God of War by Rina Kent

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A standalone enemies-to-lovers, marriage of convenience romance.

I fell for the villain.
It happened back when I was a clueless girl.
But he ruthlessly broke my heart and trapped it in a jar.
Since then, I’ve sworn to hate him to the end of my days.
Eli King might be a savage devil, but I’m out of his way. And league. 
That is until I wake up in a hospital and find him holding my hand.
He tells me the words that change my life forever.
“We got married two years ago, Mrs. King.”
So I set out to investigate how I landed myself into this marriage.
Turns out, my memories are darker than my present. 
I thought I was ready for the hurricane.
I thought I could handle his soulless eyes and cold shoulder.
I thought wrong.
Nothing can stop my husband.
Not the secrets surrounding us.
Not the hatred between us.
Not even me. 

God of War

a girl with psychosis!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙❤️💚🖤
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌏🌎
Character development: 😊😄😘🥰
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Duet Narration

The heroine: Ava – recently she has been partying and using alcohol, drugs, and anything she can get her hands on to forget her recent situation. She was a cello prodigy who just participated in an international cello competition, though she was not happy with her performance where she ended up storming off the stage. Her best friend Cecily has been helping her out of her funk ever since she was ill. Though Cecily will soon be moving with her boyfriend Jeremy to the states. He has told Ava that she has been too dependent on Cecily and too clingy. Nobody knows but Ava has had three panic attacks in three days and is spiraling towards a huge one. She thinks she doesn’t deserve love because she is mentally sick.

The Hero: Eli – He is the son of Aiden King, the grandson of Jonathon King. They make one of the wealthiest and most influential families in England. Some say all of them are a bit sociopathic. He is arrogant and makes others feel like they are less than a spec of dust beneath his shoes. He has high cheekbones, full lips and mysterious eyes. People can’t tell what he is thinking by looking in his eyes.

The Story: Ava sees Eli King as her nemesis. He crushed her heart years ago and completely changed her feelings for him. She now loathes him and the fact that he always seems to be wherever she is, hidden away, just watching her, bothers her and prevents her from feeling free. Once, Ava used to look at him as a God, but he ruined her, and she hates that stupid version of herself. Now she does her best to meet him with indifference. Until one night while driving, she sees a car following her without headlights on and ends up crashing her car.

I am a huge Rina Kent fan and have been since her first book. I have read nearly everything she has written and marked most of them as either four or five stars. I like her brand of dark romance. She is great at writing enemies to lovers and making the biggest bullies into the most obsessive, possessive alpha male anti-heroes that would do just about anything for the woman they love. Eli and Ava are no different. When she wakes up in the hospital, she sees Eli by her bedside, though he looks a bit older, and his hair is longer. Ava finds out she has lost two years of her life and is now married to Eli King.

Ava was an odd duck, in that her mental state was always shaky. From the time she was in high school she always was legally required to have a guardian. She always had to see a therapist and due to her psychosis, and constant mental breakdowns and fugue episodes, she needed permission to do things like open a bank account, having access to funds and any administrative procedures. When she married Eli, he became her guardian rather than her father.

Though Rina Kent has dealt with mental illness and even amnesia in previous books, this one was very different in that Ivy was obviously suffering from deeper mental issues than just the amnesia. It also confused me because it was obvious that Eli was so in love with Ivy that he was willing to work hard at keeping her mental problems between himself and his staff and to take care of her to the best of his abilities.

I don’t know why when she joked about him falling for her and loving her, he made it clear that he would never love her. I think she was just a bit too ill for my liking, though it was definitely interesting. It seems to me that his desire for a woman that was so mentally ill was kind of strange. I like a story more when I can identify with the heroine, and I just couldn’t identify with Ivy at all.

This audiobook was told in dual points of view via duet narration and was narrated by Shane East and Zara Hampton-Brown. Shane East is my favorite British narrator. He has a very deep but soft voice and sounds like an upper crust society guy which works well for most romance books. Zara Hampton Brown isn’t one of my favorites but has a decent voice and sounds age appropriate for Ava.

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