Rating: 4 Stars

Publisher: Paulina Ian-Kane

Genre: Gay Erotic Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Blood Play/Kink, On Page Torture/Murder, Personality Disorders, Romance, Series

Length: 306 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

Michael Caldwell—medical examiner, odd, blood obsessed. His new life in Chicago consists of performing autopsies and eating chips while watching old detective series.

Until…

“He’s suddenly standing in front of me. Leather jacket, washed-out jeans, jet black hair.
His deep, green eyes are so intense on me I can barely breathe.
It’s in his crooked smile, bold flirting and confident—borderline conceited—behavior that I get lost.
The fact that he protects me five minutes later during an attempted robbery only reinforces my crazy-instant attraction toward him, though.

But there are shadows hiding in his gaze. And his apathetic yet possessive attitude confuses me.
Makes me care.
Makes me crave.

But then secrets come out and my life turns into a thriller movie.
Now I’m left wondering how this all started. And when the answer comes, I know I can never go back to my uneventful life. Would I even want to?
Would I be able to leave him?

‘Never again’, he whispers.”

WARNING-This is not a sci-fi angel story, unless you see eager vigilantes with a dark side as angels.
This is an action packed romance with an HEA and no cliffhangers. It features an over the top possessive psychopath, and a peculiar medical examiner with a stomach made of steel. There’s violence, torture (only of very bad people), dark humor, amazing side characters and very spicy scenes with blood play. Morality’s grey area is quite stretched in this story.

This is book one in the Angels of Wrath Series. Each book follows a different couple.

Review –

I finally belong. I’m Michael, one of the angels of wrath.

Ask my blog partner what I would say the physical description of the perfect man is, and her answer would be black hair, green eyes, leather jacket, rides a motorcycle, and wears glasses. Raphael didn’t wear glasses, but everything else is spot on.

Sure, he’s a psychopath, but we can’t have it all. 🙂

I’m joking, and I did say physical description.

This starts with a prologue that takes place twenty years before. It shows the readers early on what made the ‘brothers’ who and what they are, starting with One and Two, two boys who had been subjected to horrific testing and training by sick government officials in a secret program.

In present day, there’s Raphael and Michael. Raphael is the millionaire CEO of a medical company, and Michael is a medical examiner, who has been tasked with doing autopsies on victims of a serial killer, dubbed the Rope Killer.

Raphael is one of several men who were rescued by Meg, a psychiatrist, and Linda, a former CIA agent, over twenty years ago. Some were adopted. Some were fostered for reasons mentioned in the book. They were all part of the above-mentioned secret program. Raphael is described ad nauseam as being a psychopath.

When the brothers get concerned about Meg, who disappears for a little while every Friday, Raphael and one of his brothers follow her. They find her in a cafe eating cake with a man around their age.

This is where Raphael and Michael’s story begins.

The man turns out to be Michael Caldwell. The reason Meg has befriended him is pretty important, though she doesn’t share that with her sons, nor does she share it with Michael himself. Let’s just say that their ‘accidental’ meeting a few months before wasn’t so accidental.

Shortly after Michael leaves, there’s a robbery in a convenience store where he stops for snacks. Raphael, who had been bluntly hitting on him only moments before, literally jumps in and saves him. Raphael being there wasn’t an accident. He’s not shy about wanting Michael. He’s blunt, and makes it very clear that not only does he want Michael, he is going to have him.

“If I haven’t made it clear enough, I will fuck you.” The confidence in his words makes me gasp.

To say Raphael is possessive is a major understatement. He and Michael go from zero to a hundred in literally seconds. From their first meeting in the convenience store, Raphael refuses to leave his side, even being present during one of the autopsies.

Michael’s expression while looking at the man is sad. He’s probably feeling… sympathetic? Compassionate? All I sense staring at the corpse is a fat slice of nothing. I mean, I want to find the killer and gut him, but not because I’m driven by a sense of justice.

There’s a lot more to Raphael and his brothers than I can put in this review. They each have their own public profession, but they also have a little side thing going. I say little, but it’s much more than that. It’s a major operation. Without going into detail and giving spoilers, I’ll just say that they’re avenging angels of sorts. Meg even named them all after angels.

“I named all of you. After the seven angels from the apocalyptic events in the Book of Revelation.”

And, yes, Michael included, as he is definitely connected to the others, though I can’t say much about how without giving away a big part of the book.

I’m a coroner. A little oddness is expected from me. But the level of wickedness I enjoy is way past society’s standards. And therefore, very wrong.

There’s a lot of sex or sexual situations between Raphael and Michael almost from the beginning, and none of it could ever be called vanilla. Raphael literally gets off on watching others bleed, causing others to bleed. Michael has his own secrets about blood and sex. These things make them the perfect couple, if a bit deranged. That’s not me kink shaming by any means. It’s what works for them, with an extra side of violence. 😉

I liked Meg and Linda, for the most part. I also liked the brothers, especially Rami. He’s the comedy relief of sorts. There were a couple that gave me pause, Uri for one, but I kind of started liking him toward the end. There’s also Serena. She’s AI, but she’s smarter than all the others put together. All the brothers have their own story in the series. I’m especially eager to read Sari and Uri’s.

The serial killer thing was interesting, though not a whole lot of time was dedicated to it. The person was caught, and it was a bit of a surprise, but the killings were mostly background stuff.

I liked watching Raphael go all caveman a few times, even if was often severe overkill. I liked watching Michael become his anchor, the only person who could calm him down. As crazy as they were together, it worked.

What didn’t work for me…

• Piglet. This is Raphael’s pet name for Michael. Yes, it sounds horrible, and I wouldn’t exactly call it sexy. Even so, it makes sense because of something from Michael’s past. Just… of all pet names, it’s piglet?

• Psychopath is said too much. We get it. Raphael is a true psychopath, but did it have to be said over and over and almost every single time he was mentioned or on page?

• !!!!!!! overload.
• Attaboy. Attaboy is something you say to a kid who colors between the lines, or if somebody wins a race or something. It’s not sexy. Good boy would’ve been perfect. Attaboy just sounded weird.
• Michael. I know I said I liked Michael, but there were some things I didn’t like. He didn’t come across as a strong character, nor did he come across as being all that intelligent, regardless of his profession. He went along too willingly with Raphael. I get it. The man’s gorgeous and pushes all Michael’s buttons, but there wasn’t a whole lot of push back when there needed to be. A couple of times, sure, but not enough, in my opinion.

Overall, with the exception of what I list above, it was a good read. I love the idea of avenging angels, and I’m all about series with brothers, even if they’re not blood related. I’ve already started reading the next one, Six (Angels of Wrath, #2). I’ve been needing something different, and this series is definitely different.

There is quite a bit of violence, so take note of warnings in the blurb if you want to read this.

I thought this was my first by this author, but I was wrong. In 2023, I read The Plus-One Entanglement (Love After Forty, #1),  and the Friendship Adjustment (Love After Forty, #2). Looking back at my reviews of those books, I see where the exclamation point overload isn’t just an occasional thing. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I feel that books flow much better without the constant need for !!!!, and if the dialogue is written well, they’re not necessary except maybe here and there. That’s my opinion.