Vandal Synopsis
She takes my breath away; she is so beautifully damaged.
Yes I had broken her, ravished her life, destroyed her happiness. I brought her to ultimate despair. I was responsible for all the pain and suffering that now brought her to her knees in front of me.
Broken.
Hopeless.
Reckless in her agony.
She is a mirror of my own tortured soul.
But what I took away I can give back.
In ways she cannot even begin to imagine.
She is everything right in all my wrongs.
She loves me. She needs me.
She has no idea I’m the one who wrecked her life.
Storm, book 1 in ASHES AND EMBERS
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IinYhBwcHEY
Review
Destroy. Desecrate. Damage. Wreck. Ruin. Sabotage.
All of these terms explicitly describe the lifestyle choices Vandal Valentine has made for most of his life due to his poor upbringing as well as a darkness that seems to consume him.
Van is an “eater of souls”; someone who wants to corrupt, control, and manipulate and seems to be unable to form any kind of meaningful relationships. He’s a damaged and dominant man who feeds on darkness and gets off on submission – it’s about the only thing that makes him feel alive in the godforsaken life he finds himself in and blames himself for.
Tabitha Bennett is just as damaged and hollow as Vandal, but the difference between them is that her destruction was not created by her own choices. Her happiness was taken from her and now she’s a shell of who she used to be, and she doesn’t feel like there’s a way out of the darkness – until Van gives her one.
Carian Cole does a fabulous job of illustrating the conflicting feelings that both Van and Tabitha feel as she submits her body and mind to him without truly knowing anything about him. Both characters need to feel something else besides the devastating feelings that consume them, and Van offers them both a way to do that, but at what cost? Both are keeping secrets from each other that could derail any progress either of them have made, and there’s no way to remain in the bubble that Van has created for them at the cabin.
As Van and Tabitha’s story continues, Cole takes readers on an incredibly tortured journey – one that uses pleasure and pain for release and one that embraces the darkness that surrounds not only their hearts but their souls as well and looks to repair them both regardless of how unfixable Van and Tabitha may appear to be.
Vandal is a well written story that will garner a multitude of feelings from its readers. It’s a text whose characters may not elicit all positive feelings from those who encounter them, but it also adheres to the idea that imperfections are what make people who they are and an author shouldn’t sugarcoat or force character transformations when at their core, they remain the same. So even though I didn’t completely understand Vandal and his methods of fixing Tabitha without truly examining himself, it fits how Carian Cole portrayed him throughout the story and while I am usually the type of reader who looks for the main characters to completely evolve, there are times when the subject matter or presentation of the characters would seem contradictory if there were to happen, which is the case, at least in my perspective, in Vandal.
A complimentary copy was presented in exchange for an honest review.
4 poison apples
Exclusive Excerpt
I slowly walk down the dark hallway and stop at Katie’s doorway. Her pink nightlight is on, illuminating the room. I don’t want to go in, but I can’t stop myself. The mix of her presence and her void is completely overwhelming, and I fall to my knees in the middle of the room. The pain in my chest is like nothing I have ever felt before, as if my heart is being ripped from my body and sliced into tiny pieces. I want her back so bad. I want to just feel her tiny hand in mine and tuck her into bed.
Lifting my head, my eyes fall on Teddy, Katie’s coveted bear that she left here to ‘take care of me’. I crawl to the small bed and lie my head next to the little bear that, just a few days ago, we tucked into her blankets together until she’d be back. Pressing my face against the little bear, I can’t hold back my tears anymore.
Carian Cole Bio
I have a passion for the bad boys, those covered in tattoos, sexy smirks, ripped jeans, fast cars, motorcycles and of course, the sweet girls that try to tame them and win their hearts. My debut series, Ashes & Embers, follows the lives of rock band members as they find, and sometimes lose, the loves of their lives.
My first novel in the Ashes & Embers series, Storm, published on September of 2014. Vandal, the second novel in this series is publishing in February of 2015. I currently have approximately nine books slated for this series, as well as an MC series in the works, and a few stand-alones coming in 2015 onward.
Born and raised a Jersey girl, I now reside in beautiful New Hampshire with my husband and our multitude of furry pets and spend most of my time writing, reading, and vacuuming.
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