Romance at a Glance is a podcast where hosts Bridget and Shani review romance novels and interview some of romance’s biggest authors diving into candid conversations about life, relationships, and sexual desires. Expect 100% honest reviews, spontaneous singing, life lessons, indecent anecdotes, and bawdy humor. Leave us a rating and review on iTunes.

Read the full transcript below.

Book Reviews at a Glance

Heroine Rating: Rika

Shani: 🍑🍑🍑

Bridget: 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑

Hero Rating: Michael

Shani: 🍆🍆

Bridget: 🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆

McDreamy to McSteamy: McChaseMe

Classy to Nasty: Nasty Fear Kink

Romance at a Glance Reviews Corrupt By Penelope Douglas

Book Title: Read Corrupt on Kindle Unlimited.

Click here for a 30-day free trial of Kindle Unlimited, or a Free 30 day Audible Trial to read like Shani!

Author: Penelope Douglas

Narrator/ Available in audio:

Part of a Series: Book #1 of the Devil’s Knight Series

Genre: Dark Romance

Cover Art: I thought the cover art was good. Put me in the headspace with the strong red and black colors. And the theme carried well throughout. I think the cover for Nightfall is my favorite of the series.

Synopsis: I was told that dreams were our heart’s desires. My nightmares, however, became my obsession.

His name is Michael Crist.

My boyfriend’s older brother is like that scary movie that you peek through your hand to watch. He is handsome, strong, and completely terrifying. The star of his college’s basketball team and now gone pro, he’s more concerned with the dirt on his shoe than me.

But I noticed him.

I saw him. I heard him. The things that he did, and the deeds that he hid…For years, I bit my nails, unable to look away.

Now, I’ve graduated high school and moved on to college, but I haven’t stopped watching Michael. He’s bad, and the dirt I’ve seen isn’t content to stay in my head anymore.

Because he’s finally noticed me.

Michael

Her name is Erika Fane, but everyone calls her Rika.

My brother’s girlfriend grew up hanging around my house and is always at our dinner table. She looks down when I enter a room and stills when I am close. I can always feel the fear rolling off of her, and while I haven’t had her body, I know that I have her mind. That’s all I really want anyway.

Until my brother leaves for the military, and I find Rika alone at college.

In my city.

Unprotected.

The opportunity is too good to be true as well as the timing. Because you see, three years ago she put a few of my high school friends in prison, and now they’re out.

We’ve waited. We’ve been patient. And now every last one of her nightmares will come true.

Favorite parts of the book:

Shani:

• Rika follows them “the 4 horsemen” (So Lame and overused) on devil’s night a night where they play pranks bro. “Burn down people’s houses and shit. Arson, statatory rape etc.

• Rika decides to go out on her own and be independent. Breaking all the ties with the people who baby her and try to control her life, but moves to the same city where Michael lives. OK???? When was she supposed to be in class btws?

• She is given a penthouse she is not okay with but stays even when she finds out Michael and the guys will be there.

• The flashbacks worked for me though I wished there were fewer of them. And there was too much build-up in the front of the book.

• the book dragged really hard for me. I wanted to DNF it by chapter 9. I was like what is happening!

• I liked when she called Michael Trevor to fuck with him.

Bridget:

• The setup of this book was great. Within seconds I completely understood who Rika was, that Michael wasn’t a good boy but she was drawn to him instead. Her talking about 3 years ago he noticed me, so we know something happened. Her dad teaching her fencing/strategy so she’s not going to be a wallflower,

• Influential sons - Damon Torrance, son of a media mogul. Kai Mori, the son of an influential socialite and banker. William Grayson III, grandson of Senator Grayson. And Michael Crist, son of a real estate developer.

• Damon is scary - “No one fucks with you but us,” he warned with a sinister smile.

• She is confused by why they are all there and after her - “I thought you were one of us,” he whispered, his breath caressing my lips. “I thought you could play.”

• “Run all you want, Little Monster,” he said, sounding like a threat. “We’re faster.” - kAI to Rika

• Crist's dad is a dickkkkk - he’ll marry her and put a baby in her - yuck.

• Flashback - won’t touch till 18 - wants his cake and eat it too. Want her to wait but not tell anyone etc. She’s like nah bitch (won’t be able to stop yourself, this is what we were built for you and me)

Favorite Line(s) in the Book:

Shani:

I’m so sorry Rika we should have made Michael confront you all those years ago…..Your house. Jesus Christ. As If just now he realizing the full measure of what they’d done.

Well, that’s one apology I guess. - Kai to Rika

Bridget:

I’d always been scared of him. The thrilling kind of scared that got me turned on. - Rika about Michael

“Then why did you let me come down here?” He paused, and then answered in a flat tone, “Who am I to deny you anything?” - Michael and Rika

“They all thought I was a good girl, Michael.” I dragged his lobe through my teeth. “But there’s so many bad things I want to do. Do dirty things to me.” - Rika to Michael

“Own who you are,” he commanded. “And don’t apologize. Do you understand? Own it or it will own you.” - Michael

“You like my friend sucking on you?” Michael taunted in my ear, groping my tits with both hands. “Yeah, I think you fucking love his mouth on your pussy.”- Michael about Kai eating Rika out

Quick Guide Review of the Book and Notes

Favorite Review:

NiCoLeTa E. {Addicted To Books} 

***4,5 "Little Monster" stars for those corrupted people***

Wow!!! Just wow!!! This book was confusing as hell at least in the beginning, but it kept you all the time on edge...

Excitement, angst, fear, hot scenes, not-so-hot scenes, crazy actions...

I got caught in the middle of all those emotions and i couldn't do anything else than loved it!!!

It was intoxicating!!! ...

Worth the Read:

Shani: ⭐⭐ This book doesn't exactly know what it wants to be. There is the New Adult component where we get sex scenes with college kids. There is the romance angle where the girl loves the jerky guy forever and he is always pushing her away, but he really loves her and they have their little HEA. And, then we have the Thriller/Mindfuck of revenge, murder, rape, etc.. Oh, and don't forget to add in the 50 Shades of Grey crapola - gotta have us some kinky fuckery. I didn't think it all fit together that well. I think it would have been better if it was more focused. It felt messy. I don't like messy book.

Bridget: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Loved this one from start to finish and read all the others in the series is super quick succession (like over a weekend and I didn’t play with my kids at all!).

Read Corrupt on Kindle Unlimited.

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Read the Full Transcript

Welcome back to the darkness of Romance at a Glance. With me, as always, is my cohost, Shani.

How are you doing?

I am doing good. I've had a great day, it’s productive. I have read a lot of books, which feels fun for me. Reading this book made me want to reread the whole series. We are reading Corrupt by Penelope Douglas.

I am excited to talk to you about this book because I felt a little bit differently about this book. I was like, “I wonder what Bridget is going to say.”

We can’t always have the same opinion, Shani.

I like to know what you're thinking. I like to know where we connect and where we disconnect. What makes you all tingly? What makes me all tingly? I like to compare. I come from a house full of sisters. For me, it’s fun.

I'm excited to get into it. I know all of our dear readers are always excited to get into it. We are talking about Corrupt, book number one of the Devil's Night series by Penelope Douglas. Before we get too deep into the plot, tell us a little bit about the narrator in the audio.

The narrator was Tatiana Sokolov and Jeremy York. I like Jeremy York. I've heard a lot of Jeremy York. He’s a solid narrator. This is the first time I'm hearing Tatiana. She was a solid narrator. I didn't think one way or the other. She didn't take away from the story. I was in it. She did a good job.

This is a dark romance. I would say that this is probably in the bully romance or maybe suspense romance, perhaps.

This was suspense.

As I was reading it, I was like, “I don’t know about Shani. She’s going to think that a lot of these things shouldn’t be happening in this book.” I thought the cover art was good. If you look at the whole series of cover art, all the covers have an abstract black and white theme. Red is the only color in them. I thought the color was nice. I thought it was not basic in a bad way, but fairly basic in the sense that it's an abstract cover. The colors gave me the vibe of like, “This is going to be a little dark.”

I agree, aesthetically. I do a tad bit of designing. I thought that the font was too thin and her name was too wide across the whole thing, but that's more of a design situation. I do feel that it felt like a dark romance. I thought it was simple. I don't feel like it tells me anything about the story other than it's going to be a dark romance.

Shani, would you like to head into a synapse?

Bridget, I would like to head into the synapse. Also, as an FYI, she fixed her design elements on the second book. It seems they got better with the design.

They did. Nightfall, which is book number five, was the best book cover of the series. That's the one with the chandelier. That one looks the coolest.

The first one looked like they were trying to put something together. It’s like, “This is a theme.” They figured it out as they went.

This book was published in 2015.

The audio came out in 2016.

This series has been going on for a while. I was lucky enough that I started reading this series. We picked it for this season so I started reading it. She had released the final book. I got to read all of them on Kindle Unlimited in a row, over the course of a weekend. I ignored my children and husband. It was glorious.

I support this decision.

It was over Christmas break too. I was like, “You all have been home too much. I need to be on the couch, drink my tea, read this book, and not talk to anybody.” It was great. Shani, you know sometimes I like to write my own synopsis but I like this one so I didn’t. “My boyfriend's older brother is like that scary movie that you peek through your hand to watch. He's handsome, strong, and completely terrifying. He’s the star of his college basketball team and gone pro. He's more concerned with the dirt on his shoe than me, but I noticed him. I saw him. I heard him. The things that he did and the deeds that he hid. For years, I bit my nails, unable to look away.” Also, that's me biting my nails. That hits me right in the heart. “Now, I've graduated high school and moved on to college but I haven't stopped watching Michael. He's bad. The dirt I've seen isn't content to stay in my head anymore because he's finally noticed me.

Her name is Erika Fane, but everybody calls her Rika. My brother's girlfriend grew up hanging around my house and is always at our dinner table because her mom is an alcoholic and her dad is dead. She looks down when I enter a room and stills when I get close. I can always feel the fear rolling off her. While I haven't had her body, I know I've had her mind. That's all I want anyway. Until my brother leaves for the military and I find Rika all alone at college, in my city, unprotected, the opportunity is too good to be true as well as the timing. Three years ago, she put a few of my friends from high school in prison, and now they're out. We've waited. We've been patient. Now, every last one of her nightmares will come true.” I was like, “That is the description to end all descriptions. Girl, you better run. Don't be putting people in prison and then not entering witness protection.” Shani, I would like to know what you thought this book was going to be like. This was our most requested book of season six by far.

I thought this was what the book was going to be about, except I didn't realize that it was going to have as much intrigue as it did. I thought it was going to be like another one of the bully romances.

Did you guys hear how she said intrigue? She was not intrigued. Shani is not here for suspense. She does not like books that are too in the intrigue. She gets scared at the suspense. It makes her anxious. I love the way you said intrigue. That's hysterical.

That was the element I was not exactly prepared for. There were some things in the book that I wanted to happen that never happened. Sometimes I felt like it was going one way and it went a different way. I don't know if that was for the betterment of the book, per se. Overall, especially compared to the books we've been reading, I like this book more than the books that we have read to this point.

What did you think about the fact that this book takes place in the present? Rika must be twenty and he’s 23 or 24 and a professional basketball player. She's in college. She's transferred. She now lives in the city. That's the present day. His friends have got out of jail and then it flashes back maybe 3 or 4 years before, depending on how long it took them to go to prison, I suppose. The one night that they let her in and thought that she was one of them.

I don't like the back-and-forth flash forwarding, but I didn't mind it so much in this book because the book was able to move forward while they gave some context. Normally, I don't like 16 and 17-year-olds getting frisky and stuff. Because they were flashing back to memories, it didn't feel icky when they did go back to some of those moments. I didn't mind it. I did think though that the book took way too long to get going, to rev up. I was on chapter eight and I was like, “How much more have we got?” There was still more.

Do you mean more of them setting up behind the scenes that they're going to torture her and she doesn't know it yet?

Yeah. They were still fully into the setup of it by chapter eight and I just was like, “I'm going to need something to happen.”

If they hadn't flashed back at all during those initial chapters, I would have been like, “What's happening?” The flashbacks were driving a lot of the story at that point, I didn't mind it because I was interested in what was going to happen if that makes sense.

We didn't find out about the phone and the videos of them until too far into the book. They kept referring to it. I hate when books refer to a bad deed that's been done and then don't tell you or explain what that bad deed is.

I like it because I'm trying to figure out the whole book. From the clues, I’m trying to figure out what it is.

That annoyed the shit out of me. I was like, “What miscommunication is coming up now?”

In general, all books of this category where someone blames someone for something, without all of the facts and circumstantially blames them, it bugs me because I'm like, “He could have asked her.” She would have been like, “I didn't do it.” Although I don’t know if he would have believed her at that point. Let me skip forward and tell you what happened. This is the reveal at the end. What happens is they go together on this devil's night. Devil’s night is where the four boys who rule the school and the community and all have powerful parents and super-rich kids can do untouchable things. They are unhinged. They don't give a flying fuck about consequences or anything. They think the night is theirs and they should take whatever they want and are like, “Fuck the rules.”

One night, they come back and they're already in college. She's about to be seventeen the following week. They can't take her from school like they take all the other kids on the basketball team because she's too young. She leaves school and jumps into one of the cars because she wants to be a part of it. They take her with them. Michael accepts her as one of them. At devil's night, they each get to pick one big ass prank or deed. They film it and they all have to go together. They all have to do it all together. She gets to be a part of this group for the night.

The next morning, they all wake up to the fact that two of the videos of this devil's night got leaked. 3 of the 4 of them are going to jail. Michael is not in any of the videos, but the other three boys are. She is wearing the sweatshirt that had the phone, which recorded all the stuff. They blame her but never asked her or told her. They blame her and think that because he was mean to her that she turned them in and sent them to prison. They've been waiting three years to exact their revenge when they get out of prison.

Their whole plan is to separate her from everyone that she loves, from her mom. They burned her house down. They sent her mom to rehab, which is low-key scary because she didn't know where she was. Also, it’s nice because her mom was an alcoholic and needed to go to rehab. They separate her from her family. They stole her phone and reprogrammed all the phone numbers to be a burner phone. She can't contact anyone. He becomes the executor of her parent’s estate because his dad was and they still owe her money. They're like, “You depend on us. You have to become our fuck toy. I will give you money if you please us.” They're trying to ruin her life because she ruined theirs. It all comes out and she's like, “What are you people talking about? I didn’t do any of that.” He easily could have asked her.

It’s a long, complicated plot. Had he asked her if it was her originally, they could have solved it. In real life, people don't ask. People assume and they would see that sweatshirt and be like, “It's them.” I know I've done it but not about sending my friends to jail. I know I've done it about big things and small things where I see one thing and I'm like, “This whole other complex thing must be true.” As much as I want to say, “That's dumb,” it's also not. It's human nature.

One conversation could have cleared this up. Rika didn't strike me as that good of a liar. If she had tried to lie to him, he would have known immediately if she was lying.

Also, not evil. She's not mean-spirited in the book.

No, which is funny because they're pissed at her and getting revenge when they burned down this girl's senior project and guns her gazebo. They blocked the road with big rigs. They beat up a cop. They did a whole bunch of stuff and then they're like, “Why are we going to jail?” That's a comical part of the story for me. I will say that the miscommunication element of it, I was annoyed but not entirely annoyed. I have experienced in my life where people could have come to me and asked me one question and not come up with things and made up a whole story in their own mind about what's happening. I was like, “I meant this.” They have all this angst over something and then it's deflated.

There was a point in the story where somebody mentions what she did. At that moment, she doesn’t come right out and say, “What are you talking about?” Internally, she’s like, “What's going on?” I felt like at the moment, she would have been like, “What are you talking about?” After they took her money, he froze her assets or got rid of her credit cards. They're all in the house and they're like, “This is what you're going to do.” It comes to light. I like that scene ended there with clarity. I thought that Penelope Douglas was going to do that thing where they were like, “You're lying.” “I'm not lying.” “We don't believe you.” It was going to carry on for longer. The fact that she didn't, I was like, “Thank God. Thank you for that.” To me, that makes me feel like an idiot. The author thinks I'm an idiot.

That scene, that's after they've done terrible things to her. They've invited her to this house. They've been standing around her like little jackals in their masks, tormenting her, pushing her around, groping her, telling her, “We're going to rape you and do all this stuff. You can't stop us.” She pulls a knife because she hides one in her sleeve and knives one of them, and I was like, “Get them, Rika.” She comes back and she's like, “I'm not going to run from them. I'm going to figure this out.” She comes back and they do believe her right away. It turns out that Damon and Will were passed out in the backseat. She thought it was Kai, in his mask, but it was Trevor who is Michael's little brother. Trevor is a piece of shit. In general, at the beginning of the book, he's trying to pressure her into dating him again. It’s creepy.

The whole scenario is weird. The dad and the brother, they're like, “Rika is meant for our family from birth.”

I wrote in my notes that their dad is a dick and also weird. At one point, he says to Michael, “She's meant for your brother. He's going to marry her and get a baby inside of her and then we'll get her fortune.” I was like, “I don't think they're all this evil, but rich people.” It was interesting because when he was a baby, the first time he even held her, he was like, “She's perfect and tiny.” They took her away and laid her next to the brother. He's like, “Even then I knew she wouldn't be for me and they would never let me have her.” He tried to pretend like, “I don't even care.” She grew up and he was like, “I have cared this whole time.”

One thing I will say about this book is that this is much longer than the books we have read so far by 100 pages. It felt more filled out. Whether you like the suspense or not is one thing, but I definitely felt like it was more filled out and more robust as a story. Crazy shit happens. For me, it was much more like, “I want to see what's going to happen next.” When I originally read it, I wanted to see what would happen to the other people. Damon is going to have to be redeemed. It’s like, “How can you come back from this?” He tried to murder his best friend and drown him in the ocean at the end of the book. How does one come back from that? It felt more filled out. As I'm looking at my notes, I have many notes because so much happened.

In the second half of the book, I didn't see it coming, it got intense. At the halfway mark, a whole lot of shit started happening quickly. I didn't see the three-way.

You didn’t see that coming?

Yes and no. I was hoping for a five-way.

With the four guys and her?

Yeah. When the book first started, I thought there was going to be a five-way at a certain point. I was down for it. I was in. I was like, “What's going where? Let's talk about that.” After they burned her house down and all of that happened and then the three-way happened, I was like, “What?” No time had passed between these moments. It was shortly after they had fucked up her whole life, burned down her house, and ruined the match collection that her dad had left for her that she has a three-way.

She had sex with Michael that night.

I could see Michael because she has a soft spot for Michael, specifically. I can rationalize that. However, it was weird because she's super livid with them. Kai is telling her how he got ruined in prison. He hasn't been with a woman. She's like, “I'll be that person for you to help get you back into it.” I was like, “No.”

Shani, don't confuse the people. You’re skipping over the whole part where he comes into the room and he apologizes after. He's the only one who apologizes.

That's my quote. I haven't heard his apologies. It's not enough, Bridget. What if I came to your house when you're sleeping and snatched Molly and held her at my house for three days? On day four, I came to your house and was like, “I’m kidding. I took Molly. Here, she's back. I'm sorry. This was not a good prank to play.” You’d be like, “Okay.”

First of all, they did not take an innocent baby. They took an alcoholic mother. You know it’s true though. Babies are defenseless.

I love how you’re like, “If you took my mom, I wouldn’t be angry.”

I’m not arguing that it would be impossible to forgive him. What I'm saying is that there are two separate events. He talks to her the day that it comes out that she's not the one. He comes and he apologizes. He says, “I lost myself in prison. I don't even know who I am anymore. I haven't touched a woman. I don't know what to do. I'm not okay.” She says, “I forgive you.” A second time later, then that's when they had sex. It's not like she had sex with him that day. When you were telling the story, it made it seem like they had sex immediately.

It's not within weeks or months. It's within days of each other. It’s like, “I'm still holding a grudge from three years ago.”

The reason why it didn't bug me is I was fine with it. I love a nice ménage. Also, I love a scene where someone is giving intimacy to help the other person. She's not having sex with him because she's seen him across the room and she's like, “He's fine. I want to get on that.” She's doing it the only way she knows how to help him because she knows he's lost. She's trying to show him that he has value and may love him. I agree, I wouldn't necessarily love him if you burn my house down. However, even though she's loved Michael her whole life, she also knows them and has known them. She didn't also feel like they were her friends and she was a part of their group.

Right after Will was like, “You're one of us.” She was like, “You tried to burn my house down.” He's like, “That was before we knew.” For him, it’s clear. It’s like, “The reason it hurts bad, that you were the one who betrayed us, is that we thought you belonged and you were one of us. We thought you were the one who broke our hearts. You were the one who did it. It wasn't that we got sent to jail. It was that you did it and we said that you are one of us. Now that we know it wasn't you, we feel bad. We feel like shit. We’ll replace all your stuff. We sent your mom to rehab.”

Michael gives her back control of her family's fortune at the end. They're like, “Now, you're one of us again. We're going to protect you and take care of you.” What I felt the way I was reading it is that she has always felt like she was one of them or should be one of them. For her, I almost feel like she understands the fact that they were hurt because they thought it was her even though she thinks they're idiots but she loves them more than she wants to be mad at them.

Even in the end, Damon and Trevor kidnapped her and took her out on a boat. She's tied up to the bed. Even then when Damon is telling her all these horrible things, she's like, “I don't think you're going to do that. You stopped Trevor that day. You didn't let him rape me. I don't think that you're all bad.” She's more scared of Trevor than of Damon even though Damon, throughout the whole book, is super unhinged. Even then, she’s like, “I don't think you're going to do this.” At least, for me, she's always felt like that.

I felt like she's like their little pet. While I felt that the three-way was unrealistic and I was like, “What?” I'm not going to say I wasn't on board. I wasn't going to say that I wasn't there for it. It could have been hotter if I had felt more of a connection to Kai and his apology and something more. I did spend the first bit of it going, “What? We're going to do a three-way?” I can understand Michael. He's the hero of the story. She's always talking about how she loves his darkness. It took me a minute to understand Kai. Honestly, when the three-way happened, I said to myself, “Shani, enjoy this. Let it happen.” She did anal for the first time that night. I feel like they never properly tell you what it should look like with your first anal situation. With anal, I’ve always felt that you should know it’s coming. It's like, “Hey.” It’s like a heads-up.

If I was reading this book, I would think that it requires less preparation than it does. It’s 1,000% rock star hotness.

To be fair, I went with it. I was like, “Shani, go with it.”

She trusts them so much. She was relaxed. They were in a steam room, Shani. They were relaxed.

Maybe the steam opened up her booty hole.

It opened up.

In the last books that we read, I had many what-moments. It’s like, “What the fuck? What is happening here?” In this book, I went in with a mindset of like, “Shani, go in and think that you enjoy bully romance.” I tried to put my brain space in somebody else's headspace who likes bully romance and think, “Maybe this is the catnip of what these bully romances are.” I did think this book was more well-written and robust. I felt like the characters were a little bit more filled out. The author did a good job of making me like and also hate Michael. I hated him but I liked when they were fucking and stuff. Usually, when I hate a character, I can't like when they're fucking and stuff. I liked both those moments. I thought he was an epic douche at moments. Also, I was like, “Please eat that pussy real good right now.” That's an art form as an author.

The reason I liked him is that he saw her. As much as he pushed her and was mean to her and forced her to do things that a good guy wouldn't do, he saw that she was itching to do more, be more like, feel more, and be freer. In one of the lines I wrote down, she's like, “I can't believe you let me do that.” He's like, “Who am I to stop you from doing anything?” I liked that about him. He was like, “You have a fear kink? I’m going to go get my mask and then I'm going to make you scared. I’m going to fuck your life away.” I like the fact that he knew her. He’s supposed to hate her because he thinks that she put his friends away and caused all this pain but he can't stop himself. He wants her too much. I always think that's a nice thing for me to be reading. I enjoy that where he's like, “I shouldn't but I'm also going to attack you in a good way.” I enjoyed that. Plus, I thought he had some nice, dirty talk moments. I always enjoyed the dirty talk.

I enjoyed the dirty attack. I was conflicted in my own body. I’m like, “He's a terrible person.” Also, sometimes terrible people are good lovers. It's interesting though because it has a happily ever after where he asked her to move in. I'm assuming marriage and babies to come. I'm like, “He's not marriage material.”

He is for her, Shani.

I'm like, “Keep fucking him.” It's like the phrase, hoe into a housewife. I don't know what the guy equivalent of that is. He's the hoe. Don't make him a house husband. Keep him in the lane that he's good at. Let him talk dirty to you. Go over to his apartment. Get your fix. The person that you got to see day to day needs to be that person who cares so much more.

He does care for her, Shani, in his own way.

His own way is not going to be enough. That will only lead to divorce at year three.

Also, it will be interesting to see what your ratings are for Rika. I also think that the author, at least for me, did a good job. In real life, would I recommend he be the lover or a husband of any of my friends? Of course not. However, in this book, for a character who wants to stand on her own two feet and be powerful, having that person who always is pushing her, challenging her, forcing her to own who she is and to fight back and to not accept whatever the meek, good girl thing that they were trying to push her into, he is the right person for that.

Since I have read the other books, there's a lot of stuff that happens. There's a bunch of books. There are a lot of characters. There's a lot of stuff. The dads are not good people. They are forced to be strong and to fight back and protect themselves from the dads, Michael’s dad and Damon's dad specifically. So much happens in the rest of the series. There will be a whole separate podcast with these. Maybe I'll do it on Patreon and I'll tell you guys all about it. A lot happens. He is a good partner for her. She needs someone a little fucked up, strong, and willing to let her be a bad bitch. He's not trying to hide her away. He's like, “You own your fortune now.”

That's part of what I did like about Michael. There were moments where he lets his friends grope her and things like that. I was like, “This is your moment.” There were moments where I felt like he handed her the match and was like, “Go set your fire.” Honestly, the one moment that redeemed him for me was when Trevor was bleeding at the end and he was like, “We’ve got to get back to land. I'm shot. I need help.” Michael kicked them into the pool and was like, “Nope. This is where your journey stops.” He was like, “You would never feel safe if he existed. He couldn't exist.” I was like, “That’s where you get points.” I like that ruthlessness.

I do too. I was also excited that Trevor died at the end. I was also excited that he died because I feel like a different author would have kept him alive forever and kept regurgitating that storyline over and over. Damon is already on the loose still and the menace of the next book. It’s like, “We still don't know what Damon is going to do.” That's enough. We don't need two menaces hanging over us. One is plenty. Also, Damon's story is more interesting because Trevor always hated them and always hated Michael. He was a piece of shit to her. He’s always a creep. He's not interesting going forward versus Damon who loves them. He would walk through fire for them and did terrible pranks and stuff with them without hesitation, but then ends up being the one who betrays them. That's a much more interesting character to work with over the next book versus the brother who always hated them.

I had to stop reading for a minute and switch the image of all the boys in my mind because they were some of the dumbest fuck boys of all time. I imagine them like Logan and Jake Paul, complete rich ass, fuck boy type, who are everyday bros. That's how I saw it. At a certain point, I can't read the book with them in my head this way. Otherwise, it's going to skew everything. I tried to stop and recreate them going forward.

What did you choose as your image?

I used a mix of between my favorite, Jason Momoa, and your guy from the MC motorcycle gang.

Charlie Hunnam. Shani, I have converted you. Shani did not know who Charlie Hunnam was. She’s never seen Sons of Anarchy. After we were reading It Ain't Me, Babe by Tillie Cole, I was like, “Shani, are you kidding?” We had to watch some YouTube videos and she's like, “We have to stop watching these YouTube videos.” I was like, “One more. We have to watch his back flexing as he's fucking on that show.”

This is to be fair, I love watching raunchy, crazy, weird things with you. Leo was there and I am less comfortable with the three of us. I was like, “I don't know exactly why I feel uncomfortable by this. We’ve got to stop watching this video.”

Leo knows of my obsession with Charlie Hunnam because I talk to him about it all of the time. We watch all the movies that come out. Every time a Charlie Hunnam movie comes out, he's like, “Another Charlie Hunnam.” I'm like, “It’s my boy, Charlie.” If you like Charlie Hunnam and you have not watched Green Street Hooligans, I highly recommend it. It's a great movie. It's about English footballers. It will bring you to tears but also will make your adrenaline pump.

I used Chris Hemsworth as Michael.

That always works. Do you know what movie I had in mind? It’s the Covenant. Did you ever watch The Covenant?

No. I don't think so.

First of all, it's great. You should watch it. Secondly, it's about these four guys who are friends and they are descendants of witches. They get powers when they come of age and they ascend. When they're teenagers, they have powers. The more they use them, the more bad stuff happens. In general, they reminded me of this. They're untouchable. They have this coolness about them. They don't give a fuck because they have magic. Taylor Kitsch is one of them from Friday Night Lights. Did you ever watch Friday Night Lights, Shani?

I know what you're talking about. I watched 1 or 2 episodes. It's not my bag.

The Covenant, I will have to watch that with you because that is what I imagined. The swagger, the zero fuckness, the sex appeal, everyone watching them and whispering about them, and them not caring versus being attention-seeking fuckboys. The reason that I never saw them, especially as I was reading because I'm creating them in my mind versus hearing someone read it to me, is because I feel like Logan Paul or whatever. They want everyone to look at them. They want everyone to come to be their friend and talk to them. These guys don't want to be friends with other people. They’re only friends with each other. They have teammates but they're only each other's friends. They're not friends with other people. Other people are around them and they're like, “Cool, you can stay, but I don't care.” They just want to do their things.

I try to think of each guy individually. I try to give them a certain look. I don't know if you know Henry Golding and David Gandy. I was like, “This one is Kai. This one is Will.” Rebranding is everything. That's what companies do. Once you do that, I was like, “Okay.” It felt a little bit better in my mind than thinking of them as Team 10 and these influencer pods, TikTok pods. That's how they felt going in. Do you know what’s strange to me? I watch TikTok a lot. I like the fact that the things that were considered gendered, all those things are blurring together. More people are comfortable presenting in different ways. I can't quite figure out why every one of those Team 10-esque copy pods, all of them look the same. All these groups of guys wear the same jewelry, the same outfits and the same everything. I wonder if there's a stylist who's like, “You need a bedangled earring and a hood that doesn't quite fit on your head.”

That’s a real problem though. Why don't people make deeper hoods? That always upsets me. Anytime I find a deeply hooded sweatshirt, I immediately buy it. I'm like, “This is what I need in my life. I don’t need these shallow-ass hoods.”

These specific little glasses, I'm always like, “Who’s the stylist behind this?” I know there's got to be someone in the group who's making this all happen. I rebranded them and it was much better after I rebranded them. Damon kept reverting back to the Logan Paul's of the world. I kept being like, “No. I’ve got to give him something better.” When they were on the boat and everything, I was like, “I'm trying hard to make you hot and I can’t.”

I thought of him as menacing.

I thought of him more than menacing. For me, Michael was menacing. Damon was a psychopath.

He might kill people.

You felt like Michael had a limit of which he would pull back. You felt like Damon would cross every line.

Especially in the flashbacks, they did mention that Michael or Kai would keep Damon in check.

Him, I didn't know what was going to happen. I thought pure psychopath, sociopath for Damon. The fact that you're telling me he has a book, I'm like, “He has a book? Let's see how he comes back from some of this shit.”

You always know it with a series of books where there are four friends. Everyone needs to have a book. Although, it's possible that he wouldn't. Kai is the next book. After that, it’s Damon. Will is the last.

The most uninteresting person was Will. He seemed like the bro who was down for whatever. It’s like, “What are we doing today, guys?” There wasn't much to him. I'm assuming that in the next books, you'll get more of maybe Will and his personality. I didn't like the fact that it was like The Four Horsemen because I've been hearing The Four Horsemen everywhere. The fact that this book came out A few years ago, I'm like, “She might have been one of the first people doing this Horsemen situation in this trend and not one of the later people.” I don't know where she fell in that. I'm like, “I forgive that.” Maybe we can do this in our ratings. I want to talk about Rika and Michael, specifically. Maybe let's rate them and then talk about some of their moments. I feel like we didn't delve into some of these.

Shani, let's start with Rika.

Rika, I gave four stars. She kept losing and gaining. The reason I gave her four stars instead of three is because she stabbed Damon. I was happy that she fucking stabbed him and she saved herself at the end of the book. Michael is desperately trying to find her. She's sinking in the ocean and tied down to some bricks, a mafia-style. She cuts herself loose and swims back up. I like that about her. In general, as many times as I was like, “Bitch, are you stupid?” I was also like, “Yeah. Okay.” I felt like the author did a good job of making her fight.

In a lot of the books we've read before, there was not much bite to the heroines and I didn't like that. I'm like, “Let the book be fucked up but let her fight it and then also go with it.” It happened. In this one, I like when they would do some dumb shit and she's like, “That's some dumb shit.” I also feel like she did a lot of dumb shit as well. There were moments where I wish she was a little bit pluckier and had a little bit more backbone, which is like when she finds out that she's in the penthouse apartment. First of all, I want to know, she was supposed to be going to college during this time. I don't remember reading anything of her going to college. Possibly she did. I'm wondering when she went to class.

There were a lot of scenes of her talking about how she only was going to class back at the apartment. Damon and Will found her in her class. She was studying with Alex.

I was like, “I must have missed it.” I was like, “What are you studying?” When she found out that she had a penthouse, it was fully furnished and Michael lived there, I wanted her to pick up and leave. She spent all this time talking about how she wanted to be on her own. She didn't want to be under their thumb any more. She wanted to be independent and whatnot. She finds out that the thing that she's trying to get away from, which is all the parents controlling what she does, happens. I felt like she had every right to be like, “I don't want this apartment. I don't want this lease. I'm going to move somewhere else where I want to paint the walls. I want to decorate. I want to put the furniture in.” I felt like that would have been a solid step for her being that she wanted that independence.

She said in the book that classes start in two days. She’s like, “It's a new school. I don't want to look for an apartment. I don't have time for that. I want to go to class.”

She did. I felt like that would have been plucky as shit, to be like, “No,” even if she had done it midway through where things were getting weird with the guys.

She didn't know Michael lived there at that point. She didn't find out Michael lived there until after she was living there. She only met him after she was staying there that night and then got scared and ran down and saw him. She had already met him.

She was already there a night or two when she found out that Michael lived there.

You're saying that after she found out he lived there, she should have left?

After she realized that the mom had planned where she was going to live, essentially. They furnished her apartment and took all the things that she had been looking forward to in her college experience away. She's got plenty of money. She’s not hurting for any money. She could have picked and found an apartment easily after even Michael was there. I even felt like, either at that moment or even a little way into the book, where she was like, “This is too close for me. I'm going to move out of here.” I felt like that would have been an empowering moment for her, but I get it. I accepted, as part of the story, that she didn't. I also would have liked it if she did.

I remember the line where she said something like, “I can't afford this place.” She doesn't have her full inheritance. She doesn't have access to all her money yet. She has to wait either she's 25 or graduates from college. I also feel like she was on a budget.

She did say that.

I don't disagree. She probably could have found a roommate and got the fuck out of there. Also, at that point, shit was spiraling. She's like, “I don't know what's going on. I can't find my mom. I don't know what's happening.” We didn’t even talk about Alex yet. Alex is her friend who's a call girl.

Sometimes we talk about these books and we forget these little characters.

Alex was cool. I liked Alex. She met Alex when Michael had taken her out. She's a call girl. To his credit, in terms of being a book boyfriend, Michael does not have sex with her because he only wants to watch Rika through the window like a creep. She ends up befriending Rika and goes to college with her and stuff like that. Shani, her character is in much more of the future books. I will also say, as a little teaser for you and our dear readers, because these people are in consensual relationships, it does not mean that they do not play with others at different times throughout the books. There are some hot exchanges throughout the book with all of these characters.

Penelope Douglas does know how to write a sex scene. I also think she does know how to write the tension between characters.

When they're having a threesome, Kai says, “Does it hurt?” He's like, “Yes. It hurts like hell to watch, but that's also my kink. The pain of it is my kink.” I'm like, “Ooh.”

Because I'm reading it for the podcast, I didn't DNF it. If I had not been reading it for the podcast, at around chapter eight, I would have DNF because I was bored. The tension and the buildup that was happening, for me, took a little too long. She does know how to write the tension and buildup but it took too long.

You're not as interested in the intrigue. When I was trying to figure out what was going on, you're like, “They're not telling me anything.” She breadcrumbs throughout until you figure out the whole thing at two-thirds of the way through. I like that. I was bored because I was like, “What's going to happen?”

I like their little grotto sex because I love a little waterfall grotto sex situation.

Did you like it when he says, “You can't touch any guy at the party?” She takes Alex out to the bedroom and starts making out and hooking up with Alex.

I love that. I also loved when he's fucking with her and she's fucking with him. He thinks he's the one, and then she called him Trevor. He's like, “Get the fuck out of here. Bullshit.”

She calls him Kai and then she calls him Trevor. I was like, “Get him Rika.”

I like that she was feisty with him. I felt like she was giving as good as she got. A lot of times, I don't feel like the girl is giving as good as she got. The authors make them give in too easily or they're like, “Ahh.” I'm like, “Fight. Go down tumbling and scrappy.” When she came to the house, all four of them were there and they're telling her that she's going to be their sex slave. I wanted there to be some sex slavery for a minute.

I knew you were going to say that. I’m like, “Shani is going to be mad that the four of them did not take advantage of her in a better way.”

At least at one night, I thought there was going to be a five-some. At some point in this book, I felt like, “Penelope promised it to me subconsciously and did not deliver it.”

Do you know what I think is funny about that? A) I knew you're going to want that. B) A bunch of the reviews was like, “Why have sex with two of them? You may as well have sex with all four.”

I'm like, “Yes.”

I was like, “She could have.” I don't think you should be shaming this fictional character for having sex with two delicious dudes at once.

I don't know what in the universe makes it wrong.

Also, this is a fictional land. Nothing in a fictional land makes it wrong.

In my mind, I'm like, “That's one guy for each boob. That's a guy to be eating you out.” It’s like, “We're making out with you and fucking.”

One guy kisses the back of your neck while the other one kisses the front of your neck. It’s the dream.

There are many options here.

Four hands, that’s a lot of hands, Shani.

Eight hands, Bridget, I would lose my mother fucking mind. I would not say no. I will say, “Yes, more please.” A little to the left. A little to the right.

I’ve only had six hands and I will say, it was a lot of hands. You would lose your mind. I did, repeatedly.

You know how much I love scratches. I love to be scratched. I love to get my head scratched. I love to be petted. It's one of my top love languages. My family is touchy. All the women in my family are touchy. We all like to be rubbed this way. I always rub other people. One day, I wasn't feeling good. All my cousins were in a room and talking. I went and crawled between two of my older cousins. Both of them, at the same time, started rubbing different halves of me. One was rubbing my neck and my head and the other was scratching my back and my top booty cheeks. I almost lost my shit, Bridget. I was like, “What is this magic? What is my name again?”

That's like me when I get my haircut. What's the one where you like the little noise?

ASMR.

It’s like ASMR, for me, mixed with the touching of my neck and scalp.

I got to do this for you, Bridget. I'm good at this. You won’t move away.

I can get close to orgasm during a haircut. It's outrageous. If I actively tried, not physically touching myself, but if I mentally focused on it, I could orgasm from my haircut. I actively tried to not have an orgasm while I’m getting my haircut. It doesn't matter who's cutting my hair. It doesn't matter where it is. The brush on my scalp, the nails in my hair while they're washing it, the snipping sound, it is a lot and I love it.

I remember you told me this the second day and I was like, “No way.” This is my gift in the family.

I've been cutting my own hair. I haven’t had a real haircut in months.

Next time I see you and the children are at daycare, because you're going to be no good once I give you this head scratch. I have to ask a couple of questions because I have to know how much pressure people like. You can scratch my head so hard that it bleeds and it won't be hard enough. I’m not tender-headed.

I don't think that is me.

That's not you. My partner likes that baby soft touch that you're hardly ever touching their skin type of touch. That will drive me insane.

I like the mystery. I like the different sensations. That’s why haircuts are good because, sometimes, they pull your hair. Sometimes they’re lightly fluffing it. There are a lot of different sensations.

That's the thing, you got to go between rubbing, massaging, scratching. You got to scratch the ears. You got to scratch the under-chin sections. You take your hand in the hair and you pull it, get it nice and tight or whatever, you release and then scratch it. It’s my gift.

I almost thought about growing out my hair long because I've always had shoulder-length hair or chin-length. I was like, “Maybe I should grow my hair out so I can have a nice ponytail that someone could hold on to while I’m having sex with them.” I do not have the hair texture for that and I wish that I did.

When I was in Florida, I kept begging my mom for head scratches. She never used to do this before when she was scratching. She would scratch my hair and then she would pull it. She would dig her hands tightly and pull from the scalp. I was like, “Shani, you can't have this feeling. It's your mom. Calm down.”

It’s not even that bad. It doesn’t matter who’s doing it.

I was like, “Mom, that’s amazing.” I'm going to give you the head-scratcher.

I gave Rika a five because I want to be her. She has sex like a little Banshee, which I enjoy. Also, I like that she makes dumb decisions. It would have been nice to challenge them earlier and be like, “What are you talking about?” In general, she's pretty badass. She fights back. In the beginning, she goes into the club and doesn't realize it's a gentleman's club. He throws her in the car and she grabs her shit and runs out and he has to chase her again. She ends up getting out another time and walks home in the rain. I like that about her. She isn't waiting for someone to save her, which is a part of the fact that when they were young, he was like, “I'm not going to save you. You can save yourself. You're strong enough. You need to figure out how to fix this.”

In one of the flashbacks, he blindfolds her and then leaves her in the catacombs. People are messing with her and she fights back and talks back. In another flashback, there's a boy and his girlfriend and they slipped her a roofie and were going to rape her in a bedroom. Luckily, one of her friends busted in and saved her. She takes him into the bathroom of this restaurant and gets the soap dispenser and smashes his girlfriend's face against the glass and cuts him deeply on the cheek with this soap dispenser. The guys bust in and they're like, “We'll take it from here.” They beat the living shit out of him so that he'll never mess with her again.

Those moments were a little too intrigue-y for me. They took too long to come into the bathroom and I was like, “She told you what the plan was.” They're not listening to her plan. Also, in the catacombs, he's like, “Do you trust me?” I was like, “She had no reason to trust him because he didn't help her when other people were coming to grope her and do their thing.” It took him forever to come back.

He was there the whole time.

He was there, but it took him forever to step into the situation. I was like, “Why should she trust you?” This was a terrible lesson in trust.

Also, when he’s talking to her about how that girl is getting fucked, everyone is watching. They could see her and taste her and to be owned like that. I was like, “You’re trying to make this girl o-face right now?” She can’t hear and she can’t see shit with the blindfold on. I was like, “Ooh.” Later, he takes her back to the catacombs and makes her wear her school outfit to reenact it and I was like, “Hell yes.”

It helped to know early on that they're both on the same page at the fact that she has a fear kink. When he was doing stuff, you could put things in that space.

Even in the steam room when they're fucking, she's almost at orgasm but can't get there. He's like, “No matter what you fucking do, no one's going to come for you even if you scream.” She immediately orgasms because he taps into that. I was like, “I liked that.” Perhaps if I had not read all the other books, I would have given her a 4, but she continues to be a badass bitch so I gave her a 5.

I don't think it's fair that you read all the books and then give a cumulative rating, Bridget. Once you read more books, it's hard to separate a character.

I did re-read. I gave her a five. I liked her a lot. I thought she was great. First of all, especially in dark romance so far, she’s my favorite heroine that we've read. In general, I liked her. I thought she was hot. I thought she was demanding of him like what she wanted, even when he was being crazy. Especially when she said, “I love you,” and didn't back down and say, “I’m kidding.” She was like, “Do what you want, but I love you and you're going to have to deal with it.” I liked that about her. I liked that she was afraid but not fearful.

I thought she was plucky and I enjoyed that about her. What's the fun in dark romance if there's no fight? The fight is what makes it menacing and the things that hit. In the other books, I felt like there were no fights, especially Perfection. I was like, “We're not going to try to get out of this?” I enjoyed that about her. I can't tell if I liked her so much because I'm comparing it to the books that we read before, or that I just liked her, but in dark romance, she's definitely my favorite. This has been my favorite book in the season and she's definitely been my favorite heroine.

Michael, I felt like I had the best build-up for me and he was the most fleshed out where I felt connected to him. The sex scenes were hot and I didn't feel like I was wanting to skim the sex scenes. There were parts of the book where I did want to skim. I'm not going to lie. The sex scenes I felt like were earned. When they came, I was in it. Besides the ménage where I was like, “What's happening? Forget it. Let's just go with it.” I did feel like they were earned, so I was like, “Kudos to Penelope Douglas.” It’s a hard genre to write.

What did you think about Michael?

Michael, I gave a three because I thought he was a good lover and shit. I like the dirty talk, the nasty, and all that stuff. However, he had some fuck boy moments that annoyed the shit out of me. He was at a two until he fucking stomped Trevor into the pool and drowned him, then he made it to a three. It's like, “Only the best for my baby.” I love that shit.

She’s been mad at me, but I don't care.

I like the commitment to ruthlessness.

He didn’t have a heart of gold like all these other boys. He’s like, “No. I’m going to handle this. I’m going to kill my own brother.”

I loved that his heart of gold at this moment was to murder his brother, and then bring the body back to his mother. That was where his heart of gold moment was. He loves his mom. “Let her bury your body.” I was like, “Abso-fuckin-lutely.” That's a good boy right there. I gave him a three. It was hard for me to give him higher than that, but I thought it was a solid character. I do commend these authors. I've been ripping some of the new ones, but dark romance is hard. I feel like there's a lot of balancing that you're doing and not everybody is good at it.

I gave him a four because of all the reasons that you said. He's not my favorite hero of all time, but I did like him. The thing I like the most is that he sees her and he pushes her to own who she is, her desires, and what she wants out of life and out of relationships, and whatever. He's a dark romance lead so he does terrible things, which was to be expected. I'm not going to lose a point for the fact that he does terrible things because that would defeat the purpose of the genre. I will say that he lost a point for me though because he didn't tell her that he loved her until after she almost dies and I was like, “Go fuck yourself. You love her already.”

Kai had to be like, “You love her. Just say you love her.”

Kai’s on his team like, “Just tell her you love her. What's so wrong with this beautiful, wonderful girl who loves you? You love her, you idiot. You loved her your whole life.” “Now I’m going to have sex with her so that you know you love her.” He even says to her while they’re fucking, “You are the perfect woman.” I'm like, “You love her, you moron.” He lost a point for me because I was like, “That's some straight-up dumbness. You need to get your mind right.”

Aside from that, I thought he was good. I liked him. I didn't love him. Not that Ride or Die is my favorite book boyfriend ever, but I did like him. I thought he delivered well on the menace. I thought he delivered well on the ruthlessness and the willingness to go further. I thought he delivered well on the machinations behind the scene of playing his dad and ruling their little group. I thought he delivered well on all of those things. I was excited after I read this book. I read the whole series right away, but I was excited even reading this again. I was like, “I can go back and read the rest.”

I don't think the rest of them could be read as standalones if you don't read this book frankly, but they all do have complete HEA. Each one is about one book about one couple and the rest of the couples though are all intertwined friendships. The rest of the couples are in all the books, but the side plots versus the series, which a different author could have easily made Rika and Michael the main characters of all five books. They had them break up and makeup.

I was happy that this book completely wraps their HEA. In the rest of the books, all couples have disagreements about what they also do about the certain crazy shit that's happening, but they are always together. The next book is about those next characters in the next story. I also want to say that she does an excellent job in future books of weaving the same way of the present day, and then flashing back to when the two characters met. It’s a consistent thing throughout the books, and it works as well as it did in this book.

It helps them with that front-loaded book. Because I've been so annoyed with the front-loading of a lot of the books we've been reading, I was way more willing to accept this flashback thing. I feel like the story can be moving forward while I'm learning some of this stuff.

It's fun, too, in the next books because they flashback, so you see events from the perspective of different characters. They'll flashback to an event that happened and you saw Rika and Michael's perspective. Now you'll flashback to that same event or that same night or the same thing, but you'll now be in Kai's perspective, which is fun to see the way that everyone remembers events differently and also, what they are focusing on. Everyone was focusing on different things and different people. Michael was so wrapped up in Rika and vice versa. The other guys were looking at and thinking about and doing different things, so it's cool. McDreamy to McSteamy, what do we get?

I wrote something for this, and then I don't know where I put it. I call them McTooLittleTooLate because I didn't like that he let her get groped and he let his friends manhandle her and shit. I was like, “That was not my favorite part of the book.”

Are you talking about when they were at the house?

Yeah, when they were at the house.

They go so far just to stab David.

The fact that she had to stab him, I was like, “Yo.”

Even though he's like, “I wouldn't have let them do that,” she's like, “Fuck you. Let them go far enough, you asshole.”

Also, how was she supposed to know what his intentions were?

He didn't even know his intentions until that moment. I would have been mad at him and have been like, “You’re an epic douchebag for that.”

That was hard for me. Unless the guy is fully committed to being a sociopath, I can go on that ride where they let anything happen to the character, but then that's part of the character. You can't give me this back and forth heart of gold, and then let something like that happen. It's the same thing with that other book, Tears of Tess, where the other mob boss, henchmen guy got her on his watch. I don't like that.

That was horrible. In that book, I was mad too, because I'm like, “You don't even care about this. You know he's a horrible person.” In this book, I could see the war between his love of his best friends and his love of her. His hesitation behind, “We've been planning this for three years,” and his realization, “I don't think I can let this happen.” It takes him a minute to get with the program. I totally agree. Dick move. I said that he was a McChaseMe.

There's an element to this book that I'm not realizing. It’s probably why I like it a little bit better. It's that both of them have something in common. In the other books, I'm like, “Why is this couple together?” Like It Ain't Me, Babe. We haven't talked about do they like to do the same things like movies? There's nothing, to me, that makes them compatible as a couple other than sex. In this book, it's like two kids who grew up with the same family structure. It's like me trying to marry somebody who came from Long Island. Our families would not mesh. For them, they came from the same place. They grew up together. Inherently, you feel like they have a connection already. Their families get together for the holidays and they can vibe. You know they speak the same language.

He gets turned on by scaring her and she gets turned on by him scaring her.

He's always trying to see her. He gets her trying to look at the inside of her. I felt like they had common ground to be a couple where in a lot of these other books, it felt more like Stockholm syndrome versus like, “I'm vibing.”

She loved him before he did anything bad to her and she loved him through him doing bad to her. It wasn't like they started doing bad things, and then she lost her way. She has always wanted and obsessed with him. What were your favorite lines of this book? I had, as you're probably aware, a few but you can go first.

This is one I picked. There were a couple. It was about a threesome. Kai says to her, “I'm so sorry, Rika. We should have made Michael confront you all those years ago. Your house, Jesus Christ.” Just now, he's realizing the full measure of what they've done. “That's one apology.” This is the apology before they have their little threesome situation or whatever. I was like, “What a big idiot.” He’s like, “Your house,” and I’m like, “What a doofus.” There's a line in the book, it was a quote that I couldn't find. I usually mark my quotes, but for some reason, I can't find this one.

She was having this inner monologue about, “I can't believe they would do something like this. I can't believe they burned down my house.” I was like, “You went and watched them burn down other people's shit. You watched them be terrible to other people. You did not think they had the capability of being terrible to you?” There was a disconnect for me in that. She's like, “How could they burn my house down?” I was like, “Bitch, you saw them do this before. Why are we acting shocked right now?” Anyway, I felt like this summed up a little bit of what I was feeling in the book, which is like, “Now we're going to have this threesome.”

I would simply like that dark romance though. In this book, at least I felt like everything fit. As crazy as it was. I felt like it all fit. In general, all these books have crazy things and I'm like, “What is happening?” I was like, “That’s dark romance.”

This book did the best job of helping me understand what it is about dark romance that can be hot, intriguing, sexy, gritty, and whatever. I enjoyed this book. That's not to say that there weren't things in this book that I thought was just ludicrous. Also, the second half of the book got messy for me and the intrigue. I don't like to be intrigued. I'm trying not to judge it on that because that's not my cup of tea, but I did feel like a whole lot started happening at the end and I was throwing a whole lot of things.

I was happy that they wrapped up and that they didn't linger.

Once she said, “That's not how things happened,” that it was believed and they moved on from there. If they had let that linger, I would have hated this book. I would have said, “You're trying to get me to read more Kindle pages.” That's why it didn't lose points for me. I was like, “When people noticed things, they dealt with it and they moved on.”

My favorite line was when they were about to have sex. When she said, “They all thought I was a good girl, Michael. I dragged his low through my teeth, but there are so many bad things I want to do. Do dirty things to me.” I was like, “He's going to lose his mind when he hears you say that.” He’s going, “Damn.” I liked it because I felt like it exemplified the fact that everyone was trying to put her in this good girl box and groom her for this life of being Trevor's wife, putting a baby in him, giving away her fortune to them, and all this other stuff. He was saying, “I saw the fire in her that she wanted more. There was more in her.” She always felt like that too. “I want to do bad things but I want to take ownership of my sexuality and my life.” They did do dirty things I enjoyed. Did you have a favorite review?

I did. I didn't agree with the number of stars that Julie gave it but I did agree with some of what she said. She said, “This book doesn't exactly know what it wants to be. There is the new adult component where we get sex scenes with college kids. There is the romance angle where the girl loves the jerky guy forever and he's always pushing her away but he loves her. They have their little HEA, and then we have the thriller mindfuck of revenge, murder, rape, etc. Don't forget to add in the 50 Shades of Grey crapola. I got to have some kinky fuckery. I don't think it all fits together that well. It would have been better if it were more focused. It felt messy. I don't like messy books.” This is from Julie. I didn't give it two stars like she did, but in general, I like this review. Most of them, people either raved or hated it. This is a love-it-or-hate-it type of book. I did like this messy book. I don't generally like messy books. However, I did wish that it had a bit more of a focus and a slightly tighter edit.

Mine was from Nicoletta E, addicted to books. She gave it 4.5 little monster stars for these Corrupted people. That was funny. She said, “Just wow. This book was confusing as hell at least at the beginning, but it kept you on edge at all times. Excitement, anger, fear, hot scenes, not-so-hot scenes, crazy actions, I got caught in the middle of all the emotions and I couldn't do anything else but love it. It was intoxicating.” I feel the same. There's a lot going on. It's a little confusing at times, but I was always in it. Even when I was like, “What is happening?” The pacing was working for me. The Penelope Douglas writing style was something that I was like, “I wanted to read more. I wanted to keep going.” For me, that is always a good sign.

I feel like for me, the pacing, I kept finding that I would get to a point in the book where I was uninterested, and quite shortly after that, something would happen that would make me interested again. I kept getting to a bored place and that kept happening. I will say though that she's good at grabbing your attention back. You're like, “What's happening?” I would read more of Penelope Douglas, especially because this book was written years ago. I'm like, “What has she written today? What's on her docket? How much better is she? How much better is her editor?” When you write a ton of books, you can only get better.

I haven't looked to see who the most popular dark romance authors are, but she's definitely recommended to us the most. In terms of her following, if that counts, she's been on the bestseller lists of all of the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, etc. She's written 25 books or something like that.

I went on Audible and let me read you this one. There's a whole synopsis of this book, but the one line when you click over, it says, “There are three of them. One of her in a remote cabin in the woods that the hot winter nights ensue.” I'm like, “Add to cart.”

What book is that?

It’s Credence. It's got four narrators on it and I was like, “Let's see where we're going with this wish list.”

That's one of her books.

It is 16 hours, almost 17 hours.

Her books are on. To put this in perspective, one of her books on Goodreads has 105,000 ratings. A lot of them are in the 40,000, 30,000, 50,000, 25,000.

People like this bully stuffing hits. I want to know what all the kinks are that it hits for people when they're reading the books.

Let's do this one.

The powerlessness.

You have to do that one. I feel like that fire of hating someone so much that you want to fuck them. Maybe like a shame one. You're ashamed that you like someone who's mean to you or something like that.

There's also an element of being powerless or the forced element.

What else? You can be your “true self” because they're so bad that you can feel free to tell them your deepest, darkest desires. They're a bad dude.

You're never going to be worse than them.

It's okay if you want him to handcuff you and spank you because he's terrible.

Dear readers, if you want to share with us what kink dark romance hits for you, especially bully romance, we want to know. DM us. Hit us up on Instagram. Please, let us know because I'm so curious.

I'll make a graphic. What kink does bully romance hit for you?

I'd love that because I'm so curious. I know what kinks this book hits for me or in general, dark romance hits, but specifically, bully romance because I find that it's less of my cup of tea. I don't care for the teenagers. The young angst of a book. I want to know. Tell us your kink. Whisper it in our ear. We should do one of those questions that people can answer on stories where people can directly message in. That'd be cool. We can keep it anonymous.

Be on the lookout for that on Instagram. We will post a graphic and a question sticker in case you want to keep it anonymous and we will talk to you about that.

This has been a great episode, Bridget. Let's wrap the people up.

We didn't even say what we liked. I gave it five stars. How many stars did you give out of five?

It's hard. I was between 3 and 4. My brain is still deciding. I didn't even write it on my sheet because I was still deciding how I felt. I didn't know how I felt, Bridget. I had to sit with it and pray about it. I'm going to give it four stars.

Four stars from Shani and I.

What pushes it to a four because three stars is a solid book. However, the books that we've been reading have not been up to the part that I would like and Penelope brought something extra. I'm going to give her the extra star because she did good for me and she put a ménage in there. I was like, “How can I give her four stars when she gave me a good ménage? Come on.”

Shani, I will tell you that there is a scene later in the series where there are two hooking up on the couch. I won't tell you which ones. Two of the women of the series hooking up on a couch and the other couples are in various positions. One is sitting on the lap of her partner. The other one is leaned over a high bar and the guy is behind her and they're all watching these two hook up.

Penelope, nasty.

It is hot as sin. There's another scene I'll tell you about.

Are we interviewing her? We need to talk to Penelope.

Slide into this lady's DMs, please, for us because I have emailed and I have Instagrammed and I have not heard back yet. I'm holding out hope. I'm hoping because I would love to interview her. First of all, because she's super interesting and also, she's passionate about the genre and knowledgeable about it, which would be interesting for everyone to hear about. She puts reviews on other people's books on Goodreads and I read a couple of her reviews. She's awesome about talking about why.

People shouldn't be giving one-star reviews if this isn't your genre. It doesn't make it a bad book. It just means you don't like it. You shouldn't read these books. That is something that I firmly believe. If dark romance is not for you, stop reading it, or any genre or any author. Move on and accept it's not for you. Don't give it a bad review just because you don't like sex that has three people in it. Stop reading books that have three people that have sex. That's the solution.

To me, people are playing God. You think you're on a website and you're just hitting stars or whatever. Back in the day, a long time ago, I used to drive for Uber and people might not like something minuscule about your car so they’ll give you 2 stars or 3 stars or whatever. That's someone's livelihood that you are starring right there. If their rating goes down, they don't get picked up much and they lose out. It’s the same thing with authors. Just because you write it doesn't mean you need to read it. If it's not in a genre you like, let that shit go. Chalk it up to the game and move on. If you enjoy it and if it is your genre, then you're fully within your rights to go read that book.

You shouldn't rate it one star for what it is. If you’re rating it one star because it is a book about bully romance and they are mean to each other and that's why you gave it one star, that's not fair. If you read it and it's not your genre and you gave it one star because you thought the writing wasn't good and the story sucked within that genre, maybe it's not your favorite, but that is different. You can't rate a book about ménages one star because there are ménages in it. You can’t rate a dark romance one star because it's a dark romance. That is bullshit.

This book was not advertised as a ménage. I didn't see them in ménage.

I said ménage only because I read one review that gave it two stars because she had sex with two characters.

I saw that one and I was like, “That review would have made me buy the book.”

I will be like, “She had sex with two people? Tell me more. Which ones?”

I would love to talk to her because I am so intrigued and I want to know more, especially from the author's perspective. What makes you write these books? What makes you tick?

You guys, we could talk about this book forever. This book had so much juiciness, but we'll have to catch you next time when we're reading Pestilence, which I am thrilled about. Until then, may your books be your lover.

Your hand, your best friend. Pestilence, that's one of the four horsemen right there.

Important Links:

• Corrupt

• Nightfall

• Patreon – Romance at a Glance

• Perfection

• It Ain't Me, Babe

• Tears of Tess

• Credence

• Instagram – Romance At A Glance

• Pestilence

Recommendations:

Welcome to Romance at a Glance, a podcast that uses romance novels to dive into candid conversations about life, relationship dynamics, and sexual desires. 

As hosts Bridget and Shani review books and interview some of romance’s biggest authors, they explore the breadth of the genre, openly embracing the sex, diverse couplings, and taboo in order to create a safe space for listeners to be exposed to different lifestyles, fantasies, and to pique their naughty curiosity.

Expect 100% honest reviews, spontaneous singing, life lessons, indecent anecdotes, and bawdy humor.

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May your books be your lover and your hand your best friend