Poison Ivy by Steffanie Holmes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ll do anything to get in. I’ll even become theirs.

Victor. Torsten. Cassius – the jock, the artist, the stepbrother.
The Poison Ivy Club.
Ruthless.
Connected.
Violent.
Untouchable.

They rule Stonehurst Prep with an iron fist.
If you want Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, they’ll get you in.
Guaranteed.
But they’ll take their pound of flesh first.
A deal’s a deal – you give them whatever they want, and they’ll make your dreams come true.

And they want me.
In their beds.
On their arms.
Part of their gang.

I’ll do anything to get into an Ivy League school.
I’ll lie. I’ll cheat.
I’ll get on my knees.
I’ll kill.

But those three dark princes will never have my heart.

Poison Ivy

A blind heroine!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🖤💙❤️💚
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 🙂🥰😎🤩😘
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration

The heroine: Fergus Monroe (a.k.a. Fergie) – she just moved to Emerald Beach California, to be with her dad after Fergie imploded her life. She had to run from her past life in Massachusetts after “the incident” and move in with her dad and new stepmother Collie, whom she had never met before because he married her on a whim in Las Vegas. Fergie is blind and walks with a cane. She was betrayed by the guy she left back in Massachusetts. She doesn’t want this new life; she just wants her old life back. She feels numb and detached since “the incident.” The good girl in her died that day and a broken girl has taken her place.

The Heroes: Cassius, Victor, Torsten – Fergie’s new stepbrother and his friends. They are the Poison Ivy Club. The do favors for people for a price.
Cassius Dio (a.k.a. Cas) – he wasn’t happy about his new stepsister moving into his brother Gaius’s old room. He has been with hundreds of girls, but never someone like Fergie. He sees Fergie’s dentist father as a gold digger that scammed his mother.
Victor August – he has a twin sister Juliette, who is not a member of the Poison Ivy club, but he protects her and rarely lets her out of his sight.
Torsten Lucien – he is always somewhere else, often with his nose in a book. He is dark and broody and lacks social niceties. He probably has a form of Asperger’s syndrome.

The Story: Things heat up between Cas and Fergie from the moment they meet. They hook up before they even formally meet each other, he breaks the news that he is her stepbrother at a very inconvenient time. Fergie immediately kicks him out and Cas replies that she will never belong. He wants to forget about her but can’t seem to keep her off his mind.

This is pretty standard reverse-harem bully romance. I like the genre, though not terribly much when the anti-Heroes are bullying the heroine. I like it when they redeem themselves and become more of a family. This one was different in that Fergie was blind since she was very young. I liked the fact that she had a handicap, but it wasn’t a handicap at all. She was a champion in martial arts before moving and she goes to regular school and doesn’t need help getting around on a daily basis.

The guys are very hypocritical at times, in that they use women any way they want and treat them badly, but then get mad at their employees for treating women like sex objects, stating that their moral code doesn’t allow them to treat women like that. Though overall, this was a good bully romance, I did like that there was a lot of chemistry between Fergie and each of the guys in separate ways.

There was a bunch of mystery and a ton of secrets. Like why Fergie had to go into hiding. Why she had to erase her history and can’t do things that she used to do like she is in witness protection or something. Also, there is a secret about her stepmother, like maybe she is in the mafia or something. There is a secret about who Torsten’s mother is, it is suggested that she is someone important or influential, but it is also revealed that she is not his biological mother, so their relationship is full of mystery.

This audiobook is told in multiple points of view in dual narration. Angelina Rocca, Myles Washington, Nelson Hobbs and Aaron Shedlock narrated it. I really like Angelina Rocca; she sounds age appropriate for Fergie and she does an excellent job. Myles Washington, on the other hand, sounds way too old to be Cassius. His voice is fine, but you can definitely tell he is reading since he seems to pause at the end of every sentence and his voice for female characters is atrocious. Nelson Hobbs does a great job, and I like his voice. Aaron Shedlock is one of my favorite male narrators and is always fantastic as far as I’m concerned.

I voluntarily read & reviewed an advanced copy of this audiobook. All thoughts & opinions are my own.

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