Romance Dark Gothic Thriller Contemporary Halloween Suspense Mystery Romantic Suspense Adult

About this book:

Remi Hayes is beginning to think she’s cursed —her fiancé cheated on her, her brother Jude is a major pain in her ass, and the moldering mansion she inherited from her uncle might just be haunted.

Flipping Blackleaf Manor already feels impossible, even before Remi is blackmailed by Dane Covett, the dangerously hot doctor-next-door, and Grimstone’s most eligible bachelor—if you can ignore the fact that everyone in town thinks he murdered his wife.

Remi doesn’t want to believe it, especially after Dane sews up a gash in her thigh and steals a kiss in payment—a kiss that makes it hard to walk for reasons that have nothing to do with an injured leg.

But as the renovation takes a strange and violent turn, Remi must decide if Dane is the one haunting her nights, or if he’s trying to protect her from something much worse…

My review

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5

Date Started: October 25, 2024 Date Finished: December 1,2024

Readability:5 out of 5
Enjoyment:5 out of 5
Characters:5 out of 5
Setting:5 out of 5
Writing:5 out of 5
Plot:5 out of 5

I did start this book right after I bought it in October, but got caught up in my schooling that I put this book on the back burner and decided that I wanted to work on that for a while before picking up a book and reading just to read for enjoyment. At first I didn’t put much stock in this book like this book has a custom playlist that I have placed down below for your preview of it. I did not think I’d enjoy that much as much as I did, but it’s unique as well for a book to have a custom play list that you can play on Spotify and or Apple. This play list will be played in the 2nd book of this series as well so I’ll have the same link for it when I read and write my review for that too once I read it. Right now I’m going back to Grimstone which is the first book in the series, even though the author Sophie Lark has stated that you don’t need to read this one first before jumping into the other one, but I like to follow a series in books so naturally I had to go with Grimstone first so that at least I’d know a little about what I’m getting into. Also if you don’t like stuff with touches of BDSM, post-partum depression, harm to an infant by a parent, filicide, parenticide, suicide, stalking, violence/blood, and attempted sexual assault (on page) then you may want to skip this book. Now onto what I thought about this book.

My thoughts about this book

I wasn’t really expecting to enjoy the story as much as I did because it started out slow. I have a hard time getting past some of the slow parts in a book because to me they are boring as anything. But I started like the book as I read each chapter because they were not long chapters and the story started to open up and had me laughing a lot because of the story with Remi and Dane. My first thought about Dane was he was a complete total asshole for the way he was treating Remi, but then I started to understand him more and more as their story started to unfold. I was finding myself calling him an asshole every time he wanted to push Remi away because she was falling in love with him , and I knew he was starting to fall in love with her because he wanted her around more and more. By the end of the story they were so addicted to each other that it wasn’t even funny. Even despite the town of Grimstone believing the worse of Dane and what had happened to his wife and newborn son. Remi did not want to believe anything bad about Dane and did her best to see the good in him. So their story was one of a lot of pain and heart ache not only because their lack of belief in the other, but also because they both had very dark pasts. Dane was picked on a lot because of a unique skin condition that made it hard for him to go outside when it was sunny, and then there was Remi who just didn’t believe in herself as much as she believed in her brother. It wasn’t until the end of the story that she started having more belief in herself and less in her brother. I don’t want to spoil the ending because it blew my mind away as I read to the very last page and was surprised at the outcome, but if you do read this. I’d love to know your thoughts about the ending as well.

This is also the only story I’ve ever seen a playlist made for that I could listen to it as I read it, and the songs made so much sense when reading the chapters. I hope you take the time to listen to the music, as I have put Side A which fits Grimstone, and after I read the next book I will be adding that playlist with its list named Side B for that will fit the Monarch book.