Rating: 5 ‘What An Ending’ Stars

Publisher: Paulina Ian-Kane

Genre: Gay Erotic Romance

Tags: Contemporary, First Time, Kink, Opposites Attract, Personality Disorder, Romance, Series, Stalking, Violence

Length: 429 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

This review contains spoilers from all the books in the series.

Also note trigger warnings. There is a lot of on page violence in every book in the series.

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Blurb –

Sully Carver

A man in a mask keeps appearing in my dreams. Sounds like the beginning of a psychological thriller. And while I thought I left all the drama in my dark past, and have since focused on moving on, the truth is, those dreams have awakened a side of me I didn’t know existed—a kinky side. And soon, my diary entries are filled with sexy fantasies.

My brain implodes when, one night, I’m saved by a real man in a white mask. And that man turns out to be Ezra—the latest addition to the family.

My intelligence is above average, but even I never would’ve guessed he wanted me badly enough to stalk me. After all, we’ve barely spoken since we met.

I should be horrified and wary, simply because most of my family doesn’t trust him. The reason behind it isn’t his psychopathy—that’s kind of a family trait. Nor his job—assassination is not very far from vigilante justice. The problem is his reluctance to share his past and his ties with the murderous maniac, Nine, who is after us all.

But Ezra’s stoicism and the intensity and dominance he exudes send an electric thrill down my spine every single time. I can’t resist. I have zero experience in how to…proceed. But it looks like he knows exactly how to make my hot desires come true.

In the midst of all the new excitement, I’m still fighting with my past demons, while Nine is upping her dangerous game. Will we get through this battle unscathed? I can’t seem to foresee a happy ending.

Not for all of the Angels of Wrath.

WARNING-This is not a sci-fi angel story, unless you see eager vigilantes with a dark, merciless side as angels. This is an action-packed, dark-themed romance with an HEA.
It features a virgin college student, an introvert, fighting with his dark past and an obsessed, touch-him-and-die, stoic psychopathic assassin.
Stalking—by a masked man—and invasion of privacy are both present. Sexy fantasy kink with a little of role play. A side character suffering chronic illness, violence, gore, remorseless torture (only of very bad people), dark humor, a band of foster brothers ready to help. Morality’s grey area is quite stretched in this story.

Please check the more detailed triggers at the beginning of the book before reading.

This is book six and the last in the Angels of Wrath Series. Each book follows a different couple and would be more enjoyable if read in order since recurring characters keep appearing.

Review –

 “Romantic love comes and goes, a psycho’s obsession lasts forever.”

Both Goodreads and Amazon have this marked as book #7 because of #4.5. It’s actually #6, the final book in the Angels of Wrath series, though there will be necessary spin-offs.

I started this series with no clue how it was going to go. I liked three of the books, was so-so on one, and loved two, including this one. That’s not too bad for me. Granted, I still need to read #4.5, but I’ll do that soon. It’s been a long time since a series has kept me interested for several books. There were a few times when I almost stopped, but I’m glad I didn’t. The ending was absolutely perfect.

Like the books before it, Eight starts with a prologue from over twenty years ago. Unlike the books before it, Eight’s prologue isn’t just a report about the child. It actually has one of the children in it, Uri. Let’s just say that his sociopathic, manipulative behavior started very early.

Sully, now 20, was introduced in Six (Angels of Wrath, #2). He’s Ollie’s clumsy but sweet kid brother. That was Ollie and Rague’s story, but Sully was very much part of it. Ezra showed up later, when it came out that there were more than the seven test subjects used in a secret experiment over two decades prior. Six of them were rescued and raised by Meg, a forensic psychiatrist, and Linda, a former CIA agent. One was found later – that would be Michael – and then there’s subject Eight. That would be Ezra, Uri’s identical twin brother. Ezra managed to escape, but he didn’t grow up with the others, including Uri. Ezra is a hitman, but he doesn’t follow the same rules as the others.

Now we have subject Nine, who is now known as Phoenix, the person who has been wreaking havoc on the brothers’ lives for over a year. This includes having Sully kidnapped and almost beaten to death. Ollie was already protective of his brother, but the attack – which was meant to be on Ollie, not Sully – amped it up big time.

Nine has always been one step ahead of the guys and all their kick-ass technology.

Sully is now in college, along with one of the triplets, Ren. He’s still as clumsy as ever, but he’s finally pulling out of his shell a little. He suffers from PTSD from the attack, but he’s managing to keep it under control for the most part. Lately, he’s had that creepy feeling of being watched. He tries to convince himself that it’s nothing, but it’s definitely not nothing.

Enter Ezra, Sully’s resident stalker. The two guys had only met a couple of times before with the family, but Ezra has been standoffish, and Sully has been shy. They’ve barely said two words to each other. That doesn’t matter to Ezra in the least. Like Raphael in One with Michael, and Uri in Seven+ Four with Sari, he wants Sully, and he’s going to have him. End of. He often wears a white mask, has even saved Sully from being hurt while wearing it. It’s super creepy, but virgin Sully has some sexy dreams about being taken by a man in a white mask. He also has those dreams about Ezra, not knowing they’re the same person.

There’s a lot of stalking in this series. Lori even has various stalker playlists and stalker kits handy at all times. Lori, in very small doses, is hilarious.

Uri, Ezra’s twin, is a sociopath. Ezra is a psychopath. I’ve now read both of their books, along with Raphael’s, who is also a psychopath. I’m just going to say that I’ll take the two psychopaths over the sociopath any day. In this series anyway.

“Well, there’s a fine line between stalking and romance, and Ezra walked that bitch hard.”

Ezra eventually makes his presence known because he has to rescue Sully from another attempted kidnapping, again orchestrated by Phoenix. After this last rescue, they almost immediately jump into a sexual relationship. Like Uri with Sari, Ezra had planned well ahead for when he and Sully would be together, even had a house built near Sully’s university.

Sully is happy. He’s having sex with his literal dream man, and said dream man is making it clear that Sully belongs to him and only him. In Uri and Sari’s story, Uri annoyed me with his controlling ways. In Ezra and Sully’s, I was okay for the most part with how Ezra went about things. Granted, it was more than a little creepy that he stalked Sully’s almost every move for months before they came together. This stalking also included sneaking into his dorm room and reading Sully’s diary, among other things. That, I wasn’t overly thrilled about. Had this not been fiction, I’d be saying that Sully needed to get a restraining order. I kept wondering why Ezra wouldn’t just make a move already. That’s explained later.

The sex, as in all the other books, is pretty hardcore. And once it happens, there’s a lot of it.

Before it’s all said and done, everybody knows about Ezra and Sully’s relationship – except his brother Ollie, and his man, Rague. How they kept it from them is a mystery, but it had to be done. Ollie had already made his feelings known about Ezra, and those feelings weren’t good. Had he found out earlier, things may not have worked out the way they eventually did.

“Rague is going to tear you to pieces, and Ollie will piss on your carcass.” He snorts.

Like I’ll let that ever happen. “And where will you be when someone with your exact face is being mutilated and sullied?”

“Watching with a bucket of popcorn.”

“Perverted fucker,” I mutter.

Because this series is all about pet names, Ezra’s for Sully is Little Chick. He explains why in the book.

Sully and all the others are still in danger. Meg is still in the hospital in a coma caused by Phoenix. They still have no idea how to find Nine/Phoenix, who everyone now knows is a woman. It’s basically a game of cat and mouse for both sides. All the brothers and their men have to come together, work together, to finally deal with her once and for all. This includes Ezra, who’s not a big fan of the family thing. He more or less puts up with it because of Uri, and now Sully.

When the time comes to take Phoenix down – and you know she’s taken down – everybody is part of it, except Meg, obviously. This includes all the brothers and their men. That right there is what totally knocked the book up from 4.5 stars for me to a solid 5. Each brother and partner played a huge part. I absolutely love how the author wrote that. Nobody is left out. Each character was able to get their piece, so to speak. This includes Noodles, Sully’s pet ferret, who played a big part as well.

As much as it pains me to admit it, I liked Uri a lot in this one. His own story was okay, but he was a total ass through most of it. Now he’s showing a softer side to Sari publicly, though everybody has fun giving him hell about it. The quote below is taken from probably the sweetest scene in the entire book, and it was Uri, the one I wanted to slap into next week in his own story.

“In the last few months, I’ve been…” Uri pauses.

“A rude prick?” Rami tries.

“An ornery bastard,” Gabe does, too.

“An unhinged fucker,” Rague says his piece.

“A sociopathic pain in the ass,” Raph decides to join.

“A blind idiot,” Ezra seems to enjoy fucking with his brother.

“Fuck you all,” Uri growls.

I was really confused and then frustrated with Linda at one point. I was not happy with her part of the plan to bring Phoenix down. I was thinking, here’s this former CIA agent who literally taught all the brothers everything they know about killing, so why is she planning something that could hurt, not help? Then I found out why she did it. Even then… no. Ezra and the others would agree. She’d been in the background the entire series, so I guess I should’ve expected her to get involved at some point. She did what she thought was right from a strategic standpoint, but until the truth came out about it, I was thinking, “And this is some kind of great special agent?”

I still don’t agree with what she did, but everything worked out well in the end.

I was iffy when I started this series because certain things (!!!! overload for one) drove me a little crazy. I’m really glad I kept going. I’m eager to see the triplets have their series, and I’m hoping Clover is in one of the books with his pet rat, Mr. Squashy Nuts. 🙂 I’m also looking forward to seeing Brad, Sully’s best friend, get his own book. Brad is a sweetheart. Something tells me that Brad’s story will be a little more angsty than these.

Great ending to a series. I’m normally grumbly about books being too long. The 400-plus pages were needed in this book. Everything had to be brought full circle.

You can find my reviews to all the books in the series here. I’m going to take a break from this world for a book or two, and then I’ll come back and read Happy Krampus Xmas & The Meet Not Cute (#4.5) that I started on but didn’t finish because Lori was too much.

5 ‘what an ending’ stars.