Vicious by A.J. Merlin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

One, two, he’s coming for you

Three, four, better run some more

I never would have accepted his help if I’d known what he’d do.

When the stranger who got me out of a mess in Springwood turns the town into a slaughterhouse in my name, I do the only thing I can do.

I run.

Not far enough, though, because I can feel him in Akron, looking for me. But he wants to take me home, and I can’t go back. Not after what he did.

Especially when I know that more than anything, he wants me home with him.

But when his words betray how he really feels, and instead of violence from the monster of Springwood, I get something completely different. Will I be tricked into going home after all?

Or will he drag me away, kicking and screaming,

with his claws so deep I’ll never be free?

Vicious

I wasn’t fond of this one!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🩵🖤
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗
World building: 🌏🌍
Character development: ☺️😆

The heroine: Quinn – she grew up as a foster kid in Springwood Ohio and had already aged out when something terrible happened. She made a mistake and the cruel son of the owners of the local diner threatened to turn her into the cops. She went straight to her therapist who had been treating her pro-bono for a while. He said he would take care of it for her, though when she went back to the diner, she found the parents and the son slaughtered and blood everywhere.

The Anti-Hero: Gabriel – he was a serial killer and a therapist. He had been getting restless lately so when Quinn brought him the opportunity to delve out a bit of justice on people who deserved it, he did what he was good at. He tortured and killed them all. He expected Quinn to be scared, but also to be grateful, but instead she ran away to college. He has been stalking her ever since. Now that she is done with college, he plans to bring her home to Springwood.

The Story: When Gabriel catches up with Quinn after her graduation from college, she runs again. This time to a social work job in Kentucky lake country. She rents a decent house and starts her job a few days later. It isn’t long before Gabriel shows up and this time, he is not letting her run from him again. I have never been fond of the Therapist falls for his/her patient trope, so that part of the story I did not like at all. Not to mention the fact that Gabriel is obviously crazy.

I just must mention the cover of this book. I like attractive covers, and this one is so ugly. I picked up this book because I liked the first few in this series and I like the psycho in love trope and this series is all about serial killers finding their true love. But seriously, this cover is so wrong. Firstly, you can barely see the man, it looks like someone went crazy with a marker or paint on his face, and secondly, what you can see of his face, looks like he has black hair and a beard and mustache. While in the book he is described as having light brown hair and it never mentions facial hair. It is a pet peeve of mine when the cover photo does not match the description of the character(s).

This book wasn’t as good as the first two books in the series. It was more of a slow burn, and I found myself a bit bored with the way he stalked her. I usually like stalker romance, but he was a bit too cocky with it and too much of a therapist.

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