Scorching Sienna by Eloise Benjamin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Light
Scorching Sienna
When I cry on a stranger’s shirt in a club,
I’m not surprised when he haunts my dreams.
He is the first man to make me feel alive since losing my husband.
Then the notes start.
I should be afraid.
But I’m not.
And the things that he does to me.
I feel his obsession in every knowing look, every scorching touch.
When my very bad stalker turns out to be the good one of the two,
he will stop at nothing to be the only one.
To protect me.
His rainbow. His light.
Shadow
Obsession.
It crashes through me when I first lay eyes on her.
Rooting itself in my dark heart.
Holding a space in it where no one before has.
My rainbow. My light.
Drawing her into the dark is dangerous, but I must have her.
Little do I know I am not the only one.
But I don’t like to share.
And when I scorch her with my touch, brand her as my own,
there is no going back.
Sometimes, the hero you need is not the one you expect.
But I sure as hell will make anyone who hurts her pay.
And I do.
This is a dual-point-of-view dark romance with a pierced, morally grey antihero, OTT/JP, a stalker who falls first, and a touch-her-and-die vibe with very dark themes. It is a standalone with no cliffhanger and ends with an HEA.
Morally grey all the way!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🖤💙💜❤️💚
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: ☹️🥲😋😘🥰
The heroine: Sienna – she lost her husband james two years ago from a tumor and is still grieving. While they were married, they had a lot of mutual friends, but since he died, they had faded away, not wanting to hang around someone so sad all the time. Now she only really had one friend, named Gloria, who was such a witch that nobody else wanted to be in her presence longer than they had to. When Gloria talks Sienna into going to a nightclub for the first time in ten years, she agrees, but when they get to the seedy joint, she wishes she hadn’t.
The Hero: Damon – he is a killer; he lives in darkness and has for as far back as he can remember. His mother told him that he was the result of a failed abortion, which pretty much sums up what his life was like as a child. As an adult, he owns multiple businesses, including his most lucrative, a club called Sin, which was one of the hottest spots in town and had different areas, including an exclusive nightclub with a long waiting list to get in, a playroom for taboo events, a high stakes gambling section where international deals were made on what was considered neutral territory and where breaking the club rules could be deadly.
The story: Sienna thought James had been the love of her life and had even thought about ending it all after he died. Her brother caught her in time and talked her into seeing a psychiatrist. Even the psychiatrist told her that she was cutting herself off from the world which wasn’t a good thing. So, she promised her brother, and her psychiatrist that she would accept the next social invitation she got, which happened to be with Gloria. Though all she wants since arriving is to get away from the place and the people. Until she runs into a tall, dark stranger and she suddenly feels something different.
Damon starts stalking Sienna and leaving her little gifts, but it isn’t long before he meets her for real and she ends up having a fascination with him as well. She gets a job at Sin and finds herself fantasizing about Damon and also about the stranger she met in the dingy bar who she thinks is the one leaving her gifts and messages since they started immediately after that night. Damon wants to do very dirty things to the innocent Sienna and there is a ton of sexual tension between the two of them.
It gets super steamy when they finally start to relieve some of that tension. Damon introduces Sienna into the world of BDSM, and she discovers that she has changed from the vanilla girl who married her school sweetheart. I really liked both characters, and I loved how intense and dangerous Damon was, he was fiercely protective of Sienna from the start, and it isn’t long before we learn why he sees himself as such a dark character.
The story is very good, and it surprised me in a way that not many books can do. I thought I would hate what happened, but I just loved how Damon was with Sienna. Sure, he can be a bad guy, he can kill without remorse and even torture when he feels it is necessary, but he is so gentle and understanding with Sienna, and so obviously in love with her that his obsession with her is sweet, not dark in any way.
“I knew this to be what it was because I had lived with the opposite of it for so long: hate.
I suddenly understood why every bad thing had happened to me. Why every moment I had endured that festered and created that hate existed. So that I would recognize its opposite in this very moment.
Love.”
Books Best Blog 