Sinister Obsession by J.L. Beck

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was such a shame that she was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. She knew that we would come for her.
We had seen her delicate face that night, hidden in the shadows, and she had seen what we did, her gasp of horror giving her away. She was perfection, beauty, and oozed goodness but that wasn’t going to save her from us. No one could ever find out our secret, which meant we needed to get rid of her. Killing her wasn’t an option and scaring her into silence wasn’t as easy of a task as we expected. She was strong, resilient, and smart doing whatever she could to evade us. Without even knowing it she turned it into a game, and so we became blood thirty wolves. Run and we’ll find you. Keep our secret and you might live. That is until someone else finds out what we did…

Sinister Obsession

A Dark Obsession That Needed More Time

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💛💚
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎
Character development: 😋😀😍
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration

Main Characters and Plot Overview

Stella was the character I connected with most in this story. She had the grades and ambition to go to college, but instead she works in the kitchen at Blackthorn University because she has to support herself and her grandmother, who is suffering from dementia. She spends her days watching wealthy students complain about things she would consider luxuries, which made her circumstances easy to sympathize with. Everything changes when she takes out the garbage one night and discovers Cameron and Easton putting a dead body into the trunk of a car.

Cameron immediately chases after Stella because he knows she could expose them. His father is the chief of police and can only protect him so much, so Cameron initially believes he has no choice but to kill her. What surprised me was how quickly that certainty starts to crumble. When Stella fights back during their confrontation and then tells him about being responsible for her grandmother, Cameron becomes fascinated with her and begins questioning whether he can actually go through with it.

Easton is much more willing to deal with the problem permanently, and the two men eventually decide to keep Stella close while exploring their attraction to her. Neither Cameron nor Easton is particularly likable at first. They are arrogant, entitled, and accustomed to getting whatever they want. Their treatment of Stella is deliberately harsh, and it took quite a while before I saw enough of a softer side to either man to understand the attraction.

Highlights and Limitations

The murder-witness setup was easily my favorite part of the story. Stella is already in a vulnerable position before she sees the body, and suddenly she has two dangerous men watching her every move. I liked the tension surrounding whether Cameron would actually kill her, especially because his feelings begin changing after he starts feeling attraction to Stella.

I also appreciated the scene following Stella’s tragedy. Seeing her completely heartbroken and watching Cameron and Easton witness that vulnerability gave them an opportunity to show some compassion. They weren’t suddenly transformed into perfect heroes, but I liked that they behaved better toward her during that part of the story. It was one of the moments where I could finally see the possibility of a relationship developing between them.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem for me was the length and pacing. The audiobook is only around six and a half hours, and I really felt that limitation. There are several major developments packed into a relatively short story, and the relationships don’t get enough time to grow naturally. I wanted more conversations, more trust-building, and more moments where Stella could genuinely get to know these men beyond the attraction and intimidation.

The guys also didn’t always work for me as dark romance heroes. I usually enjoy arrogant, cruel bad boys, but Cameron and Easton often came across as immature rather than genuinely intimidating. Their comments about women and their initial attitude toward Stella made them difficult to root for. The fact that they basically tell Stella she’s theirs while offering to pay her to be theirs was a major turnoff for me. I wanted more emotional connection before that point.

There was also something about the supposedly wealthy characters that didn’t quite work for me. Cameron’s father being the sheriff didn’t make the family seem particularly wealthy, so some of the descriptions of Cameron and Easton as rich college elites didn’t completely fit how I pictured them. There was very little background information on any of the characters which also made it hard to see them as real people.

Narration

Sierra Kline was the narrator I preferred. She has a soft voice that suited Stella, and I thought she did a particularly good job conveying Stella’s anxiety and fear during the scenes where she doesn’t know what Cameron and Easton are going to do. My only issue was that she sounded noticeably older than I imagined Stella sounding.

Hugo Locke has a naturally deep voice that fits the bad-boy persona, but his performance wasn’t quite as enjoyable for me. I thought he overacted in places, and some of the dialogue already felt over-the-top enough without the extra emphasis. There was one particular threat about Stella keeping her mouth shut that made me cringe so hard I almost gagged. No pun intended.

Final Thoughts

This ended up being a 3 to 3.25-star listen for me. I liked the premise, Stella was easy to sympathize with, and the opening murder-witness storyline gave the book some immediate tension. Cameron’s hesitation after learning about Stella’s grandmother was also one of the more interesting character developments.

What kept me from rating it higher was mostly the rushed pacing and the relationships. I wanted this story to slow down and let Stella, Cameron, and Easton actually develop some emotional intimacy instead of moving so quickly from danger and attraction to possessiveness and even ultra controlling behavior. The guys did have moments that made them more sympathetic, particularly when Stella was dealing with her heartbreak, but I needed more of those moments to really become invested in them as a trio.

I don’t regret listening to it because there were definitely parts I enjoyed, but I kept thinking that this could have been much better with another few hours devoted to character development and relationship building. The foundation was interesting, but the story moved too quickly for the romance to have the impact I wanted.

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