Rating: 5 ‘Sebastian Needs A Hug’ Stars

Publisher: Lark Taylor

Genre: Gay Paranormal Romance

Tags: Contemporary/Paranormal/Supernatural, Age Gap (About 600 Years), Grumpy/Sunshine, Opposites Attract, Romance, Series, 

Length: 476 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

Sebastian

Blood. Torture. Murder. They’ve been my only companions for centuries. I haven’t needed or wanted anything else.

Until I see Matty smile. Then something in me, something that’s been dormant for centuries, begins to reawaken.

Matty doesn’t belong in my world. He’s loving, innocent, and full of joy. The darkness of my life would corrupt him in a heartbeat, but when he’s dragged into it against his will, nothing can stop me delivering my personal brand of justice.

Matty keeps fighting for things I can’t give him, for things I’m no longer capable of. I can’t come between him and his family. I can’t give him what he needs.

But I also can’t stay away from him.

Matty

I’m surrounded by couples in love.

Once, I thought that’d be me. That I’d be swept off my feet and experience the kind of epic love you only see in movies.

Now, I know better.

A horrific night taught me to look for other things in a partner. Someone who’s predictable. Safe. Stable.

Sebastian is anything but.

Everyone tells me to stay away from him, but I don’t understand their concerns. How can he be a villain when all he’s shown me is kindness?

He makes me want things I thought I’d given up on. Things I’m too scared to admit I still want.

The trouble is, I can’t figure out what Sebastian wants. He tells me he can’t say no to me, but he won’t open up. He says to stay away from him, but he keeps coming around.

One thing is for sure, Sebastian is who I want in my future.

But how can I keep fighting for us if I’m the only one doing it?

Justice is a MM PNR romance about a grumpy vampire assassin and the sunshine human he can’t stay away from. The second in the Damned Connections series, each book will follow a different couple as they find their HEA. Although better read in order, these books can stand alone.

Review –

“Please. You love me. You love me, so save me.”

My face was expressionless as I spoke my final words to him. “I love nothing and no one. Not anymore. You made certain of that. I will not make the same mistake twice.”

I first ‘met’ Matty and Sebastian in The Silencer (Unexpectedly Twisted, #1) by Cora Rose, and they popped up again in His Reaper (Unexpectedly Twisted, #4). They may have made appearances in some of the others in that series. If so, I don’t remember. I was curious about them, but not curious enough to get involved in their series. I don’t read books with demons, or angels, or anything pertaining to religion. It’s just not my thing. Even so, I did want to know more about Matty and Sebastian so I skipped book 1 and downloaded theirs. I’m glad I did. I was confused a little about the other characters and their stories, but the book mainly focused on Matty and Sebastian, so I wasn’t too lost.

Justice starts with a prologue that almost had me crying like a baby. It tells the story of how and why Sebastian became the hardened and (most would say) mean vampire that he is. He’s very standoffish and gives off that ‘don’t come near me if you want to live’ vibe. He loved once, was betrayed, and will never fall again, especially for a human. Once upon a time he was a loving and sweet man. Now, he’s a paid assassin who doesn’t hesitate to do his job. He’s also a good hacker, which is the side of him I saw in the Unexpectedly Twisted series.

Matty, a human, is a sweetheart. He’s always smiling, and everybody loves him. After meeting him once, Sebastian has developed a serious obsession. He watches him just to see his smile. One might say he stalks him, but it’s done to keep Matty safe. Well, that’s Sebastian’s justification to himself anyway. The stalking is taken a bit to an extreme later. But then again, it also saves Matty’s life.

So instead of being busy unaliving an American senator like I was supposed to be, I was trailing around after a human while he shopped for yarn.

Does anyone know where Sebastian is? Because he’s sure as fuck not here right now.

Sebastian isn’t liked by anybody. He kills without thought, and he’s a serious ass to everybody he comes in contact with. This has pushed everybody away, which is exactly what he wants. That includes Matty’s brother Leo and his man. Sebastian tries to talk to Matty once in a bar, and everybody – demons, fallen angels, wolf shifters, etc. – gets downright rude to Sebastian about daring to speak to sweet Matty. And who could blame them? He knows he’s not a good guy, and someone as kind as Matty is way too good for him. Even knowing that, he can’t stay away.

Matty develops a serious crush. Instead of allowing Matty, an adult, to live his own life, everybody treats him like a child, especially when it comes to Sebastian. In their defense, something bad did happen to Matty a few months before that keeps them all hovering. Even so, he knows he wants Sebastian, his brother and everybody else be damned.

Why does he have to be good looking and an arsehole? The combination is my kryptonite.

Things are happening with some of the others (demons, etc.), so this puts Matty in a dangerous position where he needs to be guarded. His brother and his man have to take off, so they leave Danny, a wolf shifter, in charge of watching him. Only a simple error on both his and Matty’s part, and a serious misunderstanding on somebody else’s part, ends up putting Matty in serious danger. Who does he call for help? That would be Sebastian. Not Danny. Not his brother. Sebastian. You know, the big and bad meanie vampire who everybody else hates. They may hate him, but they also know he gets things done. Which is exactly what he does when he rescues Matty.

The rescue starts their relationship of sorts, though Sebastian refuses to call it that. Nobody wants him around Matty, but Matty is inconsolable without him.

The rest of the book is Matty falling harder for the vampire, and Sebastian doing everything in his power to not fall for the human. Well, those ships sail early on for both of them, only Sebastian refuses to admit it to himself. This was even after they played around a little sexually.

There’s a LOT of ‘I’ll never be good enough’ from Sebastian, and I admit that it got more than a little tiring. Matty was as kind and genuine as they come, and Seb didn’t want to hurt that simply by being associated with him. He also didn’t want to cause issues with Matty’s family – the family who will do everything in their power to keep Sebastian away.

Suddenly it made sense why everyone had tried to tell me to stay (away) from him. He was everything he’d said he was.

Dangerous.

Ruthless.

Unforgiving.

But with me… he was none of those things. He was gentle. Kind.

He called me ‘sunshine.’

He’d told me to hold on for him. That he’d come for me.

And he had.

I may have gotten frustrated with Sebastian a few times, but what happened later cancelled everything out. He does what he feels is the right thing and walks away, breaking his heart in two. He knows that Matty will get over him someday, so he gets out while their relationship is somewhat early. Only Matty doesn’t get over him. He falls apart. He’s no longer smiling, and no longer doing anything he loves like crocheting and baking. He’s a shell of his old self. As for Sebastian, he’s faring even worse than Matty. He refuses to feed, something a vampire has to do, because it’s not Matty’s blood. He puts himself in situations in hopes of getting himself killed when he’s been long known as a good assassin who can take out an entire clan of wolves while barely breaking a sweat.

I refused to be the darkness that would eclipse his sunshine.

My heart hurt for both of them, and I found myself getting a little teary several times while reading this. I love how they came back together, and who played a part in making it happen. I loved watching Sebastian do everything in his power to prove to Matty that he’s never disappearing again. Before, it was him constantly feeling like he had to leave. Now it’s knowing he’ll be with Matty forever, if he’ll have him. He has to work hard to get back in Matty’s good graces, but it’s so worth it. They were just too sweet together. If ever there was a definition of a grumpy/sunshine couple, it’s these guys. I was so emotional watching them finally get their act together.

I normally despise characters like Sebastian, a constant grump, but I loved him from the start. I loved him even more at the end. In the prologue the reader is allowed to see why he’s as standoffish and as heartless as he is. That killed me. Showing the incident that caused Sebastian to be the bastard he is at the beginning of the book made me love him. Had it came out little by little, or even all at once later with Matty, I’d have spent the entire book hating him and not giving him the benefit of the doubt at all.

I admit that I was not a fan of the length, 476 pages, and I honestly thought I’d either DNF or get bored. Usually anything over 300 pages or so and my ADHD brain is over it. Strangely, that wasn’t the case at all. The pages seriously flew by as I was waiting to see Seb and Matty finally find their way back to each other.

Note that Matty did not know that supernatural beings existed. He didn’t know about any of the others, much less the fact that Sebastian is a vampire. This doesn’t come out until it kind of has to. Also, Matty was scared of blood. It actually made him pass out. That was funny because he, once he learned who Sebastian was, had no problem begging his vampire man to bite him and suck his blood. 🙂

I’m not sure if I’ll read all of Patience (#1), but I am interested in reading Temperance (#3), Toby’s story, and Humility (#4), Danny’s story. I also want to go back into the first book just to see something that happened with Matty.

I’m heavily invested in The Firm series by Lark Taylor and Cora Rose. I look forward to reading more by this author.

Great book.

5 ‘Sebastian needs a hug’ stars.