Rating: 4 Stars

Publisher: Self Published 

Genre:  NA Dark Romance

Tags: Boarding School **TW: Numerous – Misogyny, Strong Mentions of Rape, Obsession, Claustrophobia, Dub Con, Violence, Toxic Families 

Length: 465 Kindle Pages

Reviewer: Kazza

Purchase At: amazon

Blurb:

They might be richer than gods, but they’re morally bankrupt.
As far as the boys who run America’s most exclusive international academy are concerned, I’m an unwelcome interloper, an inconvenience, and they’re determined to make my life a living hell.

When Wren Jacobi sets eyes on Wolf Hall Academy’s newest inductee, all he sees is an easy mark. A reserved little girl with a target painted on her back. He knows nothing of my troubled past, though. Nothing of my mother’s suspicious death, or the horrific treatment I’ve had to endure at the hands of my psychotic father.

And he has no idea of the lengths that I, unassuming little Elodie Stillwater, will go to in order to break the savage beast who dreams of breaking me first.

There’s a wolf stalking the forests that surround my new school.
Little does he know…
There are far scarier predators lurking out there in the dark.

Review:

Fuck her
Hurt her.
Soothe her.
Ruin her.

Can we just take a moment to look at and applaud this beautiful cover. *Claps hand. Even if it didn’t fit a character, and it does, it’s gorgeous. That is Wren Jacobi. Bad boy. Rich boy. Stalker boy. Emotional baggage and secrets boy. Seventeen-year-old purveyor of dark, classic poetry. And what book would dare call itself dark academia without some Edgar Allan Poe. There’s some Lord Byron – The Destruction of Sennacherib – as seventeen-year-olds (especially a boy) are t o t a l l y inclined toward quoting- psshaw.  

Anyhoo, when Elodie arrives at Wolf Hall there is a gorgeous, if not kinda scary, guy waiting for her like he’s the ‘I drew the shortest straw’ welcoming committee, being all broody, smoking a cigarette, wearing black clothes, complete with black nails. Because we get both MCs POV, we know that Wren Jacobi vows to himself that he’s going to wreck her, the new girl. The boys at Riot House make bets. Including – but not limited to – having sex with the females at Wolf Hall. And now there’s a newbie. I mean, they have a well earned reputation.    

You have to go into Riot House knowing that the teenaged guys within these pages are a combo of 2 parts morally bankrupt and 1 part scared of, also waiting for, that special girl who makes them feel all the feels that will help them repent their deviant ways – they don’t admit that last part, FYI. They rail against it. You get the general vibe of academia because it’s set around an elite boarding school in Mountain Lakes, New Hampshire. It also delivers on OTT drama. It’s everything plus the kitchen sink drama. And that’s primarily thrown at Elodie and Wren, with some others getting some of that rah-rah Riot House splashback. There’s obsessive behaviour as well. Pining. Hurt/hurt alongside hurt/comfort. Dark thoughts. Sexist thoughts and language – I’m not a fan of that. And there’s some payback – that I am a fan of. That bonus chapter. Mwah!  

While Wolf Hall is the boarding school everyone attends, and nearly everyone lives there because, hello, boarding school, three of the wealthiest boys, however, live at the story’s eponymous Riot House – one of Wren Jacobi’s many real estate assets. Pax and Dashiell are the other two boys who also come from immense wealth and are as thick as thieves with Wren. No one at school, including the Principal, says boo about the boys living on their own, doing what they want. Driving their cool cars. Having orgy-like end-of-year parties that are not without serious incident. Meanwhile, the school’s (odd) English Teacher, Doctor Fitzpatrick, gives lessons at Wolf Hall in a room where the students can literally lounge about however they want. His is the only class we get much of.

While Wren thinks ‘fuck feelings and the horse they rode in on,’ as do his bros, from the beginning he is one big walking obsession. Wren soon leaps from wanting to break Elodie to possessing her. 

He knows me, so he should also know that I don’t take well to other guys eyeing my property. Possession, regardless of the fact that the other party is unaware they’re someone else’s property, is nine tenths of the law. And I’ve always been willing to defend what’s mine. 

Carina is a student-teacher liaison and takes Elodie under her wing. They’re both on the fourth floor and Carina looks out for girls on the fourth. They all respect Carina. She seems nice but Elodie doesn’t know if it’s a fakeness she’s giving off or if she’s genuinely friendly. There is also a bit of weirdness with the other girls around Elodie’s room and previous students who have “transferred out.”

“Don’t,” she warns. “Not yet. Jesus, let the girl settle in a little first before you go dredging up that shit, yeah?”
Uh…this has me slightly worried, “Dredging up what shit?”
“Nothing,” Carina says this firmly, eyeing the other girls. She’s daring them to open their mouths and breathe another word, which none of them do.  

However, as the two grow into really good friends, Carina warns Elodie off Wren. She tells her, and often, he is bad news. Meanwhile, Carina has a chequered past with Dashiell, they’re the MCs of the next series book. Elodie and Wren get closer and closer, having clandestine meetings, eventually sex, but Elodie keeps this from Carina because she doesn’t want to upset her, especially since she knows why Carina is pissed at Dash and, by proxy, also Wren and Riot House.

I can’t fix anything. I’ve gotten myself mixed up with a guy Carina hates, who’s best friends with the guy who broke her fucking heart, and I can’t see myself getting out of the situation any time soon.

Wren, Dashiell, and Pax, the latter whom I especially didn’t like, are set up to be the three walking red flags MMCs of the Crooked Sinners series. What Callie Hart does here is set a male character up to be brooding and difficult, even crass, she then flips him and makes it about giving in to love. That his house mates are a little more gross. For example, Wren isn’t quite as disgusting in his language about females as the other two. But it’s a low bar, to be honest. Pax calls Elodie the French whore (her mother was French) for a while until Wren finally says something. While Wren tells Elodie he’ll be factual and honest with her, that he hasn’t lied about a thing, he tends toward lies of omission. It’s often easier for readers to forgive those over flat-out lies. He does become quite direct after a bit, telling her he’s known since obtaining and reading her personal student file that she is ‘his.’ Calm down, Romeo. Wren battles with his immediate desire for Elodie and initially “hates her” for that, wanting to be all hardcore and make her sweat it. Then he accepts the wanting, spending some time winning her over. Not that she puts up a fight. She talks a big game but she wants him just as instantaneously and definitively as he does her. It’s a very intense attraction. Her father is human garbage. Her mum is dead. It doesn’t exactly set you up as emotionally healthy. Even though stinking rich, Wren’s family is dysfunctional as well. Dead mum. Alive, shitty dad. Look. We have commonality, babes! Plus, Elodie is small, seems innocent to him, has doe eyes, but she can also use krav maga and pick a lock. The confounding package that is Elodie Stillwater calls to him. 

I’m reeling from the fact that she managed to get that lock to open. Fucking reeling. I know precisely why she learned that skill, and I know precisely why she would carry the tools required to pick a lock with her at all times.     

To be real, the reasons for her being able to lock pick are pretty dark, but everything in this book is geared that way. Elodie’s background is horrendous. A murdered mother. Her colonel father has somehow amassed a small fortune and appears to be made of Teflon. Her last school in Tel Aviv was the most settled she felt in a friendship group, so dear old dad sends her somewhere new, New Hampshire, complete with a new phone and no contacts in it except his. Elodie doesn’t find out for a while that her father told her old school that she had died. He let the whole school and her friends grieve her.  

The burgeoning relationship between Wren and Elodie is understandably a fraught push-pull. Quite a degree of ruminative perplexity happening. Wren sending text messages that would drive me away but Elodie responds to because romance + dark + teens = questionable decision making. That’s the  equation.   

There is also a murder/mystery arc, although that aspect is alluded to in the first part of the book, it’s delved into more in the latter part of the book. While Carina is telling Elodie to stay away from Riot House she has her own poisoned chalice of a relationship going on in the background with Dash. She knows secrets and those secrets bind the old guard of Wolf Hall in a trauma bond of sorts. Even Mercy, Wren’s twin sister, and an incredible drama queen, comes back to school as well. Because, why not?  

I’m not the only one who’s been keeping secrets. Turns out that I’ve been shut in the dark, all of the students and even the teachers at the academy keeping me on the other side of a locked door that they won’t open.

I did like that Wren is pansexual, it’s not given that name here. It just means he’s not hung up on his (sexual) partner’s gender or identity.  

My cons of this book:

Look, the author puts her foot to the floor and I’m the first to applaud that pedal to the metal writing but I do have a but. I’d like to see her tone down the sexist language because this is a NA book. I get it, these guys are deviant young guys blah, blah, blah. Dark blah, blah, blah. I can separate fiction from real life, some younger girls, maybe not as much.  

This book could have done with some cutting down. It’s a contemporary romance and it’s nearly 500 pages.    

Overall:  

I came to Riot House via Quicksilver, book #1 of a very promising romantasy series I am eagerly awaiting the second book of. I thought I’d see what else the author had to offer. The cover was a hook. My blog partner and I will freely admit to being shallow cover lovers. God knows I love a dark, gritty, twisted book so I had to get it. I’m glad I did. Don’t mind my at times jaded dialogue in italics, I’m older. I’m way past the age of the primary demographic of this book but there is something addictive about Hart’s writing. I have to see what’s on the next page, then the next, then the next. I didn’t love either MC yet I was still here for them and the drama. If you can suck me in despite me not loving the MCs, kudos to you. That’s good writing. It already has a ton of reviews and I can see why, while also understanding its polarising aspects. Will I get the next book? Probably.  

I believe I mentioned this already in Quicksilver but Hart prices her books very competitively. I appreciate that, especially coming from Australia where our $AUS exchange takes a big hit compared to the $US. Because I have thus far enjoyed my Callie Hart experience, she’s good value, I’ll continue with her books that appeal. If, like me, you enjoy a twisted, gritty tale with some characters who clearly aren’t sugar and spice, and the TWs don’t put you off, give this a go. Sample first and see what you think. Happy reading. 4 Stars!