A LOVE STORY WITH TEETH AND CLAWS

Synopsis:

Hades in a Brioni suit - cruel, coldblooded and heartless.

Cillian Fitzpatrick has been dubbed everything on planet earth. 

To the media, he is The Villain.

To me, he is the man who (reluctantly) saved my life. 

Now I need him to do me another, small solid. 

Bail me out of the mess my husband got me into.

What's a hundred grand to one of the wealthiest men in America, anyway. 

Only Cillian doesn't hand out free favors. 

The price for the money, it turns out, is my freedom. 

Now I'm the eldest Fitzpatrick brother's little toy.To play, to mold, to break.

Too bad Cillian, forgot one tiny detail. 

Persephone wasn't only the goddess of the spring: she was also the queen of death.

He thinks I'll buckle under the weight of his mind games. 

He is about to find out the most lethal poison is also the sweetest.

L.J Shen stories always consume me and they are very addictive - but The Villain is more than that. And I'm sure this must be one of her difficult books to write. Putting all that angst into writing might not be easy. She is a badass when it comes to writing soul-shattering addictive stories. I always feel overwhelmed anytime I read any book of hers. The Villain owned me from the first world to the last. I felt it to my marrow bone.

OH MY! THE CHEMISTRY; The pull and push, all encompassing - all of the love hate emotional angst - it's scorching HOT. But the emotional dynamics are what make this book perfect. These two are perfectly matched. The inspire each other in just the right way. Persy chiselling away to Kill's pysche bit by bit to humanize him. Cillian unexpectedly but beautifully helps her find strength and belonging, a place for her exuberant love to dwell. 

This starts as a story of contrast, a story of a woman who loves too much and a man who can't love at all. Light and dark, soft and hard, restrained and free, love and hate. Right and wrong. Hell (hades) and Spring (Persephone). But here is where the story is so brilliant, why the character dynamics are so captivating because like their mythical inspirations those contrasts become a false split. As they connect, as their story unfolds, we see as the confines they placed on these characters aren't true. How they exist in the grey - a man who can't love can love, and a woman who is soft can be strong. Because they always have the capacity to do so. But no one has inspired it. And that is what I love about L.J Shen books - complex, damaged characters find hope and restoration in their love. How love unlocks layers of their essence, let's them not grow into someone new but whom they have the potential of becoming. Love peels away the scar tissue layer by layer, and like the writer's characters journeys, it finds their true beating heart. And that is so hopeful and so romantic. And that's the power and creativity of the author's writing. She weaves humor, heat, symbolism and dynamic of the characters - connects them seamlessly, so that by the end of the book, we too are uplifted, perhaps healed. by the power of the most vulnerable, most complicated emotion of all - LOVE, pure unadulterated LOVE.