, or a picture of the new girl with a sword in her chest. He is the scariest person in the Asylum.
The heroine: Gambrielle Evans – committed to the Asylum after accusing her step-father, who is a district attorney, of murdering her sister. She has been abused by her stepfather and suffers from panic attacks.
The Love Story: Laces is taken with Gambrielle from the start, though he doesn’t know why he is drawn to her. She isn’t weak and submissive like his usual type and he can’t use her to get something for himself like he and his friends do with Nurse Kline.
The story was very well done. I like the idea of people with mental illness finding each other. Plus the fact that not all of them technically have mental illness. Gambrielle was put away in the Asylum because her rich District Attorney stepfather killed her sister and nobody believed her stories about abuse and murder. Her mother testified for her husband and against her daughter saying they were together so Gambrielle couldn’t have witnessed what she said she did.
Gambrielle’s sole purpose is to get out of the asylum, if even for a weekend to find more evidence agains her step-father. To do that she has to earn a star every day for good behavior. Laces and his friends, Reyes Park, Varla English, and Thorne Walsh take Gambrielle in as part of their group.
The book got pretty hilarious at some points, especially when Laces was talking to his Doctor about his private parts. There was also a pretty great scene where Thorne played a video about why he was committed to the Asylum. You could tell at that point that some of these guys, despite appearing so normal, were in there for a reason.
I liked the story though it ended too soon and the cliffhanger ending made absolutely no sense, so I guess I will see how that turns out in book two. I would have given this five stars, but the character development wasn’t quite there. I know next to nothing about Laces and just when they started to go through what each one did to get committed, Gambrielle ended it, so we only got to find out about Thorne. hopefully book two will be longer with a bit more character development.
I voluntarily read & reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts & opinions are my own.
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